Causes and Treatment of Amnesia - Research Paper Example

Amnesia can be attributed to any cause that interferes with the regular operation of the limbic system and hence causes a loss of memory or amnesia. The various functional causes of amnesia could be psychological factors and psychoanalytic triggers such as various kinds of defense mechanisms. While these episodes of amnesia continue for some time other forms of amnesia such as transient global amnesia occurs in spontaneous episodes. One such typical form of amnesia is childhood amnesia (or infantile amnesia). This paper will elaborate on the various aspects of childhood amnesia using the current state of research on the issue.

Childhood Amnesia
Childhood amnesia may suggest that this form of amnesia afflicts children yet the opposite is true. Childhood amnesia affects an adult’s ability to recall certain memories typically memories formed between the age of two years to four years. Certain classifications of childhood amnesia also include the period up to ten years of age where memories are not entirely lost but a significant portion may be lost (Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2012, pp. 272–276). The onset of childhood amnesia tends to become stronger as time proceeds and older adults may be able to recall fewer memories than younger adults.

In the case of infants various brain regions such as the hippocampus and the amygdala are just developing. This is especially true for infants aged in the first two years of their lives. Various systems such as those mentioned above are involved in memory storage but are yet not fully developed enough to retain memories (Richmond & Nelson, 2007). Research has conclusively demonstrated that young children aged between three years and four years can remember events that occurred in this age bracket. However, the children’s ability to retain these memories tends to decrease significantly as they tend to get older (Cleveland & Reese, 2008).
Other research has shown that adults can recall events from the age of one year and before but these memories tend to blur out as the children grow older. The blurring out may be significant enough to erase entire swathes of memory so that the adult is unable to recall any of these events at all (Tustin & Hayne, 2010).
The offset of childhood amnesia is typically defined as the age of the first memory and a typical value for it is three and a half years of age (Joseph, 2003). However, the age of first memory is not fixed to any value but rather it depends on various research factors such as memory retrieval methods where the first age of memory ranges between two years and five years of age (Multhaup & Johnson, 2005). Similar variations in the first age of memory may occur when the ages of the respondents are varied (Tustin & Hayne, 2010).
Another unique method of defining the first age of memory is to use the distinction of personal memories versus public knowledge. In this method, the respondent’s recollection is considered valid for the first age of memory when the respondent can recall minute personal events. This offset of the first age of memory typically occurs approximately when the child is around four and a half years of age. It has been suggested that this may happen since the children’s development of knowledge about their memory is much enhanced at this age rather than at previous ages (Jack & Hayne, 2007).

Certain differences tend to exist between the first memories when bifurcations such as gender or ethnicity are considered. In terms of gender, females tend to have first memories earlier than males. This difference has been attributed to the difference between the care doled out by mothers to daughters and sons. It has been suggested that mothers tend to provide better care and emotional attachment to daughters when compared to sons. This in turn leads to far richer and denser memories in women than in men. It has also been indicated that this difference tends to persist across cultural and other social bifurcations (Fitzgerald, 2010).
There are differences in the first memories displayed by men and women. The earliest memories of males tend to focus on their existence while the earliest memories of women tend to focus on other people around themselves. Another major difference is the orientation of the earliest memories. Males tend to display more negative memories than females. Another perspective is that males tend to display earliest memories related to various play events while females tend to display earliest memories related to either transitional as well as traumatic events (Fitzgerald, 2010).

Certain ethnic differences also exist in the display of earliest memories. Cultures, where boys are prized over girls, tend to produce individuals where the female's first age of memory is later than that of males. This has been attributed to greater care and emotional attachment to sons in such cultures. In contrast, research has shown that black females tend to display their earliest memories far later than black males or white females. Additionally, black females report considerably fewer personal memories when compared to black males and white females (Fitzgerald, 2010).

Conclusion
Overall, it can be said that childhood amnesia tends to affect adults so that their childhood memories are lost to a large extent.  Read More