Anterograde amnesia and Alzheimer’s disease are completely different problems that concern the brain; however, the commonality between the two problems lies in the memory loss constituent. Amnesia as we know it and understand it from popular media is a temporary or permanent loss of memory. However, there is a further differentiation that most neurologists would make to the holistic term. Anterograde amnesia is one of those and it specifically means the inability to make memories after the event that caused the amnesia occurred. What this means is that if you have had a head injury, what you remember just a bit after the head injury occurred would be seriously impaired. To what degree and how long this problem lasts is defined by the amount of the injury incurred. Injury is not the only contributing factor for Anterograde amnesia. Drugs that are used for anxiety and hysteria like benzodiazepines have quite an established and powerful effect over Anterograde amnesia.
Alzheimer’s Disease or AD, on the other hand, is a completely different problem. In AD, in the simplest terms, your brain wastes away until the point that no life functions can be maintained. Each neuron and piece of brain tissue will slowly degenerate and plaque will form until the point where breathing and life sustaining process will not occur. Memory is of course a part of this and the areas of the brain where memories are stored, namely the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe, are just as affected as the areas of the brain responsible for cognition and other functions. The exact mechanisms of the disease are varied. One of the possible ways that AD occurs is due to the misfolding or incorrect chemical encoding of DNA from RNA – a regular process during cellular replication. Other contributing factors are the presence of cytokines that trigger inflammation and tissue destruction in the brain. There is also a strong link between herpes infections and the development of AD in patients. This is so because the virus goes into a vegetative state in the neurons and is quite free to travel up and down the spinal cord during infections.
The most important difference between the two problems is that Anterograde amnesia that is drug-induced is completely reversible but there is nothing that can be done to recover lost brain tissue. AD is one of those diseases along with Parkinson’s disease that has no cure and is one of the genetic destinies that is handed to us