Can amnesia affect motor skills and make me forget how to do common activities or tasks?
Amnesia rarely affects motor skills. When you learn how to do something, like swim or ride a bike, your brain stores memories of how to do it in a different part of your brain. That’s why amnesia doesn’t typically affect motor abilities or learned skills.
Can amnesia change your personality or erase a person’s identity?
No, your memory lives in a different part of your brain than the areas that hold personality and behavior. While you can have damage to both, having damage to one area doesn’t automatically damage the other.
Is mild cognitive impairment (MCI) the same as amnesia?
No, amnesia and mild cognitive impairment are separate. You can have both at the same time (like with degenerative brain diseases or head injuries), but they aren’t the same.
Is amnesia common when you drink alcohol?
Alcohol can disrupt the formation of new memories, but you usually have to be significantly intoxicated for that to happen (the common term for this is a “blackout”). Binge drinking may increase the chances of this happening. The definition of binge drinking is a single session where you have five or more drinks (if you’re assigned male at birth or AMAB), or four or more drinks (if you’re assigned female at birth or AFAB).
How does memory work?
Your memory is like your brain’s recording of important events or details about your life. Think about it like a library of what happened in your life. Creating that library involves the following steps:
- Encoding: This is when your brain creates the memory. It’s like your brain typing and publishing a memory in book form.
- Storage: This is how your brain stores the memory. It’s like your brain filing the book away in your library. Your brain also tags the memory so you can return and find it, if necessary.
- Retrieval: This is when you go back into your library, open the book and review what was in it.
Memory formats
Your brain has different memory formats depending on how long you need to store a memory. Those formats are:
- Working memory (immediate recall). This is how you remember the topic of a conversation you’re part of, a phone number you’re writing down, etc. It’s like your brain’s version of scratch paper and stores information for no more than 10 minutes or so.
- Short-term memory. These are memories that you store for slightly longer than working memory. Your brain converts working memories to short-term memories when you need to hold onto information for longer. Short-term memory stores information for about an hour.
- Long-term memory. This is when your brain converts short-term memories for permanent storage. In theory, your brain can store long-term memories for the rest of your life (but retrieval may not always work correctly, which is why long-term memory loss can happen).
Types of memory
You have different forms of memory, explicit (declarative) and implicit (nondeclarative). Amnesia only affects explicit memory.
- Explicit (declarative) memory. These are memories you can access when you want to recall something. Explicit memory includes semantic memory (like facts or basic descriptions of events) and episodic memory, which is when you recall the details and nuances of the memory.
- Implicit (nondeclarative) memory. These are things you know even without remembering how you learned them. An example of this would be knowing how to tie your shoes or brew coffee or tea.
A note from Cleveland Clinic
Your memory is a key part of who you are, so not being able to remember something can be a scary experience. If you’re experiencing memory loss or have a loved one showing signs of it, you should talk to a healthcare provider. Despite how it looks on TV or in movies, sudden memory loss isn’t common. And many of the conditions that cause memory loss are treatable. Your healthcare provider can help you better understand what could be causing memory loss, what you can do about it and how you can reduce its impact.
