Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bolgabam here. It's one of the most tired tropes in the land of television. A character gets bumped on the head or falls down the stairs and suddenly has amnesia. They can't recall who they are or what they used to do, which results in a whole set of complications, often played for laughs. Just before the end of the episode, though, they get their memory
back thanks to another blow to the head. It's so ingrained in our minds that it's no wonder that between thirty eight and forty six percent of Americans think that amnesia can be cured by a blow to the head. And this TV trope didn't come out of thin air. It was a plot device in numerous novels of the nineteenth century and believed by many doctors of the period.
In an article published in the journal Neurology titled the Head Trauma, Amnesia Cure, the Making of a Medical Myth, the author, Mary Spears, an associate psychology professor at Drexel University, looks at where this belief originated in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. She writes, scientists thought that the two halves of the brain had the same function,
much as the body has two lungs. French anatomist and physiologist Francoise Viere Bisha proposed that a second blow to the head could restore the memory of someone who had a concussion. His reasoning was that since the two hemispheres of the brain needed to be in balance with each
other in order to function. Quote that should explain these observations so frequently repeated, of an accidental blow upon one side of the head having restored the intellectual functions which had long remained dormant, in consequence of a blow received upon the other side, Spears said in a press release. From my reading of Bisha's work, it seems that he felt that the second trauma amnesia cure was a common occurrence and didn't need the citation of an individual case.
This was not unusual at the time to forego evidence like that. Ironically, Bisha died of a head injury in eighteen o two, but his theories lived on and other doctors expanded on them. In an eighteen forty four book, a physician named Andrew Wigan wrote of a case where a sixteen year old boy who had been rendered insensible by a blow to the head suddenly came out of his coma weeks later when the clatter from someone accidentally dropping fire tongs awoke him. Meanwhile, a second idea was
also taking hold, that of memory permanence. Philosopher William James credits poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the notion that memories are forever etched in the brain. Coleridge used a well known story of a woman whose ravings turned out to be forgotten memories to make his point. Although cole Ridge was no scientist, Spears explained that he lived in a time when there were no quote, hard and fast lines
between scientific and popular writing. These ideas about amnesia have persisted along after Coleridge, Bisha and Vegan, and become part of literature, movies, and television. By the mid eighteen hundreds, though, scientists were beginning to question these beliefs about amnesia, and today we know that amnesia may be caused by things like a stroke or brain inflammation from an infection, brain condition like Alzheimer's, seizures or tumors. Blows to the head
or concussions can cause confusion. But very rarely result in permanent loss of memory, and even among patients with amnesia, it's far more common to lose the ability to make more memories rather than completely forgetting who they are. There isn't any treatment for most types of amnesia. Patients are instead taught coping skills like using smartphones to keep track of daily tasks. But no, a second blow to the
head will not fix the problem. Spears said, well, one of the issues we see in the persistence of this myth is that understanding how the brain forgets, recovers, and or loses information is a complicated matter that's still being studied by brain scientists. As individuals, we may have had the experience of a memory jog or a queue that
reminds us of some long forgotten memory. Because our own experiences serve as powerful evidence to us, this reinforces the myth that all memories are forever stored in the brain and only needs some sort of jolt to come back. Interestingly, scientists say the film Memento is one of the few to get amnesia right. The main character, who has interrograde amnesia is unable to remember from one day to the next what he's done and so must create elaborate memory aids.
Today's episode written by Katherine Whitburn and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this lots of other brainy topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio or more podcasts my heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,