If any of you are familiar with the epic trilogy of the hero Jason Bourne you know that most of the violence and destruction is a result of Jason not knowing who the heck he is. The movies portray Jason a.k.a David Webb a.k.a Charles Briggs a.k.a Paul Kay as a secret agent who has no recollection of his past 5 or so years, and is struggling to find out. As many Hollywood writers do, they exaggerate amnesia for a more interesting story line. In psychological terms Jason suffers from severe retrograde amnesia. Jason's amnesia could be a result of erasing painful memories, brain damage, or someone else eliminating his memories but in any case the real life applicability is very rare. Having such large retrograde amnesia is quite uncommon among memory loss victims, usually they lose their ability to form new memories (anterograde amnesia) because of damage to the hippocampus or amygdala. Jason's ability to remember new information is still intact, and unfortunately for his foes Jason has just lost his explicit memory, not his procedural memory, thus allowing him to retain his deadly hand to hand combat skills along with an uncanny talent for turning ordinary objects into weapons, as seen in the clip. Jason not remembering his past life drives the plot and allows for the entertainment of many action hungry viewers. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ4dFcm4ML0
Oh Na Na, Whats My Name?
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In regards to what nogle003 said above, the textbook says amnesia doesn't always affect a person physically. Memory is located throughout the brain, so it may depend on what part of the brain received damage. Also, I'd like to point out that not everyone recovers from amnesia (which is also pointed out in the textbook).
In discussing the actual blog post, great title, haha! Also, what a great example of how Hollywood magnifies things.
This is a really interesting entry. I never related amnesia and memory loss problems to this movie, I just watched it for what it was, a great action movie. I think it is cool how you related what we are talking about in class to a situation that many people probably know about.
I really liked reading this entry, and I'm also a fan of the Bourne Identity. It's interesting how many films are based on retrograde amnesia, when in reality anterograde is much more common. Given a choice, I would choose retrograde amnesia- the case study of Clive Wearing's anterograde amnesia (from the textbook) is heartbreaking.
I find it funny how of all the movies where a character has amnesia, it is always exaggerated and actually unlikely that amnesia of that kind and that serious is highly unlikely. That's Hollywood though, and without their knack for embellishing real life scenarios, there wouldn't be three, going on four movies in the series.
Sounds interesting, I did not know the different types of amnesia. But the one that jason has in these movies does seem to be very rare I have never heard of anyone having it for such a long period of time like he does. I also find it interesting that he retained his ability to fight...