Neuro Note, Fifty First Dates

This is a movie that came out in 2004 and stared Adam Sandler (Henry) and Drew Barrymore (Lucy). Henry has a real playboy attitude at the beginning of the movie and has his eyes set on Lucy. He meets Lucy at a diner where everyone knows her. It took multiple tries for him to get Lucy's attention. For days, they both had lovely conversation at a breakfast. However, Henry starred to notice something different about Lucy.  Henry finds out  Lucy was in a car accident that lead to short-term memory loss so every night all memory of her day is erased. Her symptoms are closely related to anterograde amnesia. This is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact.

Anterograde amnesia is a selective memory deficit, this can result from a brain injury, when the person is severely impaired in learning new information. Memories that occurred before the injury may be my not be regained (not always and not in Lucy's case), but events that occurred since the injury may be lost. Short-term memory is generally spared, which means that the individual may be able to carry on a conversation; but as soon as they are distracted, the memory of the conversation fades.

I chose this topic because it was fascinating because in the movie Lucy's family was trying so hard to always adjust the situation and try to live the same day over and over again. Henry, loved her so much that he wanted to adapt her situation in order for her to have a better quality of life. He came up with a movie that show would watch every morning to help her realize her accident and what has happened since that accident. I love that they did a movie on this topic, because it is something that needs to be addressed in our culture.

References

(n.d.). Retrieved April 05, 2018, from      http://www.memorylossonline.com/glossary/anterogradeamnesia.html