The main types of memory disorders. Memory disorders: why memory becomes poor, the norm and the relationship with diseases, treatment

Memory - the mental process of reflection and accumulation of direct and past individual and social experience. This is achieved by fixing, preserving and reproducing various impressions, which ensures the accumulation of information and enables a person to use the previous experience. Accordingly, memory disorders are manifested in violation of fixation (remembering), preservation and reproduction of various information. There are quantitative disorders (dysmnesia), manifested in the weakening, strengthening of memory, its loss, and qualitative (paramnesia).

Quantitative memory impairment (dysmnesia).

Hypermnesia - pathological exacerbation of memory, manifested by an excessive increase in the ability to recall past events that are insignificant in the present. Memories at the same time are of a vivid sensual-figurative nature, emerge easily, cover both the events as a whole and the smallest details. An increase in recall is combined with a decrease in the memorization of current information. Playback of the logical sequence of events is broken. Strengthened mechanical memory, worsened logical-semantic memory. Hypermnesia can be partial, selective, when it manifests itself, for example, in an increased ability to memorize and reproduce numbers, in particular, in oligophrenia.

It is detected in manic syndrome, hypnotic sleep, some types of drug intoxication.

Hypomnesia - partial loss of memory of events, phenomena, facts. It is described as a "tricky memory", when the patient does not remember everything, but only the most important, often repeated events in his life. In a mild degree, hypomnesia is manifested by a weakness in the reproduction of dates, names, terms, numbers, etc.

It occurs in neurotic disorders, in the structure of a major drug addiction syndrome in the form of a "perforated", "perforated" memory ( palimpsests), with psychoorganic, paralytic syndrome, etc.

Amnesia - complete loss of memory of phenomena, events for a certain period of time.

The following amnesia warrants are distinguished in relation to the period subjected to amnesia.

Variants of amnesias in relation to the period subjected to amnesia.

Retrograde amnesia - loss of memory for events that preceded the acute period of the disease (trauma, a state of altered consciousness, etc.). The duration of the period of time subjected to amnesia can be different - from several minutes to years.

Occurs with hypoxia of the brain, craniocerebral trauma.

Anterograde amnesia - loss of memories of events immediately following the end of the acute period of the disease. With this type of amnesia, the behavior of patients is ordered, criticism of their condition is preserved, which indicates the safety short term memory.

Occurs in Korsakov's syndrome, amentia.

Congrade amnesia - loss of memory for events during the acute period of the disease (period of disturbed consciousness).

Occurs with stunning, stupor, coma, delirium, oneiroid, special conditions consciousness, etc.

Antero-retrograde (complete, total) amnesia - loss of memory of events that occurred both before, during and after the acute period of the disease.

Occurs in coma, amentia, traumatic, toxic lesions of the brain, strokes.

According to the predominantly impaired memory function, amnesias are divided into fixative and anecphoric.

Fixation amnesia - loss of the ability to remember and reproduce new information. It manifests itself in a sharp weakening or absence of memory for current, recent events while maintaining it for knowledge acquired in the past. Accompanied by a violation of orientation in the environment, time, surrounding persons - amnestic disorientation.

Occurs in Korsakov's syndrome, dementia, paralytic syndrome.

Anekphoria - inability to arbitrarily recall events, facts, words, which becomes possible after a prompt.

Occurs in asthenia, psychoorganic syndrome, lacunar dementia.

According to the course of amnesia, they are divided as follows.

Progressive - progressive loss of memory. It proceeds in accordance with Ribot's law, which proceeds as follows. If memory is imagined as a layer cake, in which each overlying layer represents later acquired knowledge and skills, then progressive amnesia is precisely the layer-by-layer removal of these skills and knowledge in the reverse order - from events less distant from the present to later, up to the “memory of the simplest skills” - praxis, which disappears last, which is accompanied by the formation of apraxia.

It is detected in dementia, atrophic diseases of the brain (senile dementia, Pick's disease, Alzheimer's).

Stationary amnesia - persistent memory loss that does not improve or worsen.

Regressive amnesia - the gradual restoration of memories of the amnestic period, and in the first place, the events that are most important for the patient are restored.

Retarded amnesia - delayed amnesia. Any period is not forgotten immediately, but after some time.

According to the object subjected to amnesia, the following types are distinguished:

Affectogenic (catatim) - amnesia occurs under the influence of a traumatic situation (psychogenically), according to the mechanism of displacement of individually unpleasant events, as well as all events that coincided in time with a strong shock.

Occurs in psychogenic disorders.

Hysterical amnesia - remembering only individual psychologically unacceptable events. Unlike affectogenic amnesia, memory for indifferent events coinciding in time with those being amnesiac is retained. Included in the structure of hysterical psychopathic syndrome.

It is observed in hysterical syndrome.

Scotomization - has a clinical picture similar to hysterical amnesia, with the difference that this term refers to cases that occur in individuals who do not have hysterical character traits.

Worth mentioning separately alcoholic amnesia, the most striking type of which are palimpsests, described as a specific sign of alcoholism by K. Bonhoeffer (1904). This type amnesia is manifested by a loss of memory for individual events that occurred during intoxication.

Qualitative memory disorders (paramnesia).

Pseudo-reminiscences (false memories, "illusions of memory") - are memories of real events that occurred in a different period of time. Most often, the transfer of events is carried out from the past to the present. A variety of pseudo-reminiscences are ecmnesia- erasing the line between the present and the past, as a result of which the memories of the distant past are experienced as happening at the moment ("life in the past").

Occurs in Korsakov's syndrome, progressive amnesia, dementia, etc.

