50 First Dates - Fictional Medical Condition

Fictional Medical Condition

In an article in the BMJ on depictions of amnesia in film, clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale writes that 50 First Dates "maintains a venerable movie tradition of portraying an amnesic syndrome that bears no relation to any known neurological or psychiatric condition". However, a 2010 article in the Daily Mail newspaper claimed a similar condition afflicted a UK woman who cannot remember anything prior to 1994 as a result of two car accidents (one in 1985 and the other in 1990). The article quotes Dr. Peter Nestor, a neuroscience specialist at Cambridge University, who said "It is reasonably rare to have this kind of amnesia but it does exist." In 2010, researchers described a woman who developed the kind of memory impairment after she was involved in a car accident. She described that her memory was normal for events on the same day and that overnight memories for the previous day were lost. However, a neuropsychological test did reveal some improvement in recall for tasks which she had, unknowingly, performed the previous day. Though the woman claimed not to have seen 50 First Dates prior to her 2005 accident (but has watched it several times since), she stated that Drew Barrymore was her favorite actress, leading researchers to conclude that her condition might have been influenced by some knowledge of the film's plot, and its impact upon her understanding of amnesia.