Real Stories
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2026
48:01 · 13M views · Aug 13, 2016
A documentary on Clive Wearing, a renowned musician whose brain was damaged by a virus in 1985, leaving him with a memory spanning only about seven seconds. It follows his life and condition.
HN points to it as the extended documentary on an extreme case of amnesia whenever memory loss or consciousness comes up.
3 comments from Hacker News
For another incredible case of retrogade amnesia, check the story of Clive Wearing, the men with a few seconds of memory. Short clip: [LINK] Extended documentary: this video I learned of him through neuroscience classes. That was plenty of years ago, and I still think of his condition every now and then. One thing that amazes me is that he keeps stacks of diaries where he keeps erasing the previous entry, adding the current date and time, and writing "first entry I made consciously" ( this video ). But also, it seems that over time he does learn something new, somehow. For example, he can now reliably "predict" the ending of movies he has seen a great amount of times after the amnesia started, without remembering of having ever seen the movie. And, of course, it's touching to see the relationship with the wife.
Have you seen the documentary "7 second memory man" on BBC. It is about an intelligent person who is confined to live with only 7 second memory. He keeps a diary recording his entries. As he reads past entries, he realises the predicament he is in and considers that his case would be interesting to doctors. Then forgets all about that. Rediscovering the whole thing again in the next 7 seconds for himself anew. 44:20 @ this video
Well there is a man called Clive Wearing who has a 7 second memory, he still believes he's been "dead"/unconscious since he's illness in 1985, every 7 seconds even when they show him videos of himself from earlier in the day or things he's written down he doesn't believe it's him he believes the 7 seconds he's in is the true first conscious moment he's had, he even keeps a diary and writes the time he truly believes is the first time being conscious it's filled with multiple entries spanning decades.Whats interested he still retains knowledge of the world and other things but he has to be "prompted" in the right way to get that out of him, the only things he seems to remembers truly are some personal details like his wife, home telephone, family members and how to play music as he was a musicologist before he's illness but no true memories of any sort.His family don't seem to think he's conscious anymore they talk about being stuck in loops with him saying the same things over again and that even though there are elements of his old self there it's just bits and pieces the person he was is not there any more, even in the documentaries about him he says the same things over and over again the only change seems to be he's mellowed out about his condition as he used to get aggressive when he was discussing it with people. There are 2 documentaries about him made decades apart Prisoner of consciousness: [LINK] The man with 7 second memory: this video