
What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory - iamjeff
https://longreads.com/2017/02/08/what-its-like-to-lose-your-short-term-memory/
======
du_bing
Actually, it's exciting, pretty much like getting a new life after death. This
really changes my attitude towards my life.

In the past 8 years, I have 2-4 grand mal epilepsy seizures each year. Happy
to be still alive, haha. Every time after a seizure, I lost one small period
of memory, about 10-30 minutes, it's amazing somehow, refreshing your brain
like reinstalling the macOS and restarting, though it can also cause some
depression because of deep fear for uncontrolled and unpredictable seizures.

After I get back my conscious gradually after a seizure, I can hardly call
back the scenarios right before my brain blows up, I can only remember roughly
what I was doing then, about 5-10 minutes before the seizure, and as babies,
the first sight of the world when I get my conscious will leave very strong
impression in my memory, extremely clear and cut.

Now I have not had a seizure for about a whole year, in fact, I miss it to
some extent:-). On the other hand, I hope I will never have it until death.

You know, humans are always full of contradictions.

~~~
gsch
This is really interesting! I can imagine it might feel quite different if,
rather than having a persistent ability to ever retain short-term memories,
you lost a small period every few months.

The author's experience seems quite different from yours, though, and I can
imagine she might disagree with your evaluation that "Actually, it's
exciting".

~~~
du_bing
Yeah bro, that's right, it's not so exciting for me at all at first, but
actually I have to accept all those stuff in my life anyway, I am glad that I
finally reach here. Thanks!

------
mitchty
I had this happen to me when I got into a motorcycle accident.

I know I did things, I have the proof and screenshots of calling people 15
times every 5 minutes. But I can't for the life of me remember it at all. It
is... weird gaining consciousness piece by piece. Eventually I remember the
blackness washing away with me walking through a door (note, couldn't see it
just felt it). And eventually other senses returning to my conscious self.

I'm now of the opinion that without memory, we do not exist as conscious
beings.

My first memory post accident as a conscious human, is "hi cat, how are you,
were you wanting me to die so you could eat my nose? also who's cat is this
and where the hell am I?" Before that colors and sounds and feelings were
all... jumbled.

~~~
pharrington
In addition to short and long term memory, there is the thought-emotion-
action-observation feedback cycle. That you performed purposeful high level
actions while being unable to form episodic memories demonstrates that the
feedback cycle was still operative and you were experiencing _some level_ of
consciousness, though it obviously was not the same level you're used to while
being sober and fully awake. The approach of treating consciousness as not
binary, but operating within a range, is not new; see the Glasgow Coma
Scale[1] and the Erowid experience vaults[2] (though the latter is obviously
_highly_ unscientific) for further documentation.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale)

[2][https://erowid.org/experiences/](https://erowid.org/experiences/)

~~~
mitchty
Cool, thanks for the links!

While I won't argue that I wasn't "conscious", I'll argue for all intents and
purposes, I wasn't conscious at that time. My buddy said I'd basically
completely forget everything after 5 minutes, and we would have the same
conversation over and over again.

Its disconcerting to say the least to find out just how fragile consciousness
is.

------
fishnchips
My mom had a stroke a few years back and somehow she lost the ability to turn
short-term memory into long-term memory. She remembered the first part of the
day very well but didn't know what was happening to her. Every time I
explained, she would remember it for several minutes and then we had to start
anew as if her RAM was powered off. Luckily she made a full recovery in a
matter of days.

~~~
superkuh
There's actually strong evidence now that both short term and long term
episodic memory and encoded at the same time (immediately) by separate
systems,
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6333/73](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6333/73)
It's just that, when things are working right, long term memory only becomes
consciously accessible days later.

~~~
fishnchips
Perhaps, but it felt like what was missing was somewhere in the middle and
that something worked like dumping your RAM onto your hard drive. Dumps kept
failing and the brain rebooted. Fascinating now but super scary back then.

~~~
rincebrain
Apparently, per WP, "Tarnow shows that the recall probability vs. latency
curve is a straight line from 6 to 600 seconds (ten minutes), with the
probability of failure to recall only saturating after 600 seconds."[1]

So it seems reasonable that, indeed, the "short-term" store was functioning,
but the long-term was failing to encode, and the loss occurred as the "short-
term" store faded.

Regardless, I'm glad it was transient.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-
term_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory), which cites
[http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memo...](http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memory_-
_Tarnow.pdf)

------
tzakrajs
This seemed unrelated to short term memory but maybe I am misreading.

"There are no images flashing through my head reminding me of the first time I
ate a hamburger, or all the barbecues I’ve attended, or the time after
marching in the Rose Parade that I ate Burger King because Burger King gave
out free burgers to participants at the end of the route. No. There is just
blank space. There is chewing. Swallowing. The end of hunger."

I think they may have forgotten how people eat burgers. I don't think anyone
has flashbacks of their previous burgers while eating their current one. That
sounds really odd in general.

