Memory is in psychology a totality of information that reflects events, emotions, any knowledge experienced by an individual before.
What is memory and its violation
Thanks to her, we have experience, and a person is the person that others know him. Loss of memory or its violation causes great discomfort to the individual.
Memory impairment in psychology is a fairly common disorder that brings a lot of problems to a person and, of course, worsens the quality of his life. Such a disorder underlies many mental illnesses.
The main types of memory disorders
There are two main types of impaired human memory.
Qualitative dysfunctions imply confusion in the patient’s head related to the inability to distinguish genuine memories from fantasies. The patient does not understand which events are real and which are a figment of his imagination.
Quantitative defects are displayed in enhancing or attenuating memory traces.
There are a huge number of varieties of memory impairment. Most of them are characterized by short duration and reversibility. They can be caused by such commonplace reasons as overwork, frequent stressful situations, drug abuse, as well as alcoholic beverages.
Others require a serious approach to treatment.
Causes of memory impairment
What are these reasons that can cause memory impairment? In psychology, several are distinguished.
For example, the presence of asthenic syndrome in a person, which is accompanied by rapid fatigue, exhaustion of the body. It can be a consequence of craniocerebral injuries, prolonged depression, vitamin deficiency, alcohol and drug addiction.
In children, memory disorders are most often the result of underdevelopment of the brain, head injury of a physical or mental nature. Such children have problems with remembering information and its subsequent reproduction.
The features of memory in children are such that violations appear mainly in the form of amnesia. Amnesia - loss of individual memories. In children, it occurs as a result of an unfavorable situation in the family or in the children's institutions that they attend. Also, the causes of amnesia include frequent acute respiratory diseases and hypovitaminosis.
In addition, children's features of memory are manifested in the fact that, starting from birth, it is constantly evolving, as a result of which it becomes vulnerable. Problematic pregnancy and childbirth, as well as improper stimulation of the development of memory processes can lead to memory damage.
Diseases related to the blood supply to the brain, for example, diabetes mellitus, vascular atherosclerosis, Parkinson's disease affect memory.
Aging. If this physiological process does not lead to serious diseases, then memory impairment occurs slowly. At first, it becomes difficult for a person to recall old events from life, and newer events and experiences are gradually erased. The above diseases, as well as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and neurosis significantly increase memory impairment.
In psychology, there is such a term as `` repression. '' It means denial or special forgetting by a person of especially difficult moments of life for him. This is a protective mechanism of the psyche.
Iodine deficiency and thyroid dysfunction increase the tendency to depression and apathy, which in turn is fraught with impaired memory processes. Therefore, it is so important to properly draw up a diet in order to fully receive all the necessary vitamins and minerals.
Memory as a psychological phenomenon
Memory is a function in psychology that captures, stores and reproduces various events and experiences, and also gives the ability to constantly replenish data and use existing experience.
As you know, depending on the functional load, there are several types of memory.
Types of memory
Shaped memory is dedicated to fixing various images in memory. The motor does the same, but with respect to movement. Emotional memory focuses on experienced emotions.
The symbolic is peculiar, but thanks to it we can memorize words, thoughts, ideas. Short-term and long-term memory is known to all. The first helps to memorize a large amount of information for a short period of time, after which it is eliminated or goes to the long-term section.
Arbitrary and involuntary memory. The first is triggered by a preliminary indication of memorization, and the second does it arbitrarily, without any commands.
Each of these species has its own memory impairment. In psychology, the Korsakov syndrome, for example, is a disorder of short-term memory.
Types of Memory Disorders
What are the symptoms of memory impairment? This is forgetting and the inability to reproduce events from personal or other people's experience.
Paramnesia is a loss in time when an individual confuses the events of the past and the present, cannot understand which events in his head took place in the real world, and which are fictitious, projected by the brain on the basis of information received once.
Dysmnesia is a disorder that includes hypermnesia, hypnosis, and amnesia. The latter is characterized by forgetting individual information and skills for a certain period of time. Memory problems are episodic in nature, after which the memories partially or completely return. Amnesia can also affect acquired skills, for example, the ability to drive a car, ride a bicycle, cook any dishes.
Types of Amnesia
Retrograde amnesia is manifested in forgetting events for a period of time preceding the occurrence of the injury. For example, a person who is injured in a head can forget everything that happened to him a week or more before an accident.
Anterograde amnesia is the opposite of the previous one and implies memory loss for the period after injury.
Fixative amnesia is when a patient is unable to remember incoming information. He perceives reality quite adequately, but forgets the information within a few minutes or seconds after receiving it. This causes problems in temporal orientation, as well as in remembering people around.
With total amnesia, a person is not able to remember anything from his past life. He does not know his name, age, address, who he is and what he did. As a rule, such a disorder of the mental function of memory occurs after receiving a severe skull injury.
The palimpsest occurs as a result of alcoholic intoxication when an individual cannot remember individual moments.
With hysterical amnesia, a person forgets difficult, painful or simply unprofitable memories. It is characteristic not only of mentally ill people, but also of healthy people belonging to the hysterical type.
Paramnesia is a type of memory impairment in which emerging gaps are filled with different data.
Ecnesia and cryptomnesia
Eknesia is a phenomenon when a person lives events long past as a phenomenon of the present. It is characteristic of older people who begin to perceive themselves as a young individual and are preparing to enter a university, wedding or other events that were experienced at a young age.
Cryptomnesia is a disorder in which a person gives out ideas he has heard or read as his own, sincerely believing in his authorship. For example, the read books of great writers in their imagination, patients can appropriate for themselves, assuring others around it.
A kind of cryptomnesia can be a phenomenon when a person perceives an event from his own life as read in a book or seen in a movie.
Treatment for memory impairment
The classification of memory impairments is a rather large amount of information in psychology; there are many works on the study of such phenomena, as well as methods for their treatment.
Of course, it is easier to engage in preventive actions than the treatment itself. For these purposes, experts have developed many exercises that allow you to keep your memory in good shape.
Proper nutrition and lifestyle also contribute to the normal functioning of the brain.
As for the direct treatment of memory impairment, it will depend on the diagnosis, degree of neglect and causes. Treatment with drugs begins only after a thorough diagnosis by a specialist doctor.