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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

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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_memory_-_Tarnow.pdf http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memo...
jdironman 10y ago
Oh my gosh, your mom is Dory.
- applecrazy 10y ago
  That's insensitive.
  - jdironman 10y ago
    Well, that was unintentional. My apologies!
- fishnchips 10y ago
  Kind of but not really. Dory in the movie seems completely OK with suddenly being in a place she doesn't know, and not knowing how she got there.

superkuh 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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_memory_-_Tarnow.pdf http://cogprints.org/4273/1/The_structure_of_short_term_memo...

jdironman 10y ago

Oh my gosh, your mom is Dory.

applecrazy 10y ago
That's insensitive.
- jdironman 10y ago
  Well, that was unintentional. My apologies!
fishnchips 10y ago
Kind of but not really. Dory in the movie seems completely OK with suddenly being in a place she doesn't know, and not knowing how she got there.