~~~
VLM
If you're cooking, Kaizen is the only path.

If you're not cooking, you're probably just too young. I can distinctly
remember a couple burgers right before or after "major life events" often when
the local population increased or decreased by one. I wouldn't recommend fast
food as a significant fraction of a diet, but a good excuse for using the
drive thru is returning home from the delivery room or a funeral too tired or
not in the mood to cook. Or the last time I saw someone was the party at the
park where traditional fare such as grilled burgers was probably served, great
uncle Tony's last family reunion picnic was at age 82 and he was doing really
good right up to the end.

If you eat junk food every day it makes it less special. I'm sure I drank
water the day my father died; of course I drink water every day. I eat a
mostly healthy diet most of the time so junk food usually involves something
memorable.

I'm also older, so nostalgic about back in the old days when Americans were
mostly thin and non-diabetic, back when mom and dad only got us that new
"Mcdonalds" stuff for a very special occasion ... Kids these days who are 300
pounds from eating mcdonalds 2 or 3 times daily will never associate fast food
with special events the way gen-x and older people associated it. In 1980
McDonalds burger meant you were in the back of the station wagon for 8 hour
road trip to visit grandma for surprise birthday or mom didn't feel like
cooking dinner after grandpas funeral. In 2010 your average 400 pound american
eats fast food every day, supposedly. Just like we're told over and over we
all watch 16 hours per day of TV on average, by people who make money selling
TV ad time, even when we don't know anyone who watches that much.

~~~
Jtsummers
Right, the frequency of the correlated events (eating the burger at the family
reunion in your case) matters. Taking my physical labor example, I did
crossfit for a bit (well, crossfit-lite). They had us swinging a sledgehammer,
certainly not something I do every day. So my first few times doing it I had
strong recollections of my earlier experiences doing manual labor with friends
(scouts and, later, work). But as I continued with the class, those
recollections became less frequent because the activity became more common (or
the recollections didn't stick because there was no longer a one-off flash of
recollection, but a frequent recurring recollection that diluted the impact).

------
sna1l
I recently read "I Forgot To Remember" which is about Su Meck, a woman who had
a ceiling fan fall on her head, which led to her forgetting the last 22 years
of her life. It was a fascinating read, but also pretty heartbreaking.

------
Markoff
i am in a bit similar position, phone calendar reminders dating back to 90s
ruined my short term memory (by effectively using them fo everything) to that
effect that if I plan to open some website I must do it immediately when I hav
this thought, otherwise in 15-20s it's gone and I might be pissed I was
postponing it for later and started to think about something else, you really
don't wanna see my calendar reminders, it would look like someone who should
have some proper disability welfare, though thanks to stereotype I can get by
with most of the things without actual reminders with daily routine

the worst thing is shower - away from mobile, need to keep repeating keywords
of all thoughts like mantra to quickly write them down upon leaving shower

~~~
fudged71
Consider a shower whiteboard?

