The rehabilitation program for Mr. Clive Wearing

Have a little read: ... The rehabilitation program for Mr. Clive Wearing One of the most common symptoms as a result of a brain injury is impaired memory (Baddeley, A.D., 1997). The impairment can vary from fairly mild to severe, and in case of very dense amnesia deprives a person from his past and his future, whose world consists of a moment.. Amnesia is caused by disturbance to the midline diencephalons or medial temporal lobe (Perkin, A.J., 1996). Diencephalic injury can be caused by strokes and tumours, intra-nasal piercing head injuries or most frequently found in Karsakoff's Syndrome. Furthermore, amnesia caused by medial temporal lobe injury has its origin in herpes simplex encephalitis, particular types of stroke, carbon monoxide poisoning, anoxia and insulin overdose (Perkin, A.J., 1996). Memory does not consist of a single entity, but of different memory systems with different capacities for storing information. In case of amnesia, some memory systems would be severely impaired, while others remain intact. In order to understand amnesia, one has to understand major modular distinctions between memory systems. Furthermore, STM and LTM are differently time-dependent, meaning that STM has a limited storage for information, i.e. three to five items for limited time period, while LTM is limitless with no decay (Sohlberg and Mateer, 2001). Often term used for STM is "working memory", because it suggests its active and flexible features, nevertheless "working memory incorporates the dynamic aspects of holding onto and manipulating information" (cited in Sohlberg and Mateer, 2001, p166). Short term memory system is a system that underlies consciousness and is a temporary storage system for incoming information (Parkin, A.J., 1996). Furthermore, the function of short term store remains undamaged in amnesia. Procedural memory also remains intact in amnesic patients, therefore it can be successfully used for rehabilitation purposes. Moreover, according to Tulving (1985), procedural memory is basically "knowing how" and involves no more than stimulus response memory. Representation is "prescriptive, it is a blue print for future actions" and increases likelihood to respond specifically to specific stimuli. The expression of knowledge is "inflexible, response is obvious and learning is in a fashion stimulus response" (cited in Pettifor, 1997, p03). According to Tulving (1985) "procedural memory contains semantic memory as its single specialized subsystem, and semantic memory, in turn contains episodic memory as its single specialized subsystem" (cited in Pettifor, 1997, p04). Procedural memory is the memory which is difficult to describe to someone, for example, how to play a piano, how to type and so on. The information is known automatically. Furthermore, there are several coexisting theories of long term memory (LTM), which support different LTM memory systems. According to Zola-Morgan (1991), classification of LTM is presented with two sub-systems, i.e. declarative and nondeclarative. Moreover, declarative, i.e. explicit refers to memory for facts and events, while nondeclarative, i.e. implicit refers to memory for skills and habits, priming, simple classical conditioning and nonassociative learning (Squire et al., 1996). According to Tulving and Schater (1990), declarative memory is our memory for facts. To follow, Tulving (1983) distinguished two further components of declarative memory: Episodic memory, i.e. memory for past and personally experienced events and Semantic memory, i.e. knowledge for the meaning of words and how to apply