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C. Wearing has suffered from a very severe form of chronic anterograde amnesia for more than 30 years, since 1985.
This means that although you are physically healthy, your brain has been around since 1985. It cannot memorize any new information; memories are not transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory.
The memories last in Clive’s brain for only about 30 seconds. New events and experiences, pleasant and not, are erased from memory almost immediately. You don’t remember what you had for breakfast, what you did yesterday, and even what you did a few minutes ago.
And that’s not all. Wearing also has retrograde amnesia; He does not remember most of his life until 1985. In general, he is a person who lives without memory.
VIDEO: Clive Wearing is a man without memory
Burnout began to experience the first symptoms of malaise in 1985. At first when he was 46 years old. At first, he didn’t pay much attention to it.
But since the symptoms – chronic headache, inability to sleep, fever, and delusions – didn’t go away for a while, Deborah called a doctor. He guessed it was just Clive’s flu.
But it wasn’t the flu. 1985 March 26 in the morning Clive woke up completely deprived of the opportunity to remember. Although his intelligence level remained intact, the sense organs also functioned as they did, he was only able to store new memories in memory for a few seconds.
C. Wearing was taken to the hospital. Eleven hours later, a diagnosis was made. A brain scan revealed lesions in various areas of Clive’s brain. Clive’s strange situation was to blame for encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by Herpes Simplex virus.
The lesions were particularly severe in a specific area of C. Wearing’s cerebral cortex, the hippocampus. It is the part of the brain responsible for forming new memories. The doctors did not know how to cure C. Wearing. And I don’t know until now.
A difficult routine
C. Wearing’s short-term memory “lasts” for ~ 30 seconds. Because, unlike other people’s brains, C. Wearing’s brain doesn’t transfer any memories to long-term memory, over time C. Wearing forgets what happened, no matter how hard he tries to remember.
Afterwards, Wearing feels like he’s just woken up again. And so, hundreds of times a day.
When asked how he feels, Clive says he seems to have woken up from a coma. During these 20-30 seconds, he often asks why he is not being examined by a doctor.
If you ask Clive questions, he can answer them. However, you cannot continue the conversation or answer the question for more than a few seconds, then you forget everything and start over.
The use of her husband’s illness in her book Forever Today, published in 2005, tells the story of her case in 1994. She entered Clive’s room and Clive asked how long she had been ill. Deborah replied nine years.
“Nine years! Oh God … Nine years … I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t seen anything, I haven’t felt anything, I haven’t smelled anything. It was a long night that lasted … How long?” end of sentence, Clive had already forgotten its beginning.
C. Wearing doesn’t remember what he did yesterday, what he did a few minutes ago, he doesn’t know what year it is now. When C. Wearing is eating dinner, he remembers the names of the dishes (for example, chicken) but cannot associate the food with the taste, because when he begins to feel the taste clearly, he has already forgotten what he is eating.
The use also lost most of the memories formed before 1985. For example, you know you have children from your first marriage, but you do not remember their names.
However, the expressions “love is eternal”, “love endures all trials”, and so on. Especially suitable for C. Wearing.
He clearly remembers the only man, his second wife, Deborah. His love for her has not diminished in any way, and each time he sees her again, he rejoices and greets her over and over again by hugging and kissing her. They often think they are seeing for the first time. When the wife is next to him, he feels much calmer.
Photo by Vida Press / Clive Wearing with his wife
When Clive was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and Deborah visited, she found many messages on her answering machine when she returned: “Please come visit me, honey, I haven’t seen you in a long time. Come at the speed of light. “
Everyday life is evidenced in a diary.
C. Wearing began blogging shortly after the amnesia began. The diary became a shocking testament to her daily routine. Page after page, it fills with roughly the following entries:
“8 pm 31 min. I’m really awake now. “
“9 pm 06 min Now I am perfect, absolutely awake”.
“9 pm 34 min. I am special now, really awake. “
“10 pm 40 min. I’m really awake now, despite what I’ve written before. “
To Wearing, each morning and hundreds of moments each day seemed like his first awakening from an infinitely long sleep, and it seemed like he had to write it down.
Most of the previous blog posts are removed because C. Wearing immediately forgot that he made these posts.
