Darren Daniel S.

Infante Cognitive Psychology

03-11-22 Prof. Rachelle Chavez

The Case of Clive Wearing

1. What happened to Clive Wearing?

- Clive Wearing was struck by herpes encephalitis, a brain infection that affects parts of the

brain, mainly memory. This resulted in him having amnesia, the worst amnesia ever

recorded. With a memory span of only seconds, all of his new experiences and events were

deleted instantly. He also has retrograde amnesia, a deletion of virtually his entire past.

This caused him to experience being “awakened” from the “dead” every time.

2. How did he continued to play music (connect it with the concepts in cognitive

psychology)?

- Clive Wearing managed to continue to play the piano is because he already knew how

to play the piano before his injury and mainly because of his semantic memory.

Episodic memory is the memory for experience while semantic memory is for facts. His

episodic memory was the one affected by his amnesia while his semantic memory was

kept intact. That is the reason why he does not have memories of his past experiences

but knows how to technically play the piano, the notes in the songs, and the sequences

of the notes in the songs. Because those factors are "facts" which are semantic

memories and not experiences (episodic memories).

3. What were your thoughts about this and in relation to memory formation?

- The experience of Clive Wearing is proof that memory involves different parts of the

brain and not only uses one part. Different areas in the brain have specific functions and

are all interconnected to each other in order to work properly. In memory formation, the

combination of semantic memory (located in the left inferior prefrontal cortex and the

left posterior temporal areas) and episodic memory (located in the hippocampus) in

long-term memory is needed to store and remember information from the past

(autobiographical and personal semantic memories), retrieve memories to make sense of

the present (procedural memory), and to imagine the future using the knowledge and

experiences.