Transcript The Curious Case of Clive Wearing

Eugene Kyere, Wyatt Andresen, Sarah
Kerman, Elijah Davila
 On March 26, 1985 Clive Wearing went to bed and
awoke the next morning unable to recall his wife’s
name or answer simple questions.
 Originally diagnosed with influenza and sleep
deprivation, he was prescribed sleeping
medication and left in a pill induced slumber while
his wife left for work
 After being found wandering the streets he was
taken to a hospital were he was finally diagnosed
with Herpes Encephalitis, a disease that began
eating holes into his brain and causing it to swell
against his skull, resulting in severe memory loss
as well as retrograde and anterograde amnesia
 Herpes Encephalitis- inflammation of the brain due
to a herpes simplex virus. Basically a cold sore in the
brain
 retrograde amnesia- a memory disorder that cause
the inability to remember events or experiences that
happen before an important time.
Anterograde amnesia- Events after amnesia cannot be
remembered and new memories cannot form
 Besides the swelling and holes in his brain in
damaged parts like the occipito-parietal, frontal lobes,
thalamus, hypothalamus and amygdale. The part that
is completely gone is is the hippocampus(Greek for
seahorse). This is what we use for recalling and
remembering as well as laying down new thoughts.
 Clive has a short term memory of about 7 to 30
seconds
 He forgets things easily and has no recollection of
what just happened to him
But oddly Enough…
•Musician- retained ability to read and play
music- showed short term memory
impacted but long term memory largely
intact b/c temporal lobe not impacted
•Sensory perception of stimuli not impacted
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y
 Stark, C.E. (2003) Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory
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for single items and memory for conjunctions. Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, Maryland.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12699335
Casler, Leah (2013) Anterograde Amnesia: The Problem that is
Forgotten. Mercer University
http://faculty.mercer.edu/spears_a/studentpages/anterograde/i
mage6.jpg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-whokeeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fac
t_sacks
http://dictionary.reference.com/