Confabulations ("fictions of memory", "hallucinations of memory", "nonsense of the imagination") - false memories of events that did not actually take place during the period of time about which in question, with confidence in their truth. Confabulations are divided into mnestic (observed with amnesia) and fantastic (observed with paraphrenia and confusion). Mnestic confabulations are divided (Snezhnevsky A.V., 1949) into ekmnestic(false memories are localized in the past) and mnemonically e (fictitious events refer to the current time). In addition, allocate replacement confabulations - false memories that arise against the background of amnestic memory loss and fill these gaps. Fantastic confabulations - fictions about incredible, fantastic events that supposedly happened to the patient.

The filling of consciousness with abundant confabulations of everyday content, combined with false recognition of the environment and persons, incoherent thinking, fussiness and confusion is defined as confabulatory confusion.

Confabulosis(Bayer W., 1943) – the presence of abundant systematic confabulations without gross memory disorders or gaps, with sufficient orientation in place, time and one's own personality. At the same time, confabulations do not fill memory gaps, they are not combined with amnesia.

Confabulatory disorders are found in Korsakov's syndrome, progressive amnesia.

Cryptomnesia - memory impairment, manifested by the alienation or appropriation of memories. One type of cryptomnesia is associated(painfully appropriated) memories - while what is seen, heard, read is remembered by the patient as having taken place in his life. This type of cryptomnesia includes true cryptomnesia(pathological plagiarism) - a memory disorder, as a result of which the patient appropriates the authorship of various works of art, scientific discoveries, etc. Another variant of cryptomnesia are false associated (alienated) memories- real facts from the patient's life are remembered by him as having taken place with someone else, or as heard, read, seen somewhere.

Meet with psychoorganic syndrome, paranoid syndrome, etc.

Echomnesia (reduplicating Pick's paramnesia) - deceptions of memory, in which any event, experience is presented in the memories as doubled, tripled. The main difference between echomnesia and pseudoreminiscences is that they are not a substitute for amnesia. Occurring events are projected simultaneously into the present and into the past. That is, the patient has the feeling that this event has already taken place once in his life. However, at the same time, echomnesias differ from the “already seen” phenomenon, since they experience not an absolutely identical situation, but a similar one, while with the “already seen” phenomenon, the current situation appears to be identical to what has already happened.

Observed in psychoorganic syndrome.

Phenomena already seen, heard, experienced, told, etc. - what is seen, heard, experienced, told for the first time is perceived as familiar, met earlier. At the same time, this feeling is never associated with a specific time, but refers "to the past in general." The opposite of these phenomena are phenomena of the never seen, never experienced, never heard, etc., in which the known, the familiar is perceived as something new, never seen before. This type of memory disorder is sometimes described as part of depersonalization and derealization disorders.

Every day, our brain receives a huge amount of different information. Just a couple of decades ago, almost anyone could easily cope with this. But now the volume of incoming data due to rapid scientific and technological progress has increased by an order of magnitude. This is not surprising - after all, a lot of devices that are used today in everyday life and are always nearby all the time bring us various, continuously updated news - about the weather, about traffic jams, about current news, about incoming letters or comments in in social networks etc.

Of course, there are people who deliberately protect themselves from this flow, but this is far from always possible, because the density and speed of information transfer in society has also seriously increased. Thus, even without using mobile devices, we are forced to absorb much more different knowledge than our ancestors. Therefore, it is not surprising that our brain sometimes does not keep up with all this, dispersing attention and accumulating fatigue. And, as an inevitable consequence, memories develop, sometimes weak, and sometimes those that drag serious problems along with them. Today we will try to understand what memory is and what its disorders are.

According to some estimates, the human brain is capable of storing up to 7 terabytes of information, but this figure can be greatly underestimated.

What is memory?

Memory is the ability to store certain reflections of objective reality in the brain in the form of knowledge and skills. How this happens is not fully understood, there are many theories on this topic. What is known for sure is that memorization occurs due to the formation of neural connections-patterns that have different levels stability.

There is also inconsistency in the available classification options, so we will simplify it a bit for understanding. So, according to the duration of memorization, memory is short-term and long-term. According to the method of memorization, there is a mechanical and associative memory. In the first case, a person remembers something that is not supported by previous experience (what is already in long-term memory). In the second, we "tie up" new information to the already existing - or similar, or radically opposite. The second type of memorization is more reliable - for example, it is easy to remember what happened on some rare holiday than on any ordinary day, full of routine. Competent formation of associations underlies the technology of high-quality memorization - mnemonics.

Memory disorders

Now let's talk about memory disorders. They are quantitative (hypomnesia, hypermnesia and amnesia) and qualitative (paramnesia).

Quantitative Disorders

Hypomnesia, or weakening of memory, is its most common disorder. A person completely or partially loses the ability to both remember new information and reproduce old memories. By the nature of the weakening of memory, the doctor can suggest an approximate cause. For example, in atherosclerosis of the cerebral vessels, which affects memory in older people, the greatest difficulties arise when reproducing new, freshly received information, while patients can remember the events of bygone days very clearly. Hypomnesia, in addition to atherosclerosis, may be the result of trauma, infectious process, chronic fatigue syndrome, anemia (including alcohol) and many other diseases. Therefore, if your memory began to deteriorate, it would be useful to consult with your doctor. Intellectual activity helps to fight hypomnesia - crossword puzzles, arithmetic operations in the mind, memorizing poems, etc. There are also foods that have a beneficial effect on memory - nuts, blueberries, millet, fish and seafood, sage, etc.

