What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory

Actually, it&#x27;s exciting, pretty much like getting a new life after death. This really changes my attitude towards my life.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>You know, humans are always full of contradictions.

I had this happen to me when I got into a motorcycle accident.<p>I know I did things, I have the proof and screenshots of calling people 15 times every 5 minutes. But I can&#x27;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&#x27;t see it just felt it). And eventually other senses returning to my conscious self.<p>I&#x27;m now of the opinion that without memory, we do not exist as conscious beings.<p>My first memory post accident as a conscious human, is &quot;hi cat, how are you, were you wanting me to die so you could eat my nose? also who&#x27;s cat is this and where the hell am I?&quot; Before that colors and sounds and feelings were all... jumbled.

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&#x27;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.

This seemed unrelated to short term memory but maybe I am misreading.<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p>I think they may have forgotten how people eat burgers. I don&#x27;t think anyone has flashbacks of their previous burgers while eating their current one. That sounds really odd in general.

I recently read &quot;I Forgot To Remember&quot; 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.

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&#x27;s gone and I might be pissed I was postponing it for later and started to think about something else, you really don&#x27;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<p>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

My lacking (medium-term?) memory is what motivated me to created this highly efficient personal organizer, which really helps: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onemodel.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onemodel.org</a> ...though probably not fully for the level of issues described in the article. But it still helps me tremendously.

I feel like I have very bad &quot;mid-term&quot; memory.<p>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&#x27;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&#x27;d have no clue and would need to re-learn it.<p>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&#x27;ll forget what it&#x27;s about at night.

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.<p>We spent the few couple hours answering the same round of question for her about once every minute. She&#x27;d occasionally get really scared and upset, but then she&#x27;d forget what she was upset about! We&#x27;d ask her questions and she remembered the most basic autobiographical details (married, 3 kids), but just about nothing else. We&#x27;d ask, &quot;where did you go to college?&quot; and she&#x27;d say, &quot;I went to....I...don&#x27;t know!&quot; Obviously, pretty disturbing, but we just had to trust it was temporary.<p>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.<p>As described in the Wikipedia page, she hasn&#x27;t experienced any aftereffects, other than not remembering much of that particular day.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Transient_global_amnesia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Transient_global_amnesia</a>

Whats it like? Get some Ambien from the doctor and you&#x27;ll know.

This is a crazy good article! I&#x27;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&#x27;s article: no short-term memory building, no long-term recall.<p>I doubt I&#x27;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.

How fragile we humans are! Things we&#x27;re taking for granted and we&#x27;re hardly noticing, like short-term memory, turn out to be a gift we should appreciate every day.

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.

It&#x27;s exactly like the Christopher Nolan film Memento starring Guy Pearce. ;-)

Lenny!