Posted by Noa on December 9, 2001, at 11:52:37
In reply to Re: atrophy of hippocampus » SLS, posted by Elizabeth on December 8, 2001, at 0:11:48
For myself(and this should not be taken as science; it is just my way of conceptualizing things for myself), the way I visualize my hippocampal weakness is not so much in terms of memory and learning of an intellectual type, but that my hippocampus may be weak in relation to the more reactive emotional parts of my brain like my amygdala. So, I visualize my amygdala always in gear, reacting, etc. outpowering the hippocampus's ability to process input more sensibly--hence all this emotional memory that is hard for me to verbalize or even associate with a specific, sensible memory.
I wonder if some of the functional memory problems people describe could also be related to working memory issues which I think are based largely in the prefrontal cortex. I guess some questions would be--are you having difficulty making new memories? Are you having difficulty holding concepts in working memory so you can manipulate them for problem solving? Are you having difficulty retrieving stored info?
poster:Noa
thread:85766
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011202/msgs/86370.html