Hypermnesia is an enhancement of memory. It can be both a marker of emerging disorders of the functioning of the brain, and a variant of the norm. Hypermnesia can occur in some mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder. affective disorder(the old name is manic-depressive psychosis), with a fever during infectious diseases, and even with stress (the notorious "life flashed before my eyes"). Hypermnesia can manifest itself as an increased ability to memorize, as well as influxes of memories that previously seemed forgotten. In any case, hypermnesia, if it is not an innate talent, is a very serious reason that requires a visit to a doctor, and immediately to a neurologist or psychiatrist.

Amnesia is a term well known to society. Still - almost every popular television series has a hero suffering from a similar disorder. As you may have guessed, amnesia is a memory gap. Most often, it covers a strictly limited period of the patient's life - for example, the time when a person was unconscious during a faint. Amnesia is retrograde (events drop out of memory before a painful condition; a similar type of amnesia is common with), congrade (an event drops out during disease state; the same injuries, as well as fainting or psychotraumatic situations) or antegrade (the ability to memorize new impressions is lost; this happens with trauma, an infectious process in the brain, and a number of other conditions). There are also combinations of different types of amnesia, such as retroantegrade. Also, amnesia may be the result of a deterioration in the patient's condition, previously suffering from hypomnesia. Alas, this happens often with the already mentioned atherosclerosis. The amnesia of the early years of life, to some extent present in everyone, and therefore considered the norm, stands apart.

Qualitative Disorders

Paramnesia is nothing but a false memory. With paramnesia, the ability to memorize and retain information does not change, but the order of information stored in the brain is violated.

The most common type of paramnesia is pseudoreminiscence. In this case, a person incorrectly remembers the time of the event stored in memory, despite the fact that he remembers the event correctly. This type of paramnesia can be both a variant of the norm and a sign of the debut of any disease. Another name for pseudo-reminiscences is memory illusions.

With all the outward similarity, the well-known phenomenon of deja vu does not apply to memory impairment - it involves the mechanisms of perception and information processing at various levels

Also, paramnesia can take the form of confabulation.- when the existing gap in memory (amnesiac period) is "filled" with events that in fact never occurred in the patient's life. This level of qualitative memory disorder, although deeper than pseudo-reminiscences, can still be a variant of the norm. But we must remember that there is enough wide range pathologies in which confabulations are present, ranging from psychoactive substance poisoning to schizophrenia and others.

There is another variant of the disorder called cryptomnesia. This is such a deception of memory, in which someone else's thought is perceived as one's own. This happens if the events that contributed to the memorization of someone else's thought were not important for the individual at that moment, but at the same time through long time an urgent task arose, "refreshing" previously considered irrelevant information. At the same time, someone else's authorship of a thought is interpreted by the brain as an insignificant detail and is amnesiac. However, cryptomnesia must be distinguished from true conscious plagiarism.

Memory- reproduction of past experience, one of the main properties of the nervous system, expressed in the ability to store information about the events of the external world, the reactions of the body for a long time and repeatedly apply it in practice.

By linking the past, present and future, memory gives stability life experience. Memory is the most important structure that ensures the formation of individuality.

At present, there is no unified and complete theory of memory in science. To the two previously known - psychological and physiological - added biochemical. The psychological doctrine of memory is "older" than the physiological and biochemical ones.

One of the first psychological theories that arose in the 17th century was the associative one. This theory is based on the concept of association - the connection between individual mental phenomena, as well as between them and the phenomena of the external world. Memory in line with this theory is understood as a complex system short-term and long-term associations by contiguity, similarity and contrast.

The essence of the theory is as follows: if certain mental formations arose in consciousness simultaneously or immediately after each other, then an associative connection arises between them and the reappearance of any of the elements of this connection necessarily causes the representation of all elements in consciousness. Thanks to this theory, many patterns of functioning and mechanisms of memory were discovered and described.

But over time, a number of problems arose, one of which was the problem of explaining the selectivity of memory, which could not be understood on the basis of the associative theory of memory.

Memory disorders

Memory disorders very varied. The causes of certain memory disorders have been identified through numerous clinical observations of patients with various brain injuries and a deep analysis of the features of memory impairment in them. Patients' memory is assessed using various psychophysiological tests. In subsequent works by domestic and foreign clinicians, a large amount of material from clinical and psychological studies was systematized, allowing certain conclusions to be drawn about the causes of certain forms of memory disorders. Based on the study of the characteristics of memory disorders in patients with various brain injuries, amnesias are private and general.

Amnesia

One of the most frequent disorders memory is amnesia - partial or complete loss of it. Memory gaps can be for certain periods of time, for individual events. Such partial amnesia is most pronounced in a person who has lost consciousness (for example, during epileptic fit), as well as with stupor, coma.

progressive amnesia

In patients with severe cerebral atherosclerosis, an organic lesion of the central nervous system, gradually increasing memory loss can be observed. This is the so-called progressive amnesia. With it, current events first of all disappear from memory; long-past phenomena are relatively preserved (Ribot's law), which is typical primarily for older people. With a traumatic brain injury or other cerebral pathology of organic origin, the events preceding the disease often fall out of memory. This feature retrograde amnesia.

Anterograde amnesia

Lack of memory for events that immediately followed the onset of the disease, such as a traumatic brain injury, is called anterograde amnesia. In the clinic of psychiatry, fixation amnesia is often observed. It manifests itself in the inability to remember current events, newly incoming information. This disorder is most often found in Korsakov's amnestic syndrome.

Hypermnesia

Aggravation of memories - hypermnesia - a simultaneous slight change in the memory function is observed in severe infectious diseases, as well as in a manic state. It should be noted that as the patient recovers, hypermnesia disappears and memory fixation returns to the previous level.

