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by droopyEyelids 4811 days ago
I know you wanted to skip over the details to get the heart of your problem, but amnesia is one of the most interesting aliments I know of, and if you feel comfortable sharing any of the details, I'll read them in rapt attention without sharing any pushy opinions or giving un-asked-for advice! (I'm a bit of a biology of the brain nerd!)
1 comments

No no, it's a fair question. I'm generally quite open to discussing what it's been like for me since I got amnesia. I do have quite a few anecdotes. I know it's not quite the same for everyone but I do have some classic symptoms that people screw up when they get "Hollywood Amnesia" - my older memories are more intact, presumably due to neuroplasticity, but without giving it much thought one may assume that the newer memories, being fresher, are the ones that are more intact.

A lot of things ended up going into more procedural memory than I was expecting. I can't actually tell you how I was able to still log into my online accounts with my password - I suspect muscle memory has a lot to do with it. I often will have a sense if I knew a person if I see a picture of them or I read their name, but sometimes linking it further than that goes nowhere. Music/language is interesting, yet mostly expected. You're probably familiar with the case of Scott Adams, who worked on overcoming Spasmodic dysphonia using a nursery rhyme. So certainly different pathways there - I will remember tunes, lyrics (even in languages that I can barely use anymore), but not the context, artist, etc. I can read all the non-latin scripts that I used to be able to read.