What the Bourne films get right and wrong about …

1 What the Bourne films get right and wrongabout amnesia5 August 2016, by Jennifer Talarico Not quite an amnesiac: a scene from The BourneUltimatum.. Credit: Jasin Boland/Universal PicturesIn 2002's "The Bourne Identity," our protagonistwakes up having been shot and plucked,unconscious, from the Mediterranean on to afishing boat with no memory of who he is or howhe got there. From there, the movie franchisefollows Jason Bourne as he recovers memories ofpast events and rediscovers his identity. But, although Bourne 's amnesia at the start of thefirst film in the series is profound (and profoundlyimportant to the unfolding story), we quickly learnthat there are some things Bourne does rememberfrom his past.

2 For example, how to speak multiplelanguages, how to drive and how to fight. All ofthese are complex motor tasks that he learnedbefore he was shot and fell in to the aspect of Bourne 's amnesia is actually quiteaccurate. For people with "organic" amnesia (where neurological memory loss is typically due todamage to the medial temporal lobes in the brain),memory for skills and habits is intact, even thoughother memories are lost. There is truth to the clich that you never forget how to ride a memories are affected in differentwaysMemory investigators make a distinction betweendeclarative memory and procedural affects these types of memories indifferent memory includes anything you can"declare" or talk about .

3 For instance, rememberingthat Paris is the capital of France, or that you hadcereal for breakfast today, or that you have to takeyour allergy medicine tomorrow morning. Whilethese types of memories are different in other,important ways, you are able to think or talk aboutthe content of the memory and have an explicitawareness that you are remembering in eachexample. It is these declarative memories that aremost affected by memory, on the other hand, are motor"procedures" or skills that you demonstrate throughbehavior. For instance, remembering how to fry anegg, or how to type a word on a keyboard, or howto hit a golf ball, or how to brush your teeth.

4 Theseare tasks that are learned over time, but that aredifficult to describe in words or to articulate when orhow mastery was amnesiacs not only remember how todo things that they had learned prior to their injuryor illness, but they are also able to learn new memory isn't affected in the same waythat declarative memory case of Henry MolaisonIn the 1960s, neuropsychologist Brenda Milner firstdemonstrated how patients who lose the ability toform declarative memories are still able to learnnew skills with the famous amnesiac patient, HenryMolaison ( ).

5 Lost his memory after surgeons removed hishippocampus, a brain structure associated withmemory, in an attempt to treat his severe course, this sort of surgery would not happen 1 / 3 today. Typically, amnesia is the result of brain injuryor was able to improve his performance on thedifficult motor task of tracing a shape while beingable to see only his hand and the shape reflected ina a week of testing, made fewer and fewermistakes on this mirror-tracing task, even thoughhe never remembered ever having done the taskbefore and had to have the goal explained to himeach day.

6 In other words, his declarative memoryfor the rules of the game and for experiencing it inthe past was impaired, but his procedural memoryfor performing the task was 's inability to form new memories ischaracteristic of what is called anterogradeamnesia. This form of amnesia is defined by theinability to form new declarative memories of facts,personal experiences or plans for the futuresubsequent to the injury or illness. This hallmarkaspect of true memory loss is frequently absentfrom fictional amnesiacs, including Jason not only lost the ability to form new declarativememories, but also struggled with memory is called retrograde amnesia , and it is definedby the inability to retrieve memories from before theinjury or illness.

7 Real-life retrograde amnesia isdifferent from how it is portrayed by the Bournecharacter (or other common fictionalrepresentations of amnesia ).Real-life retrograde amnesia more recent memoriesare more likely to be forgotten, while memoriesfrom long ago are more likely to be example, if a 40-year-old woman suffers from abrain injury resulting in amnesia , she will rememberwho she is, her childhood and most of her teenageyears, then have fewer memories from her 20's andeven fewer from her 30's, and few to no memoriesfrom the year or so before her injury.

8 The firstmemory Bourne retrieves, in contrast, is themission that immediately preceded his memoryloss, and not older memories of his childhood, the pastIn the subsequent films , Bourne is shown recallinghis past experiences in a fragmentary, near-randomway. It is also more strongly suggested in the laterfilms that Bourne is likely suffering something calledpsychogenic amnesia . Unlike amnesia that stemsfrom an illness or injury that causes brain damage,psychogenic amnesia has no known biologicalcause and is instead of psychological victims of trauma are more likely to have intrusive memories than memory loss.

9 Intrusivememories are suddenly and unexpectedly broughtto mind by cues in the environment. Having spontaneous memories is common, even forhealthy he is driven to discover his identity byrecovering memories, Bourne seeks these types ofenvironmental cues, for example, in "The BourneSupremacy," the second film in the series, byrevisiting the Berlin hotel where he committed hisfirst assassination. In the third film , "The BourneUltimatum," Bourne returns to the facility where hewas trained, and says he "remembers everything."More realistically, individuals who haveexperienced trauma tend to avoid circumstancesthat remind them of those tragic events.

10 Theirmemories of the traumatic event (and eventssurrounding it) are typically accompanied by strongphysiological and emotional reactions. Survivorsoften struggle with managing the flood of emotionsthat come with those common therapeutic goal is to reduce emotionalreactivity to the memory through pharmacologicalor behavioral the pieces togetherThroughout the films , Bourne tries to piece togetherthe events from his life to form a coherent process is common to all of us as we developand reconstruct autobiographical individuals for whom the trauma defines their 2 / 3 life story and their sense of self often suffer the mostfrom symptoms of post-traumatic stress people who are better able to contextualizeand compartmentalize the trauma as a part of theirlife, but not the most important or central part oftheir life, seem to have better psychological.