Question: Once you loose one of you’re memories because of Alzheimer can you ever recuperate that memory?

Beth Eyre answered on 22 Jun 2020:

This is a great question!

Firstly in neuroscience terms a memory occurs when neurons fire together, a process called long term potentiation (LTP) happens which strengthens the synapse. Memories ‘happen’ when a certain group of neurons become activated again.

Follow this link for a great, easy to understand explanation of how memories are formed:

https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/memory/how-are-memories-formed

We still aren’t fully sure why people lose their memories in Alzheimer’s disease but we do think it is to do with neuronal death, whereby nerve cells that usually communicate with each other to make you you become damaged and die. This neuronal loss also leads to atrophy, this means brain tissue dies and the brain actually becomes smaller.

Lots of brain cells die within the hippocampus, which is important for memory, this area of the brain becomes much smaller in people with Alzheimer’s so we think this may be what produces the symptoms of memory loss.

However, sometimes in Alzheimer’s disease, people can be very forgetful and not know people around them or how to complete certain tasks but suddenly out of the blue they can become lucid. Being lucid means they remember everything again and it’s like they have no memory loss!

Unfortunately we don’t understand how and why people do become lucid, but it does suggest that the memories (or the neurons that are reactivated to produce the feeling of a memory) must still be in the brain for the person to become lucid.