Hypomnesia

In severe depressive states, accompanied by severe melancholy, depression, patients complain of a sharpening of memory for unpleasant events, misfortunes of the distant past. At the same time, the process of memorization generally decreases and hypomnesia develops: at first, the reproduction of terms, names, main dates is difficult, and later the fixation properties of memory are weakened. Hypomnesia affects the elderly with atherosclerotic lesions of the cerebral vessels. It also occurs with traumatic disease.

paramnesia

Qualitative memory disorders - paramnesia - are erroneous, false memories. These include pseudo-reminiscences, characterized by the fact that the patient fills in the gaps in memory with events that occurred earlier, but not at the time he points to. For example, a patient, being in a hospital for treatment, claims for several days that he allegedly went to Polotsk yesterday. He really was in Polotsk, but at a different time.

Confabulation

TO quality disorders memory also includes confabulation. This is such a state when memory lapses are filled with fictional, often fantastic events that did not take place. The content of confabulations is very diverse, which is determined by the personality of the patient, his mood, the degree of development of the intellect and the ability to imagine, fantasies. Pseudo-reminiscences and confabulations are symptoms of the development of senile dementia.

Cryptomnesia

Sometimes there is such a weakening of memory in which the patient cannot distinguish facts and events that really took place from those ever heard, read or seen in a dream. These are cryptomnesias.

Causes of memory disorders

For a long time, the causes of various memory impairments were interpreted from the point of view of narrowly localized ideas about this complex mental function. In particular, it was believed that the center of memory is the mamillary bodies. Developing this point of view, scientists came to the conclusion that pathological mechanisms memory disorders - the result of damage to the higher parts of the brain (cerebral cortex).

A weighty argument in favor of this thesis was the complete cessation of the transfer of information from one hemisphere to another after cutting corpus callosum. The responsibility of certain areas of the brain for the function of memory was confirmed during surgical interventions, during which electrical stimulation of certain areas of the cortex awakened in a person the recollection of long-past events.

So, one woman during the operation heard the voice of her little son, coming from the yard along with street noise. It seemed to another patient that she was giving birth and, moreover, in exactly the same environment that really was many years ago.

In attempts by scientists to determine the specific areas of the cortex responsible for the function of memory, it was found that traces of it are activated when the temporal lobe is irritated by current. At the same time, it was found that the localization of the pathological focus in the occipital part of the visual memory is disturbed, and in the temporal - auditory.

The defeat of the frontal lobe leads to a violation of semantic memory. However, these hypotheses should not be considered absolutely proven, since some patients show memory impairment in the absence of any organic changes in the central nervous system.

Even the most thorough clinical examination does not reveal its organic changes, for example, in patients with memory disorders with strong emotional experiences, reactive psychoses (affectogenic, psychogenic amnesia).

Despite the fact that irritation of certain areas of the cortex causes the revival of traces of past events, they differ qualitatively from ordinary memories in excessive clarity and brightness. Patients tend to re-experience these events and never regard them as a memory.

Solving the problem of the mechanism of memory, Sechenov and Pavlov, on the basis of numerous studies, established that it is based on trace conditioned reflexes. In this case, the physiological basis of memory is reduced to the association of trace signals with signals coming from the environment.

This is confirmed by the fact that in people suffering from mental disorders in old age, when developing decline reactive nervous system deterioration or complete absence revival of old and formation of new conditional connections. In recent years, the biochemical theory of memory has been increasingly asserted.

It boils down to different kinds metabolism in the brain and, first of all, ribonucleic (RNA) under the influence of bioelectric potentials coming from the analyzers, cause the formation of a protein that carries encoded information. When information similar to the previous one enters the brain again, the same neurons in which the trace has been preserved begin to resonate. Violation of nucleic metabolism, and, above all, RNA, leads to memory disorders.

Treatment and correction of memory disorders

Today, there are many drugs that stimulate the activity of nerve cells and improve memory. The fact is that human memory is a very delicate and well-established system that has been developing for hundreds of millions of years and healthy person works optimally. Do not forget that nature already has various mechanisms for regulating the activity of nerve cells. In the meantime, doctors recommend using only mild drugs, taking them along with a daily dose of vitamins.

There are other ways to correct memory. The most simple and affordable good sleep And balanced diet. It is known that in most cases, food poor in proteins and vitamins reduces the possibility of memorization.

Helps improve memory inclusion in daily diet foods rich in magnesium, calcium and glutamic acid:

• dried apricots;
• beet;
• dates;
• nuts;
• beans;
• greenery;
• wheat seedlings.

And tea and coffee are usually resorted to during intense mental work, in particular, when you need to quickly remember something - and they do it right.

Experiments have shown that the alkaloids, caffeine and theophylline, which are contained in tea and coffee, inhibit the action of phosphodiesterase and thereby prevent the destruction of the natural source of cellular energy - cyclic adenosine monophosphate.

At the same time, not only its level increases in the brain, but also the level of all substances-mediators that are directly related to the memorization of information: adrenocorticotropic hormone, vasopressin, a number of hypothalamic hormones that favor the creation of positive emotions.

Thus, a favorable background arises for the perception, processing, storage and reproduction of information (retrieving it from the “storerooms of memory”). And all this is done by one cup of coffee or tea! For science and practice, it is important in what ways and means it is possible to increase the capacity of the brain and activate the processes of memorization.

Questions and answers on the topic "Memory disorders"

Question:A 20-year-old girl had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was operated on. It's been three years, memory has not fully recovered. She forgets the events of the previous day, if she remembers some event, she does not remember when it was. She can tell something that has never happened to her. She is prescribed medication to improve circulation. Maybe there are some other methods to improve memory? Will the memory be restored to the end?

