MEMORY LOSS, ETC

[SysDOWN84]

Hi, just wandering if anyone could fill me in on something:
One of my characters has a head on collision with another car. The character in the other car can't remember who he is , or who the other character is [vital to plot] as a result of this crash.

My question is this; is this plausible? Could a car crash, in which a car spins several times, landing upside down, with the result being a severe hit to the head for a passenger actually result in temporary or permanent memory loss?

If it was temporary, is it likely he would he forget everything [again, vital to plot], and would it be possible for him to regain his memory in full just a few days later?

Many thanks -- I didn't really check the other posts in here to see if this is what this forum is for, but I think it is. I apologise if I'm mistaken.

Many thanks [and I'd really appreciate a response as soon as possible],

Sys.

[OwainGlyndwyr]

Hi,

Hers a link that should hopefully be of use to you :)

www.howstuffworks.com/question672.htm (http://www.howstuffworks.com/question672.htm)

I think what your looking for is called 'Anterograde amnesia'. The site above should be a good launch point for you.

Good luck.

O.G.

[OwainGlyndwyr]

Just a test to see if my Sig works :)

[elroy butch]

Just asked my girlfriend about this one, she's a physiotherapist (I think you call them physical therapists). She says, yes, it's perfectly possible with a head injury, but chances are there would also be other neurological damage as well, possibly affecting motor function, speech, etc. though not necessarily permanent.

Hope that helps

E

[SysDOWN84]

Oh, thankyou.

You've all been super helpful. You people rock.

Thanks!

Peace out :hat

[BlankPaige]

Very late chiming in on this, but this is exactly what happened to Trevor Rees-Jones in the very famous Paris car crash. I just read his autobiography. The doctors in fact would have been very, very surprised had he remembered anything, given the severity of the impact to his head and face. His face was pretty well totally smashed up and had to be re-built. Anyway, you might read his book to get a first-hand feel of what it's like.

[kklstef]

I had a bump on the head in a car accident. My parents tell me I was in and out of consciousness the first day, conscious the next few days but very foggy, everything had to be explained over and over and over again.

I reached a level early on (first few days) where I knew who I was, who the people around me were, all the most important stuff, but didn't remember people who didn't play a significant role in my life and/or at least knew for a length of time. I never remembered getting into the car, why, where we were going. And there were memories lost completely, including foreign languages I never regained.

I did have other short-term memory problems for quite some time (still do a little bit), and throughout all of this, there were other effects of the injury (reading, language stuff).
If I recall correctly, the effect of the head injury is directly related to the lobe of the brain that is injured. I know all of my effects fell into the lists of symptoms for two adjacent lobes.

edited to add: if your character needs to not remember it only for a few days, it's definitely plausible, and I know the only obvious signs of the injury for me, in those first few weeks, was that I seemed "stoned", things had to be repeated if there was more than one thought in the sentence ("dinner's ready" was completely clear, "dinner's ready, we'll go shopping after we eat"...didn't sink in, and my face was torn up from the windshield.

Oh, and the headaches were so excruciatingly painful I could do nothing but lay still. Even with the high octane pain pills.

[dclary]

I used to know the answer to this... I think...