If you have recently suffered a stroke, received a traumatic injury directly to your cranium, have had a surgery to remove specific parts of your brain, then you can suffer from short term memory loss
The duration upto which the condition troubles you will depend on the cause. If it's due to a traumatic injury, it may heal over time period of a few months or a few years, again depending upon the extent of damage.
If the condition is caused due to stroke, then the recovery of the patient depends on the extent of damage caused by the stroke and how quickly the stroke was taken care of.
Some people have brain disorders like epilepsy and brain cancers, glioblastoma being the most common form. To treat these conditions, especially in epilepsy, specific parts of the brain are removed.
Now, short term memories are processed into long term memories in a part of the brain called hippo campus. It is responsible for converting short term memories into long term memories, which are believed to he stored in the uppermost layer of the brain called neocortex and when this part of the brain gets damaged, conditions like short term memory loss(STML) appear.
In some cases, infection in the brain can also cause lesions on certain brain areas, which can also cause STML.
Storing memories is not one step process, it involves a lot of different parts of the brain and lots of different pathways, if any of those get disrupted, it may result in certain brain disorders.
In some cases, the conditions persists until death, especially patients who have their hippo campus removed. The most famous case is of
Henry Molasion Gustav or, as famously known in the scientific community as HM Gustav or simply Patient HM. He battled with the condition until his death im 2008.
So, we can say the origins of STML have a clear connection with damage to certain brain areas.
Short Term Memory Causes:
Although it's normal for our short term memory to deteriorate, some underlying causes can speed or amplify the process. These are behavioural causes that we can and should avoid;
- Lack of Sleep
- Alcohol or Substance Abuse
- Certain Medicines
- Work Exhaustion
- Lack of nutrients