Answer: Memory impairment is frequent occurrence after neurosurgical operations, but most often the memory is gradually restored. To improve memory, you can use nootropics, for example, Piracetam, vitamin B group - they will also speed up general rehabilitation after surgery.

Question:Mom is 75 years old, 4 years ago, we (her relatives) began to notice a deterioration in my mother's memory. She asks the same thing several times with an interval of 2-3 minutes, in the evening she does not remember what she did in the morning, she remembers her childhood years very well - the years of the war, orienting herself in time, takes only piracetam and memorium. It's very hard to leave her, she's like Small child- is about to cry. There are no other diseases, they consulted a neurologist, she said that they had not yet come up with drugs to restore memory. What can and should we do for our mother, how to cure her, or at least make sure that the disease does not progress? Thanks in advance for your reply.

Answer: Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that your mother has a neurodegenerative disease - Alzheimer's disease. With this disease, there really is no real effective treatment. Usually in such cases, nootropics are prescribed - your mother is already taking them. Most likely you will have to come to terms with the fading of her memory. We also recommend doing an MRI of the brain to rule out other causes of amnesia (memory loss).

Question:Hello, I am 28 years old, but I do not have a good memory. At one time I even read and memorized just like that, taught to train my memory, but it remained that way. It’s hard for me to remember something, I can immediately forget, then of course I’ll remember, but it’s too late. Tell me, can there be any pills that help improve memory? Thanks.

Answer: You need to consult with a neurologist and undergo an MRI examination of the brain and a Doppler study of the vessels of the neck, and only after that undergo a course of treatment.

Question:Hello! The father is 65 years old, he has short-term memory loss. Why?

Answer: It is highly probable that the cause of this phenomenon was multiple sclerosis or circulatory disorders of the brain. In any case, only a neuropathologist can identify the cause of this phenomenon after a personal consultation and a comprehensive examination.

Memory is in psychology a set of information that displays events, emotions, any knowledge experienced by an individual earlier.

What is memory and its violation

Thanks to her, we have experience, and a person is the person that others know him to be. Loss of memory or its violations cause great discomfort to the individual.

Memory impairment in psychology is a fairly common disorder that brings a lot of problems to a person and, of course, worsens the quality of his life. This disorder is at the root of many diseases. mental nature.

The main types of memory disorders

There are two main types of human memory impairment.

Qualitative dysfunctions imply confusion in the patient's head associated with the inability to distinguish between genuine memories and fantasies. The patient does not understand which events are real and which are the fruit of his imagination.

Quantitative defects are displayed in strengthening or weakening of traces of memory.

There are many types of memory impairments. Most of them are characterized by short duration and reversibility. They can be caused by such banal reasons as overwork, frequent stressful situations, abuse medicines as well as alcoholic beverages.

Others require a serious approach to treatment.

Causes of memory impairment

What are the reasons that can cause memory impairment? In psychology, there are several such.

For example, the presence of asthenic syndrome in a person, which is accompanied by rapid fatigue, exhaustion of the body. It can be a consequence of craniocerebral damage, prolonged depression, beriberi, alcohol and drug addiction.

In children, memory disorders are most often the result of underdevelopment of the brain, a head injury of a physical or mental nature. These children have problems with remembering information and its subsequent reproduction.

Types of memory disorder

What are the symptoms of memory impairment? This is forgetting and the inability to reproduce events from personal or someone else's experience.

Paramnesia is a loss in time when an individual confuses the events of the past and the present, cannot understand which events in his head took place in the real world, and which are fictional, projected by the brain based on the information once received.

Dysmnesia is a disorder that includes hypermnesia, hypomnesia, and amnesia. The latter is characterized by forgetting individual information and skills for a certain period of time. Memory problems are episodic, after which the memories partially or completely return. Amnesia can also affect acquired skills, such as the ability to drive a car, ride a bicycle, cook any kind of food.

Types of amnesia

Retrograde amnesia is manifested in forgetting events for a certain period of time preceding the onset of the injury. For example, a person who has received a head injury may forget everything that happened to him a week or more before the accident.

Anterograde amnesia is the opposite of the previous one and involves loss of memory for a period after an injury.

Fixation amnesia is when the patient is unable to remember incoming information. He quite adequately perceives reality, but forgets the information within a few minutes or seconds after receiving it. This causes problems in time orientation, as well as in remembering the people around.

With total amnesia, a person is unable to remember anything from his past life. He does not know his name, age, address, who he is and what he did. As a rule, such a mental disorder occurs after a severe skull injury.

A palimpsest occurs as a result of alcohol intoxication, when an individual cannot remember certain moments.

With hysterical amnesia, a person forgets difficult, painful, or simply unfavorable memories. It is characteristic not only of mentally ill people, but also of healthy, related to the hysterical type.

Paramnesia is a type of memory impairment in which the resulting gaps are filled with different data.

Ecmnesia and cryptomnesia

Ekmnesia is a phenomenon when a person lives long past events as a phenomenon of the present time. It is characteristic of older people who begin to perceive themselves as a young individual and are preparing for university admission, marriage, or other events that were experienced at a young age.

Cryptomnesia is a disorder in which a person passes off ideas they hear or read as their own, sincerely believing in their authorship. For example, patients can appropriate the books read by great writers in their imagination, assuring others of this.

A variation of cryptomnesia can be a phenomenon when a person perceives an event from his own life as read in a book or seen in a movie.

Treatment of memory disorders

The classification of memory disorders is a fairly large amount of information in psychology, there are many works on the study of such phenomena, as well as methods for their treatment.

Of course, it is easier to engage in preventive actions than the treatment itself. For these purposes, experts have developed many exercises that allow you to keep your memory in good shape.

