TNG - Conundrum

Conundrum
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Season 5, Episode 14

Crew members lose just the right bits of their memory to allow this shaky plot to advance. Overlook these goofy lapses of logic and the episode is not half bad. 

(viewed 08/27/2009)

Comments

[Mark Soutar]

You clearly have no training in Psychology or brain physiology, or you would know there is nothing far fetched about their memory loss. You can lose one area of memory but not another, they lost what is called episodic memory: their memories of who they are but retained what is called procedural memory which is how to work a car, how to read. there are many examples of this in psychology. Patient HM could not make any new memories (like the guy in Momento) because of damage to his hippo-campus but after instructing him how to use MS Windows for severel weeks because able to master it. You would ask him if he used the program before he would indicate he hadn't because he couldn't remember having used it, but his brain still retained the skills he learned he just couldn't remember the source. A Dr. tested HM by putting a tack in his hand and shaking hands with HM, after a few days HM would refused to shake this Doctor's hand, however he wouldn't know why. These examples illustrate that memory is not all or nothing, you can lose one part of it.