Rehebbilitating Memory

Abstract

Amnesia is a deficit of memory function that can result from trauma, stress, disease, drug use, or ageing. Though efforts are made to prevent and treat the various causes of amnesia, there remains no treatment for the symptom of memory loss itself. Because the defining feature of amnesia is an inability recall memory, any given case may be due to the possibility that the memory is damaged, or the alternative that it is present but irretrievable (Squire, 1982). Discriminating between these two scenarios would be of scientific value, because the neurobiology of memory formation is anchored in experimental amnesia. Pathological cases of amnesia that are due to retrieval deficits may in principal be treatable rather than merely preventable. Amnesia could be attributed to a retrieval deficit if the ostensible ‘lost’ memory could be evoked through brain stimulation. The challenge here is to identify exactly where in the brain a particular memory is stored.