Proper nutrition and lifestyle also contribute to the normal functioning of the brain.

As for the direct treatment of memory disorders, it will depend on the diagnosis, the degree of neglect and the causes of occurrence. Treatment with drugs begins only after a thorough diagnosis by a specialist doctor.

Memory is an important function of our central nervous system to perceive the information received and store it in some invisible "cells" of the brain in reserve in order to retrieve and use it in the future. Memory is one of the most important abilities mental activity person, therefore slightest infringement memory burdens him, he breaks out of the usual rhythm of life, suffering himself and annoying those around him.

Memory impairment is most often perceived as one of the many clinical manifestations of some kind of neuropsychic or neurological pathology, although in other cases forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are the only signs of a disease that no one pays attention to, believing that a person is such by nature. .

The big mystery is human memory

Memory is a complex process that takes place in the central nervous system and involving the perception, accumulation, retention and reproduction of received in different periods information time. Most of all, we think about the properties of our memory when we need to learn something new. The result of all the efforts made in the learning process depends on how someone manages to hook, hold, perceive what they see, hear or read, which is important when choosing a profession. From the point of view of biology, memory is short-term and long-term.

Information received in a glimpse or, as they say, “it flew in one ear, flew out of the other” is a short-term memory in which what is seen and heard is postponed for several minutes, but, as a rule, without meaning and content. So, the episode flashed by and disappeared. Short-term memory does not promise anything in advance, which is probably good, because otherwise a person would have to store all the information that he does not need at all.

However, with certain efforts of a person, information that has fallen into the zone of short-term memory, if you keep your eyes on it or listen and delve into it, will be transferred to long-term storage. This happens even beyond the will of a person, if some episodes are often repeated, have a special emotional significance, or occupy a separate place among other phenomena for various reasons.

Assessing their memory, some people claim that they have a short-term memory, because everything is remembered, assimilated, retold in a couple of days, and then just as quickly forgotten. This often happens when preparing for exams, when information is put aside only for the purpose of reproducing it to decorate a grade book. It should be noted that in similar cases, referring again to this topic, when it becomes interesting, a person can easily restore seemingly lost knowledge. It is one thing to know and forget, and another to not receive information. And here everything is simple - the acquired knowledge without much human effort was transformed into departments of long-term memory.

Long-term memory analyzes, structures, creates volume and purposefully postpones everything for future use indefinitely. Everything is kept in long-term memory. Memorization mechanisms are very complex, but we are so used to them that we perceive them as natural and simple things. However, we note that for the successful implementation of the learning process, in addition to memory, it is important to have attention, that is, to be able to concentrate on the right subjects.

It is common for a person to forget past events after a while, if they do not periodically extract their knowledge in order to use them, therefore, the inability to remember something is not always to be attributed to memory impairment. Each of us has experienced the feeling when "it is spinning in the head, but does not come to mind", but this does not mean that serious disorders have occurred in the memory.

Why do memory lapses happen?

The causes of impaired memory and attention in adults and children may be different. If a child with congenital mental retardation immediately has learning problems, then adulthood he will already come with these disorders. Children and adults can react differently to the environment: the child's psyche is more tender, so it takes stress harder. In addition, adults have long studied what the child is still trying to master.

Sadly, but the trend towards the use of alcoholic beverages and drugs adolescents, and even young children left without parental care, has become frightening: cases of poisoning are not so rarely recorded in the reports of law enforcement agencies and medical institutions. But for the child's brain, alcohol is the strongest poison that has an extremely negative effect on memory.

True, some pathological conditions that often cause absent-mindedness and poor memory in adults are usually excluded in children (Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, osteochondrosis).

Causes of memory impairment in children

Thus, the causes of impaired memory and attention in children can be considered:

• Lack of vitamins,;
• Asthenia;
• Frequent viral infections;
• Traumatic brain injury;
• Stressful situations (dysfunctional family, despotism of parents, problems in the team that the child attends);
• Poor eyesight;
• Mental disorder;
• Poisoning, alcohol and drug use;
• Congenital pathology, in which mental retardation is programmed (Down syndrome, etc.) or other (whatever) conditions (lack of vitamins or trace elements, the use of certain drugs, a change in better side metabolic processes), contributing to the formation of attention deficit disorder, which, as you know, does not improve memory.

Causes of problems in adults

In adults, the reason that has become a bad memory, absent-mindedness and inability to concentrate for a long time, are various diseases acquired in the process of life:

1. Stress, psycho-emotional stress, chronic fatigue both souls and bodies;
2. Acute and chronic;
3. Discirculatory;
4. cervical spine;
5. Traumatic brain injury;
6. Metabolic disorders;
7. Hormonal imbalance;
8. GM tumors;
9. Mental disorders (depression, schizophrenia and many others).

Definitely anemia. different origin, lack of trace elements, diabetes mellitus and other numerous somatic pathologies lead to impaired memory and attention, contribute to the appearance of forgetfulness and absent-mindedness.

What are the types of memory disorders? Among them are dysmnesia(hypermnesia, hypomnesia, amnesia) - changes in memory itself, and paramnesia- distortion of memories, to which the patient's personal fantasies are added. By the way, some of them, on the contrary, are considered by others to be rather a phenomenal memory than its violation. True, experts may have a slightly different opinion on this matter.

Dysmnesia

Phenomenal memory or mental disorder?

Hypermnesia- with such a violation, people remember and perceive quickly, information set aside many years ago for no reason pops up in memory, “rolls”, returns to the past, which does not always cause positive emotions. A person himself does not know why he needs to keep everything in his head, however, he can reproduce some long-past events to the smallest detail. For example, old man he can easily describe in detail (up to the teacher's clothes) individual lessons at school, retell the literary montage of the pioneer collection, it is not difficult for him to recall other details related to studying at the institute, professional activities or family events.

