In the movies, a conk on the noggin can erase a person’s memory and personality, turning brutal assassins into average folk and heiresses into humble housewives. Such personality-altering amnesia is far from reality, reports Sallie Baxendale, a neuropsychologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, in a first-ever study of amnesia in films.
Profound amnesia (usually caused by neurosurgery, brain infection, or stroke) is quite rare in the general population, but Baxendale found amnesic characters in 60 movies, from the 1915 silent reel Garden of Lies to 2004’s 50 First Dates and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In nearly all, the portrayals were stunningly inaccurate. In one common device, movie patients lose their memory after a blow to the head, then regain it with a second injury. “The idea that lost memory could come back after another bang is absolutely ridiculous,” Baxendale says. “You wouldn’t expect ...