These recordings caused C. Wearing annoyance and anger because he saw the recordings made by his hand but did not remember writing them. Later entries often received more and more capital letters or exclamation points, at least something different from the previous ones.
And those records, little different from each other, lasted hundreds of pages. They revealed a constant agony inhabited by the unaware of what was happening to him, Clive.
To blog how she “first woke up,” Wearing completed the blog in 2007 – more than 20 years after the onset of the disease.
According to his wife, Clive realized that something terrible and horrible had happened to him, but did not understand what. He did not complain that he did not remember anything. He complained that something had taken away all his experience, all his consciousness, all his life. And after a while, forgetting that he had just complained, he complained again.
Photo by Vida Press / Clive Wearing with his wife during the wedding
2005 praised the journalists who came to him as “the first people he saw in those 20 years.”
Preserved musical skills
One feature of C. Wearing’s state, which especially amazes scientists and gives them new insights into how memory works in general, is that his musical abilities remain.
Before the onset of his illness, Clive was a renowned conductor and musicologist in the UK. He worked for the BBC in 1981. It was he who was in charge of selecting the music that BBC Radio 3 broadcast during the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Now, C. Wearing remembers almost no theoretical knowledge of music, does not recall ever having played the piano in his life, and does not remember ever being a conductor.
However, you can play complex piano pieces right from the start and lead the choir. This proves that although C. Wearing lost his declarative memory, his procedural memory has remained as it was.
Declarative memory is the ability to consciously remember things for long periods of time, and procedural memory is commonly defined as long-term memory that includes what we unconsciously remember, such as riding a bike or tying shoelaces.
Clive’s observation confirmed that procedural memory mechanisms and conscious memory mechanisms function separately in the brain. Even with long-term conscious memory loss, procedural memory can remain.
Furthermore, Clive’s observation showed that the ability to interpret musical pieces, even very complex ones, is precisely a matter of procedural memory. Even without remembering that he ever played the piano in his life, Clive can play it perfectly. And enjoy playing.
Photo by Vida Press / Clive Wearing plays the piano
And not just the clues he knew before. If Clive receives notes in front of his eyes on a piece he has never played, he can play it perfectly. Although after that he will not remember playing it.
“Music is a space where we can be together, because as long as the work continues, it is herself. It is perfectly normal. When the music ends, he falls back into the abyss. He doesn’t know anything about his life, about what happened to him, “his wife told the BBC.
C. Wearing can also learn some new things by acquiring procedural memory through constant repetition of something. For example, if you watch the same video multiple times a day for several days in a row, you will remember it after a while and you will be able to know what will happen next in that video. Although he does not remember where he learned it from.
While making the coffee, Clive can figure out where the milk and sugar are put, as picking them up has become a habit for him, although if you ask him where the milk or sugar is, he won’t know what to answer.
Live in this moment
Carry is not the only person in the world with anterograde amnesia. However, this is the most difficult case known to scientists.
Many people have experienced isolated episodes of such amnesia, which can be caused by medications, a stroke, severe stress, or simply a large amount of alcohol consumed in a short period of time.
However, these episodes are usually short-lived (the next day the ability to memorize returns, we have experienced more than one after the party) or incomplete (at least some of the new memories are preserved). But C. Wearing’s amnesia is long-term and complete.
In late 1985, when it became clear that C. Wearing was unlikely to recover, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital for the critically ill. He lived here for seven years before his wife’s efforts moved to a roadside shelter, where he had the opportunity to walk through the garden and where he was cared for more by nurses.
Here it became a bit more fun, he liked to communicate with others, although the conversations were repeated very often. And he really enjoyed playing the piano built in his room, that was something he did as well as ever.
C. Wearing is now 82 years old and his status has not changed. It is the same as it was in 1985, although it perceives time completely differently from all of us.
He lives in a shelter where his wife Deborah visits him regularly, and is constantly delighted to see her and says how much he loves her; this seems to be the strongest memory of him.
According to 2005 When visiting neurologist Oliver Sacks, Clive does not lead a normal life in the sense of all people. But seeing him hug his wife or play the piano shows that in these brief moments he feels happy.
Until the end of his life, Clive will remain a man who literally “lives in this moment.”
Developed by BBC, Oxford Presents, Wikipedia, New Yorker.
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