Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bolgabam here. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most tired tropes in the land of television. A character
Speaker 1: gets bumped on the head or falls down the stairs
Speaker 1: and suddenly has amnesia. They can't recall who they are
Speaker 1: or what they used to do, which results in a
Speaker 1: whole set of complications, often played for laughs. Just before
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, though, they get their memory
Speaker 1: back thanks to another blow to the head. It's so
Speaker 1: ingrained in our minds that it's no wonder that between
Speaker 1: thirty eight and forty six percent of Americans think that
Speaker 1: amnesia can be cured by a blow to the head.
Speaker 1: And this TV trope didn't come out of thin air.
Speaker 1: It was a plot device in numerous novels of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and believed by many doctors of the period.
Speaker 1: In an article published in the journal Neurology titled the
Speaker 1: Head Trauma, Amnesia Cure, the Making of a Medical Myth,
Speaker 1: the author, Mary Spears, an associate psychology professor at Drexel University,
Speaker 1: looks at where this belief originated in the late seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. She writes, scientists thought that
Speaker 1: the two halves of the brain had the same function,
Speaker 1: much as the body has two lungs. French anatomist and
Speaker 1: physiologist Francoise Viere Bisha proposed that a second blow to
Speaker 1: the head could restore the memory of someone who had
Speaker 1: a concussion. His reasoning was that since the two hemispheres
Speaker 1: of the brain needed to be in balance with each
Speaker 1: other in order to function. Quote that should explain these
Speaker 1: observations so frequently repeated, of an accidental blow upon one
Speaker 1: side of the head having restored the intellectual functions which
Speaker 1: had long remained dormant, in consequence of a blow received
Speaker 1: upon the other side, Spears said in a press release.
Speaker 1: From my reading of Bisha's work, it seems that he
Speaker 1: felt that the second trauma amnesia cure was a common
Speaker 1: occurrence and didn't need the citation of an individual case.
Speaker 1: This was not unusual at the time to forego evidence
Speaker 1: like that. Ironically, Bisha died of a head injury in
Speaker 1: eighteen o two, but his theories lived on and other
Speaker 1: doctors expanded on them. In an eighteen forty four book,
Speaker 1: a physician named Andrew Wigan wrote of a case where
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old boy who had been rendered insensible
Speaker 1: by a blow to the head suddenly came out of
Speaker 1: his coma weeks later when the clatter from someone accidentally
Speaker 1: dropping fire tongs awoke him. Meanwhile, a second idea was
Speaker 1: also taking hold, that of memory permanence. Philosopher William James
Speaker 1: credits poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the notion that memories
Speaker 1: are forever etched in the brain. Coleridge used a well
Speaker 1: known story of a woman whose ravings turned out to
Speaker 1: be forgotten memories to make his point. Although cole Ridge
Speaker 1: was no scientist, Spears explained that he lived in a
Speaker 1: time when there were no quote, hard and fast lines
Speaker 1: between scientific and popular writing. These ideas about amnesia have
Speaker 1: persisted along after Coleridge, Bisha and Vegan, and become part
Speaker 1: of literature, movies, and television. By the mid eighteen hundreds, though,
Speaker 1: scientists were beginning to question these beliefs about amnesia, and
Speaker 1: today we know that amnesia may be caused by things
Speaker 1: like a stroke or brain inflammation from an infection, brain
Speaker 1: condition like Alzheimer's, seizures or tumors. Blows to the head
Speaker 1: or concussions can cause confusion. But very rarely result in
Speaker 1: permanent loss of memory, and even among patients with amnesia,
Speaker 1: it's far more common to lose the ability to make
Speaker 1: more memories rather than completely forgetting who they are. There
Speaker 1: isn't any treatment for most types of amnesia. Patients are
Speaker 1: instead taught coping skills like using smartphones to keep track
Speaker 1: of daily tasks. But no, a second blow to the
Speaker 1: head will not fix the problem. Spears said, well, one
Speaker 1: of the issues we see in the persistence of this
Speaker 1: myth is that understanding how the brain forgets, recovers, and
Speaker 1: or loses information is a complicated matter that's still being
Speaker 1: studied by brain scientists. As individuals, we may have had
Speaker 1: the experience of a memory jog or a queue that
Speaker 1: reminds us of some long forgotten memory. Because our own
Speaker 1: experiences serve as powerful evidence to us, this reinforces the
Speaker 1: myth that all memories are forever stored in the brain
Speaker 1: and only needs some sort of jolt to come back. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: scientists say the film Memento is one of the few
Speaker 1: to get amnesia right. The main character, who has interrograde
Speaker 1: amnesia is unable to remember from one day to the
Speaker 1: next what he's done and so must create elaborate memory aids.
Speaker 1: Today's episode written by Katherine Whitburn and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this lots of other brainy topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or more podcasts my heart Radio visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,