but this denial does not deny the organic brain location of
speech memories; it merely affirms that they are scattered rather
than concentrated in one area.)

[1] Foot of the left or right third frontal convolutions,
auditory speech in the supramarginal, etc.


In its widest phases memory alters with the state of the brain.
In childhood impressibility is high, but until the age or four or
five the duration of impression is low, and likewise the power of
voluntary recall. In youth (eighteen-twenty) all these capacities
are perhaps at their highest. As time goes on impressibility
seems first of all to be lost, so that it becomes harder and
harder to learn new things, to remember new faces, new names.

The typical difficulty of middle age is to remember names,
because these have no real relationship or logical value and must
be arbitrarily remembered. The typical senile defect is the
dropping out of the recent memories, though the past may be
preserved in its entirety. With any disease of the brain,
temporary or permanent, amnesia or memory loss may and usually is
present (e. g., general paresis, tumor, cerebral
arteriosclerosis, etc.). As the result of Carbon monoxide
poisoning, as after accidental or attempted suicidal gas
inhalation, the memory, especially for the most recent events, is
impaired and the patient cannot remember the events as they
occur; he passes from moment to moment unconnected to the recent
past, though his remote past is clear. Since memory is the basis
of certainty, of the feeling of reality, these unfortunates are