AMNESIA

AMNESIA. — Loss of the faculty of remembering, due to alteration of the traces (symbols) impressed in the nervous centres in relation to the representation that the individual has of external objects. Retrograde or anterograde, partial (lacunar) or total, temporary or permanent, it may depend on purely functional and transient causes (fatigue, exhaustion, toxic or infectious conditions) or on serious organic alterations of the nervous centres (senile softening, destructive lesions of the encephalon). It may affect, in isolation or globally, the faculties of forming, retaining, and recognizing mnemonic traces; it impoverishes the patrimony of the intellect, without, however, disturbing its associative, logical, and critical activity.