Remember Ten Second Tom from the movie 50 First Dates? The character was an amnesiac who could only keep events in short term memory for about ten seconds at a time.
Although Tom was a very funny character, reality isn’t nearly as amusing. Today, New Yorker Magazine published an article about a real-life case even worse than Ten Second Tom…
In March of 1985, Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist in his mid-forties, was struck by a brain infection – a herpes encephalitis – affecting especially the parts of his brain concerned with memory. He was left with a memory span of only seconds – the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded.
Although Ten Second Tom was very funny in the movie, Clive’s reality sounds absolutely terrifying.