Hypermnesia, present in a healthy person in the absence of other clinical manifestations, is not considered a disease, rather, on the contrary, this is exactly the case when they talk about phenomenal memory, although from the point of view of psychology, phenomenal memory is a slightly different phenomenon. People with this phenomenon are able to memorize and reproduce huge amounts of information that is not connected with any special meaning. These can be large numbers, sets of individual words, lists of objects, notes. Such a memory is often possessed by great writers, musicians, mathematicians and people of other professions that require genius abilities. Meanwhile, hypermnesia in a healthy person who does not belong to the cohort of geniuses, but has a high intelligence quotient (IQ), is not such a rare occurrence.

As one of the symptoms of pathological conditions, memory impairment in the form of hypermnesia occurs:

• With paroxysmal mental disorders ah (epilepsy);
• When intoxicated with psychoactive substances ( psychotropic drugs, narcotic drugs);
• In the case of hypomania - a condition similar to mania, but not up to it in terms of the severity of the course. Patients may experience a surge of energy, increased vitality, and ability to work. With hypomania, a violation of memory and attention is often combined (disinhibition, instability, inability to concentrate).

It is obvious that only a specialist can understand such subtleties, distinguish between the norm and pathology. Most of us are average representatives of the human population, to whom "nothing human is alien", but at the same time they do not turn the world upside down. From time to time (not every year and not in every locality) geniuses appear, they are not always immediately noticeable, because often such individuals are considered simply eccentrics. And, finally, (perhaps not often?), among the various pathological conditions, there are mental illness requiring correction and complex treatment.

bad memory

Hypomnesia- this type is usually expressed in two words: "bad memory."

Forgetfulness, absent-mindedness and poor memory are observed with asthenic syndrome, which, in addition to memory problems, is also characterized by other symptoms:

1. Increased fatigue.
2. Nervousness, irritability with or without it, bad mood.
3. Meteorological dependence.
4. during the day and insomnia at night.
5. BP drops, .
6. Tides and others.
7. , weakness.

Asthenic syndrome, as a rule, forms another pathology, for example:

• Arterial hypertension.
• Postponed traumatic brain injury (TBI).
• atherosclerotic process.
• The initial stage of schizophrenia.

The cause of impaired memory and attention according to the type of hypomnesia can be various depressive states(not counting everyone), menopausal syndrome, occurring with an adaptation disorder, organic brain damage (severe TBI, epilepsy, tumors). In such situations, as a rule, in addition to hypomnesia, the symptoms listed above are also present.

"I remember here - I don't remember here"

At amnesia not the whole memory falls out, but its individual fragments. As an example of this type of amnesia, one would like to recall the film by Alexander Gray "Gentlemen of Fortune" - "I remember here - I don't remember here."

However, not all amnesias look like in the famous motion picture, there are more serious cases when memory is lost significantly and for a long time or forever, therefore, several types of such memory impairments (amnesia) are distinguished:

A special type of memory loss that cannot be managed is progressive amnesia, representing a sequential loss of memory from the present to the past. The reason for the destruction of memory in such cases is organic atrophy of the brain, which occurs when Alzheimer's disease And . Such patients poorly reproduce traces of memory (speech disorders), for example, they forget the names of household items that they use daily (plate, chair, clock), but at the same time they know what they are intended for (amnestic aphasia). In other cases, the patient simply does not recognize the thing (sensory aphasia) or does not know what it is for (semantic aphasia). However, one should not confuse the habits of “radical” owners to find a use for everything that is in the house, even if it is intended for completely different purposes (you can make a beautiful dish or stand out of a used kitchen clock in the form of a plate).

This is what you need to figure out!

Paramnesia (distortion of memories) also referred to as memory disorders, and among them are the following types:

• Confabulation, in which fragments of one’s own memory disappear, and their place is taken by stories invented by the patient and presented to them “in all seriousness”, since he himself believes in what he is talking about. Patients talk about their exploits, unprecedented achievements in life and work, and even sometimes about crimes.
• pseudo-reminiscence- the replacement of one memory with another event that actually took place in the patient's life, only at a completely different time and under different circumstances (Korsakov's syndrome).
• Cryptomnesia when patients, having received information from various sources (books, movies, stories of other people), pass it off as events they experienced. In a word, sick in effect pathological changes go to involuntary plagiarism, which is characteristic of delusional ideas found in organic disorders.
• Echomnesia- a person feels (quite sincerely) that this event has already happened to him (or did he see it in a dream?). Of course, such thoughts sometimes visit a healthy person, but the difference is that patients attach special significance to such phenomena (“go in cycles”), while healthy people simply quickly forget about it.
• Polympsest– this symptom exists in two versions: short-term memory lapses associated with pathological alcohol intoxication (episodes of the past day are confused with long-past events), and the combination of two different events of the same period of time, in the end, the patient himself does not know what really happened .

As a rule, these symptoms in pathological conditions are accompanied by other clinical manifestations, therefore, having noticed signs of “déjà vu” in oneself, there is no need to rush to make a diagnosis - this happens in healthy people too.

Decreased concentration affects memory

To violations of memory and attention, the loss of the ability to focus on specific objects include the following pathological conditions:

1. Attention instability- a person is constantly distracted, jumping from one object to another (disinhibition syndrome in children, hypomania, hebephrenia - mental disorder, developing, as a form of schizophrenia, in adolescence);
2. Rigidity (slow switching) from one topic to another - this symptom is very typical for epilepsy (those who communicated with such people know that the patient is constantly “stuck”, which makes it difficult to conduct a dialogue);
3. Lack of concentration- they say about such people: “That’s what a distracted one from Basseinaya Street!”, That is, absent-mindedness and poor memory in such cases are often perceived as features of temperament and behavior, which, in principle, often corresponds to reality.