I have a similar problem. Often when reading my twitter timeline I will think
to do some action based on a tweet, then keep scrolling and forget what it
was. I would have to scroll back a few tweets to remember what that thought
was.

~~~
Markoff
shower whiteboard is interesting idea, though maybe it would be more practical
to have waterproof phone or at least Bluetooth headset with some assistant in
phone, i don't spend that much time in shower to justify installation of
whiteboard and i am also not exactly on brink of revolutionary intervention
that my thoughts would be that valuable

as your help with going back, that sadly for me works very rarely anymore, is
bigger odds that the thought will suddenly appear later when not thinking
about it anymore, though i don't risk any of this and now just immediately
follow new thought without postponing, I guess you could say I developed ADD
thanks to progress in mobiles technology and internet, if it's possible to
develop it, i used to be avid reader of books, but nowadays have problem to
focus even on longer article, having child ruined even my movie watching
experience, when because if limited time i FFWD scenes without talking and
other filler to shorten runtime of movie, this coming from guy who was
considering destroying Christmas decoration on public street because it was in
my vision field when watching movie going through blinds

------
lcall
My lacking (medium-term?) memory is what motivated me to created this highly
efficient personal organizer, which really helps:
[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) ...though probably not fully for
the level of issues described in the article. But it still helps me
tremendously.

------
vagab0nd
I feel like I have very bad "mid-term" memory.

I have no problem reading long sentences, and my long-term memory is just
fine. But I feel like my brain just forgets things too soon. If I were to
speak in front of people about 3 things, by the time I get to the 2nd thing
I'd forget what the 3rd is. If I try to learn some non-trivial new concept,
like blockchain or coroutine, I understand it just fine, at the time I learn
it. But if someone asks me about it after maybe 2 weeks, I'd have no clue and
would need to re-learn it.

This also has a pretty big impact on my day-to-day life. I have a very bad
sense of direction and suck at navigation, partly because I tend to forget the
buildings and landmarks I see. If I take a one-word note in the morning, 30%
of time I'll forget what it's about at night.

------
acjohnson55
My mother had an episode of transient global amnesia [1] that lasted for about
12 hours. It was the strangest thing. For those 12 hours, both her short- and
long-term memory were almost completely impaired. It was terrifying when we
thought it might be a stroke, but once the whole differential diagnose was
done and we realized it was probably just TGA, we knew we just had to ride it
out.

We spent the few couple hours answering the same round of question for her
about once every minute. She'd occasionally get really scared and upset, but
then she'd forget what she was upset about! We'd ask her questions and she
remembered the most basic autobiographical details (married, 3 kids), but just
about nothing else. We'd ask, "where did you go to college?" and she'd say, "I
went to....I...don't know!" Obviously, pretty disturbing, but we just had to
trust it was temporary.

Eventually, the duration of forgetfulness started extending, and then by
night, she said it was like a fog was lifted, and she could remember again.

As described in the Wikipedia page, she hasn't experienced any aftereffects,
other than not remembering much of that particular day.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_global_amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_global_amnesia)

~~~
oflannabhra
My mother experienced the exact same issue while I was attending college. It
was preceded by an intense migraine the night before (including vomiting). She
called me early that morning very confused why she wasn't at school (she was a
teacher). She didn't remember the night before, or why she had stayed home, or
where my dad was (he had left for work). I was seriously alarmed, but she had
no other impairments other than her memory. She was lucid, had clear speech,
etc.

I eventually pieced everything together (my dad is a doctor and he diagnosed
her over the phone). I then spent the rest of the day on the phone with her,
answering the same cycle of questions. I eventually had her start writing
those questions and answers down, but she kept losing the paper! Eventually we
moved it to the fridge, and a close friend of hers was with her.

Similarly, it lasted about 24 hours, eventually faded, and had no adverse
after effects. It truly was like Memento, though. Definitely one of the more
surreal medical issues I've been exposed to.

------
dominotw
Whats it like? Get some Ambien from the doctor and you'll know.

------
ak39
This is a crazy good article! I've always been fascinated by my recent
inability to learn new programming languages and concepts and I believe it
could be due to the concept expounded in Lee's article: no short-term memory
building, no long-term recall.

I doubt I've suffered minor strokes but I think our lives simulate strokes on
the short term memory recall by sheer overwhelming schedules and commitments.
Our daily schedules are possibly a simulator of short term memory recall
impairment.

~~~
scandox
That sounds a lot like stress. Maybe you need to take a break or shift down a
gear or two?

~~~
ak39
Thanks friend! Without a doubt.

The guilt though of taking time off is also a paradoxical contributor to
existing stress.

~~~
scandox
I know that feeling. I get stressed thinking about all the work building up in
my absence. But in the end I've never regretted saying NO or saying WAIT!

------
janwillemb
How fragile we humans are! Things we're taking for granted and we're hardly
noticing, like short-term memory, turn out to be a gift we should appreciate
every day.

------
Kenji
If you want to understand what that feels like, you have to smoke a strong
joint. A friend almost lost his mind in panic because he worried this effect
might persist.

~~~
mirimir
LSD+THC is much worse. It's a common n00b fail. And really not much fun, in my
opinion. THC rather pollutes the trip. But at least, you know that it's
transient. Sometimes, though, it's helpful to have a friend around, who can
remind you that you've just done some drugs.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I never understood people who loved this combination. Horrible mix, brings out
the worst of both drugs.

------
mrslave
It's exactly like the Christopher Nolan film Memento starring Guy Pearce. ;-)

~~~
tasty_freeze
In Memento, the main character had short term memory, but it would not form
new memories. His window of awareness seemed to be on the order of 10 or 15
minutes. The author of the article describes not being able to even read a
paragraph because the start was forgotten by the time she reached the end.

------
camperman
Lenny!

