In the movie 50 First Dates, the main character, Lucy, has what the movie calls “Goldfield’s Syndrome.” Goldfield’s, however, is not a true a syndrome. A more accurate description of Lucy’s condition would be that she has anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is the “loss of memory for events after an accident” (SITE). One example of this is that Lucy is able to remember that it is her father’s birthday, how she builds new structures out of waffles and toothpicks, or even that she knows her brother use to be a football player. She remembers all of this because it all happened before the accident. She cannot however remember meeting Henry and so she has to “re-meet” him every day.
A more accurate real-life example of Lucy would be Henry Molaison or more famously known as H.M. H.M. had his hippocampus removed to help alleviate symptoms from his epilepsy. H.M.’s could not remember new people he had met, any current events, or even that his father had died (McLeod, 2011). The only major difference between Lucy and H.M. is that Lucy lost her memories after going to sleep, while H.M. actively could not form new long-term memories. There is no such…show more content… While Lucy can remember new events for a whole day before forgetting them, Tom can only remember new events for 10 seconds. Ten-second-Tom’s condition is, unfortunately, very real. The best real life example of Tom would be Clive Wearing. Clive developed encephalitis and cannot encode new long-term memories. This means that he can really only remember things for up to SEVEN seconds (so he’s actually worse than ten-second-Tom). He can however, remember certain things about the past, like how to play the piano or who his wife is (Goldstein, 2011). Although the movie does not go into much greater detail about Tom’s condition, as an educated person it would be safe to assume that it is also the case that Tom, like Clive, remembers general info about his