My wife has been working with large databases and has to compact and repair to clean it up regularly.
In the current New York Times magazine there was an article called "A Brief Vacation From Myself". What becomes of a man when his slate is wiped temporarily clean?
The writer explains that he lost four hours of his mind. His wife called their doctor and was told to take him to the ER right away. He seemed to have lost his short term memory.
He passes all test and the doctor's give him their results.
"It's benign, and it will happen only once in your life."
It is called "Transient Global Amnesia". It is a short term memory loss. For four hours the brain replayed the same two-minute loop, recording nothing and missing large chunks of the recent past. You forget and ask the same questions over and over again.
The author says "Your accumulated memories make you who you are. How terrifying it is that they can simple vanish."
So once in your life, our brains need their version of compact, repair, and reboot.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us 
1 comment:
This happened to me once... but it was because I took a sizable dose of Ketamine :)
Was actually an extremely interesting experience. I was still *ME*, still had all my other capacities, but I had ZERO memory and my short term memory lasted about a minute or two. I went outside and forgot where I was, and just sort of logically surmised that I lived there and poked my head in to tell someone that I should probably be watched.
The best part, which I oddly enough remember very clearly, was a conversation I had internally about who I was without my memories. Apparently an extremely weird philosophical goof... like always :)
Post a Comment