It can easily be taken away from certain diseases that affect your brain, causing your memory to fade away. A common disease know as Alzheimer 's affects more than 5 million people per year.(Texas Department of State Health Services) Alzheimer 's, a common form of dementia, is a disease that “destroys memory and other important mental functions”(Mayo Clinic Staff). The connection between cells in the brain are lost thus causing memory loss. Alzheimer’s mostly affects people over the age of 65. Someone with Alzheimer’s is not able to obtain new memories and can’t remember observed facts. There are four types of memories that a person loses; short- term, episodic, semantic, and procedural.(The Human Memory) The first memory to go is short-term which is where you hold information for about 30 seconds. A translator is an example of this because they must remember what they are trying to orally say in another language. Next is episodic which is the memory of certain events that have happened to you. An example of one is where you were and who you were with when you found out about the 9/11 terrorist attack. Then it’s semantic which is your knowledge of language and logic. You would forget “names of colors, the sound of letters, the capitals of countries, and other basic facts acquired over a lifetime”.(Zimmermann) The final one to go is procedural. Procedural is responsible for remembering how to walk, talk, ride a bike, and …show more content…
A person who is facial blind has difficulty remembering someone 's face. Facial Blindness was discovered in the 1940’s when World War II soldiers with head injuries came back home and weren’t able to identify their own family members. Fifty years after this event scientists discovered that people could be born with this disease. Jacob Hodes is a 31 year old man who has been affected by facial blindness ever since he was born. In an interview with Lesley Stahl, Jacob was asked to identify the faces of some famous celebrities. When Lesley held up a picture of Jimmy Carter Jacob said, “Nope. I can 't say if I 've ever seen that person”. (Stahl) The odd part is that Jacob actually has seen him many times. Jacob was also shown pictures of Elvis, Michael Jordan, John Travolta, and Will Smith and his answer for all of them was still no, he has never seen