Our Brain. Arguably our most complex and awe inspiring bodily organ.
At it’s most fundamental level, our brain is an electrochemical signal processing organ with a formidable memory storage capacity. Think of it as the ultimate, soft 3 lb. onboard computer.
Medical research has discovered that the dynamics of the brain’s memory encoding and storage comes with a few surprises.
It turns out that our memories of a family member, our emotions, sounds and smells are composed of not just one singular memory experience. Instead each event is a combination of separate and individual sensory, emotion, sight, sound, smell and language components. The brain receives its incoming memory data from the eyes, ears, nose and skin. It then processes and encodes most of it within the Hippocampus. The now brain readable memory is then shunted off via neural circuitry to one of several specialized regions of the brain for storage and future retrieval or accessing.
Thus, all memories having to do with, say facial recognition, are stored in one region. All memories having to do with sound are stored elsewhere. Emotional memories have their own file cabinet, and so on.
What does Aunt Maybel look like?
File cabinet #1: Occipital Lobe stores visual memory.
What does Grandpa’s voice sound like?
File cabinet #2: Primary Auditory Cortex within the Temporal Lobe.
What emotions have I attached to my sister over my lifetime?
File cabinet #3: the Amygdala.
What is my husband’s name?
File cabinet #4: Temporal Cortex.
Have I had any unpleasant or traumatic experiences with an individual, place or event in my life?
File cabinet #5: Anterior Cingulate Cortex.
What did my first boyfriend smell like?
File cabinet #6: Lateral and Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex.
So, when your loved one begins to display problems with recognizing you, or remembering your name, due to their Alzheimer’s, the problem may be that the disease has disrupted or destroyed the neural circuitry that runs between the Hippocampus and a specialized storage area.
Examples might sound like these.
“Today, my wife dropped in to see me. At least she looked like my wife, however, the voice that was coming out of her sounded different, like it was somebody else. Was it really my wife Darlene, or was it somebody else?”
“Last night, a caregiver told me that my grandson came to visit me. He sounded like a little boy that I knew, but I could not place him by the look of his face. He also seemed to smell different from my little Billy. I could not tell who that child was.”
“My husband came to visit me in my room yesterday. He brought in a bouquet of yellow roses with sprigs of lavender, both of which have always been my favorites. But these seemed artificial to me; I could not detect a fragrance from them at all. The smile on his face turned sad when I thanked him for the nice artificial floral arrangement. They had no scent to me at all.”
The mechanics of how our memories are formed and stored is amazing. For far too long, we have remained ignorant or taken for granted how marvelous a gift our brain is and how it serves us. Take the time to learn more about how the brain works. It will also provide you with a greater appreciation and compassion for your Alzheimer’s stricken loved one.
We lucky folks who do not have Alzheimer’s sometimes get wrapped up in our personal vanities by expecting recognition of ourselves each time we encounter our loved one fighting with AD.
Give them a break. Your loved one can no longer be held accountable for that which they can no longer deliver, express, convey or hold in their mind. They are under attack and siege and putting up the best that they know how. The focus of attention should be all about them, their comfort and their feeling of being loved.
Jeff Dodson
October 6th 2010
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