Can you really forget like Dory in Finding Nemo?

In one of our prior posts, we talked about Infantile Amnesia. That is a type of amnesia (memory loss) we all experience, and it means that we cannot remember what happened to us before the age of about 3.

Dory has a different, much more severe, type of amnesia called Global Amnesia. (While you might think of “global” as meaning “around the world,” it can also mean “overall” or “the whole of something,” and that is the meaning it has here).

This is not a type of memory loss that you are likely to experience in your life. It happens only very rarely, when something — like a stroke, or a very serious head injury— injures parts of the brain needed for long-term memory.

In Global Amnesia, a person loses the ability to create new declarative long-term memories. (You can read our earlier posts to learn more about this type of memory). Without these memories, people have difficulty remembering what has happened to them since the time of their brain injury. They have trouble learning the faces and names of people, and they have difficulty recalling events after they experience them.

People with Global Amnesia usually retain many memories from before the time of their brain injury. They can remember things like where they grew up, and who they went to school with.

For Dory, and for people with Global Amnesia, it’s not that they are not paying attention. They can be trying really hard to remember. It is because the parts of their brain needed to form long-term memories are not working well that they have such difficulty remembering things, even things that are important to them.

So to sum up: Can people really forget like Dory in Finding Nemo? Yes, but it’s very rare, and when that type of severe memory loss occurs, we call it Global Amnesia.