Praghna Week 13: The complex relationship between memory and schizophrenia

Personally, memory is my most favorable topic because it is connected to my favorite subject, neuroscience. 

For this blog specifically, I will be discussing a psychotic disorder (alters thoughts and perceptions) known as schizophrenia and its bizarre connection to memory. 

Memory is a fundamental aspect of human cognition intertwined with our daily societal experiences. 

According to an article by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, patients with schizophrenia depict symptoms involving "delusions (false beliefs), hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that don't exist), unusual physical behavior, and disorganized thinking and speech." Imagine taking a walk around 6 o'clock, then suddenly you "blank out" and realize that it is currently 2 am, and you have no idea what happened for the past 8 hours of your day. You experience "so much energy buzzing out of [your] mind, everything becomes visceral," and worst of all, you feel a rush of paranoia and "voices as clear as a bell in [your] head." After this "breakdown," you "wake up in a locked ward surrounded by psychiatric patients," wondering what just happened! David described these exact events in an interview with the BBC. 

                                                       (image from GIPS Psychiatric Clinic & De-Addiction Center)                                                          

But how does memory relate to this complex disorder?

While reading an article from the National Library of Medicine, I realized that memory affects this disorder more than it seems. To uncover the answer to this question, we must focus on the neural and cognitive mechanisms within this psychiatric disorder. This article states that schizophrenia results in episodic memory deficits. This means that these patients' general cognitive functions (such as attention, memory, information processing, and everyday brain tasks regarding daily life) are impaired. 

Unlike common memory-related disorders such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia perfectly represents the interplay of neural and cognitive processes in the human mind. It also depicts the significance of memory and its relation to the future development of neuroscience. 

I hope this blog has broadened your perspective on this disorder and the value and relation of cognitive functions such as memory to cognitive psychology and neuroscience development. 

Comments

  1. Arushi March 27, 2024 at 7:58 PM

    Hi Praghna! I liked that you took a scientific approach to this blog and investigated an unfortunate disorder and its relation to memories. Quite frankly, it is so hard to believe that such disorders exist that can alter our cherished memories. I really liked that you broke down the information and data you summarized further using examples that were easily understandable. Your explanation of blanking out was well detailed and the account of hallucinations that patients face. I liked that you traced back the schizophrenia back to neural and cognitive mechanisms. This blog really did broaden my perspective on this disorder; thank you so much for sharing!

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  2. Daniel ChenMarch 27, 2024 at 9:34 PM

    Praghna, I wanted to start off by saying that I really loved your POAS presentation about Johnny Depp, and that I really loved your outfit and slides and presentation. Everything about it was amazing and I would 100% watch it again if I had the chance.
    Anyway, I've always been interested in how these cognitive diseases and disorders worked. I know that my brother will be studying this stuff since he's a neuroscience major, but I really wish that I had opportunities to learn about it like him. I've heard that some of the diseases that are caused by degeneration of the brain actually show up years or even decades before the onset of symptoms, which is genuinely so scary, because you could have schizophrenia in your 20s and just not know about it yet. I did also hear though that maybe if it is caught early enough, then it could be treatable like any other disease; the problem is that we do not have any means of detecting these diseases early on. Hopefully we get some of those new technologies soon because I'd rather not forget everything since I already struggle to remember to do stuff in general.
    Hopefully my brother will save us all haha. Maybe they'll find a cure for these diseases soon, or create some sort of solution to prevent the onset of symptoms, I really don't know, but all I do know is that Schizophrenia is a horrible disease...is a horrible disease...is a horrible disease...is a horrible disease... whoops what was I saying? Oh yeah, great blog :thumbsup: :D

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