Amnesia is kind of a disorder in which individuals lose their memories. The memories could have occurred as events and could have been acquired as experiences in the past for a second, minutes, or months (Ratini, 2021). People suffering from this disorder are unable to recall these memories. The brain plays a crucial role because any part of the brain is related to memory. And damage or injury of any parts of the brain may affect memory. However, there are other causes of memory loss which include head injury, stroke, lack of sufficient oxygen supply to the brain, and being involved in alcohol consumption for a long time may cause amnesia (Ratini, 2021).
‘Tere Naam’ is an Indian Hindi-language film, directed by Sathish Kaushik in 2003. The case of amnesia is well presented in the film. The protagonists of the film are Salman Khan as Radhe Mohan and Bhumika Chawla as Nirjara Bhardwaj. The film was a romantic tragedy based on a real-life incident story. Radhe was a poor boy, jobless, and rowdy, and fight against those who used to harass college students. On the other hand, Nirjara was from a high caste (Brahmin) and a college-going student (Kaushik, 2022). Radhe liked and loved Nirjara because she was a simple girl. But, as this love story started, suddenly a tragedy was encountered by both characters. Radhe was beaten up by his enemies and his brain received severe injuries. After the attack, he was mentally imbalanced due to damage to his Brain. This incident resulted in the loss of his memory (Kaushik, 2022).
According to Mayes & Downes (1997), amnesia has two defining features, which are anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Firstly, anterograde amnesia is when someone cannot recall and recognizes facts and personal information or episodic memories after the incident takes place and particularly any kind of brain damage (Mayes & Downes, 1997). However, anterograde amnesia is when someone cannot recall and recognizes facts and personal information or memories that occurred before the brain damage. In the case of retrograde amnesia, some people who had brain damage have impairment with memories that occurs months before the incident of brain damage. But other people also have impairment with memories that occurs for decades before the incident took place (Mayes & Downes, 1997).
In Radhe’s condition, he was not able to recall and recognize any of his facts and personal information like his family and Nirjara or memories with his friends that occurred before he had a head injury. This must be the case of retrograde amnesia with Radhe who had impairment of memories for many months and was sent to an asylum for treatment (Mayes & Downes, 1997). There were some changes in Radhe’s personality like he became opposite to what he was before as Tulving et al. (1988) explained later about a patient who behaved the same way as Radhe. From a violent person, he transformed into a very normal person, who did not speak much. When his elder brothers were asking for something, he was just listening to them but gave no reply. When nobody was there and left alone, his reaction to loneliness did not change but he used to be calm (Tulving et al., 1988).
In addition, a case study was done by Tulving et al. (1988) on a retrograde amnesia patient K.C. who was 36 years old. He also suffered from a head injury that caused frontal-parietal damage in his brain (Tulving et al., 1988). Due to a head injury like Radhe, he did not remember his personal information about his past from 3 years before the incident. He did not even remember how did he get in an incident or about 3 years going to a community college. When he woke up after the incident, he only recognized his mother and no one. His personality also changed and he became easygoing, silent, and polite (Tulving et al., 1988). Some of the behaviors of K.C. were similar to Radhe's. When people used to ask direct questions to him, he used to answer them back by saying that his life is good in response but he usually had memory issues. However, he used to pay attention to the conversion very carefully and he was very active in paying close attention while having conversations with anyone (Tulving et al., 1988). According to the neuropsychological test, he had really good intellectual functions in language, and reasoning abilities apart from memory (Tulving et al., 1988). However, he did not give response to some classic frontal signs like he found difficulty in starting activities on his own, having issues with planning did not follow if someone gave him directions (Tulving et al., 1988).
Additionally, he found it difficult to describe his future to anyone and when he was asked to explain what was going on in his state of mind, he would just try to think about the past and future. After some moment, he would say that it's blank (Tulving et al., 1988). On the other hand, brain damage led to retrograde amnesia in K.C. Moreover, he was not able to remember or learn anything new even though his short-term memory was normal. This evidence suggests that he had anterograde amnesia too (Tulving et al., 1988).
In conclusion, Amnesia is a neurocognition disorder where a head injury would read to memory loss which means people would find difficulties in recalling or learning new things. Radhe had retrograde amnesia according to Tulving et al. (1988) because he had similar behavior after the incident in the case of K.C. Radhe struggled in recalling memories of his past, which resulted in impairment of planning complex things, and he was blank when he was asked about his past.
Citation
Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L., McLachlan, D. R., & Moscovitch, M. (1988). Priming of semantic autobiographical knowledge: A case study of retrograde amnesia. Brain and Cognition, 8(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-2626(88)90035-8
Mayes, A. R., & Downes, J. J. (1997). What do theories of the functional deficit(s) underlying amnesia have to explain? Memory, 5(1-2), 3–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/741941147
Ratini, M. (2021, May 19). Amnesia: Types, causes, treatment, and more. WebMD. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-to-know-about-amnesia
YouTube. (2022). Tere Naam. YouTube. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ-NAltFP6M&t=7550s
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