Undoubtedly a decrease in concentration of attention, in particular, will adversely affect the entire process of memorizing and storing information, that is, on the state of memory as a whole.

Children forget faster

As for children, all these gross, permanent memory impairments, characteristic of adults and, especially, the elderly, are very rarely noted in childhood. Memory problems that occur due to congenital features require correction and, with a skillful approach (as far as possible), may recede a little. There are many cases when the efforts of parents and teachers literally worked wonders for Down syndrome and other types of congenital mental retardation, but here the approach is individual and dependent on different circumstances.

Another thing is if the baby was born healthy, and the problems appeared as a result of the troubles suffered. So here a child can expect a slightly different reaction to different situations:

• Amnesia in children in most cases, it manifests itself as memory lapses in relation to individual memories of episodes that took place during the period of clouding of consciousness associated with unpleasant events (poisoning, coma, trauma) - it is not in vain that they say that children quickly forget;
• Alcoholization adolescence also proceeds differently than in adults - lack of memories ( polympsests) on events occurring during intoxication, appears already at the first stages of drunkenness, without waiting for a diagnosis (alcoholism);
• retrograde amnesia in children, as a rule, it affects a short period of time before an injury or illness, and its severity is not as clear as in adults, that is, memory loss in a child can not always be noticed.

Most often in children and adolescents there is a memory impairment of the type of dysmnesia, which is manifested by a weakening of the ability to remember, store (retention) and reproduce (reproduction) the information received. These types of disorders are more noticeable in children. school age because they affect school performance, adaptation in the team and behavior in everyday life.

Toddlers attending nurseries preschool institutions, symptoms of dysmnesia are problems with memorizing rhymes, songs, children cannot participate in children's matinees and holidays. Despite the fact that Kindergarten the kid visits constantly, every time he comes there, he cannot find his own locker to change clothes, among other items (toys, clothes, towels) it is difficult for him to find his own. Dysmnestic disorders are also noticeable at home: the child cannot tell what happened in the garden, forgets the names of other children, each time he reads fairy tales he perceives as if he hears them for the first time, he does not remember the names of the main characters.

Transient disturbances of memory and attention, along with fatigue, drowsiness and all sorts of autonomic disorders, are often observed in schoolchildren with various etiologies.

Before treatment

Before you start treating the symptoms of memory impairment, you need to put correct diagnosis and find out what causes the patient's problems. To do this, you need to get as much information about his health:

1. What diseases does he suffer from? Perhaps it will be possible to trace the connection between the existing pathology (or transferred in the past) with the deterioration of intellectual abilities;
2. Does he have a pathology that directly leads to memory impairment: dementia, vascular insufficiency brain, TBI (history), chronic alcoholism, drug disorders?
3. What kind medical preparations is the patient taking and is the memory impairment associated with the use of drugs? Some groups of pharmaceuticals, for example, benzodiazepines, among the side effects, have such disorders, which, however, are reversible.

In addition, in the process diagnostic search can be very useful, allowing you to identify metabolic disorders, hormonal imbalance, deficiency of microelements and vitamins.

In most cases, when looking for the causes of memory impairment, they resort to methods neuroimaging(CT, MRI, EEG, PET, etc.), which help to detect a GM tumor or hydrocephalus and, at the same time, differentiate vascular lesion brain from degenerative.

The need for neuroimaging methods also arises because memory impairment at first can be the only symptom serious pathology. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulties in diagnosis are depressive conditions, forcing in other cases to prescribe a trial antidepressant treatment (to find out if there is depression or not).

Treatment and correction

The normal aging process itself involves some decline in intellectual abilities: forgetfulness appears, memorization is not so easy, concentration of attention drops, especially if the neck is “squeezed” or pressure rises, however, such symptoms do not significantly affect the quality of life and behavior in everyday life. Older people who adequately assess their age learn to remind themselves (and quickly remember) about current affairs.

In addition, many do not neglect pharmaceutical treatment to improve memory.

Now there are a number of drugs that can improve brain function and even help with tasks that require significant intellectual effort. First of all, these are (piracetam, phezam, vinpocetine, cerebrolysin, cinnarizine, etc.).

Nootropics are indicated for elderly people who have certain age-related problems that are not yet noticeable to others. Preparations of this group are suitable for improving memory in case of violation cerebral circulation caused by others pathological conditions brain and vascular system. By the way, many of these drugs are successfully used in pediatric practice.

However, nootropics are a symptomatic treatment, and in order to obtain the proper effect, one must strive for an etiotropic one.

As for Alzheimer's disease, tumors, mental disorders, here the approach to treatment should be very specific - depending on the pathological changes and the reasons that led to them. There is no single prescription for all cases, so there is nothing to advise patients. You just need to contact a doctor, who, perhaps, before prescribing drugs to improve memory, will send for an additional examination.

Difficult in adults and the correction of disorders of mental activity. Patients with poor memory, under the supervision of an instructor, memorize verses, solve crossword puzzles, practice solving logical problems, however, training, bringing some success (the severity of mnestic disorders seems to have decreased), still do not give particularly significant results.

Correction of memory and attention in children, in addition to treatment with various groups pharmaceuticals, provides classes with a psychologist, exercises for the development of memory (poems, drawings, tasks). Of course, the children's psyche is more mobile and better amenable to correction, unlike the adult psyche. Children have the prospect of progressive development, while in older people only the opposite effect progresses.

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