Author's note
Awyr here. Now, some of you seem a bit confused as to what's going on medically
in the story.Since I don't want to have one of the actual characters explain it (I hate
it when that happens), I'm just going to explain it here.
Hippocampus: The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is thought to encode
memories. People with damage to the hippocampus will most likely have
amnesia/memory loss. In Kakashi's case, he has retrograde amnesia and light
anterograde amnesia. He didn't realize that he hit Sakura because he had no memory
of the event; he was distracted by Iruka. Kakashi might also lose some memories of
his immediate past (relative in decades). Unlike some other fics and stories might lead
you to believe, there is no way to retrieve lost memories. Once the event is gone, it's
gone. Although the facts of the event might remain.
Thalamus: The thalamus is the part of your brain located right around your ears.
Surprise surprise, it processes almost all things in the brain requiring words; hearing,
speech, ect. The middle part of the thalamus is also associated with memory loss, as
it is directly over the hippocampus. Tsunande guesses that Kakashi has memory loss
because of the location of the brain-damaged areas. She can see where the brain
damaged areas are because of relative amounts of activity shown on the MRI scan.
Aphasia: There are two types of aphasia. Kakashi has both. That means that he can't
form or understand words. All semantic meaning is lost. Unlike memory loss, it is
possible for the afflicted to get somewhat better. If the person does not get better
within a few days of the damage, there is still a strange effect that happens 6 months
afterwards that is referred to as the 6th month miracle. In the 6th month miracle, the
patient might make full, or at least partial, recovery. Of course, most of the time this
doesn't happen; that's why it's a miracle.
Amnesia: There are two types of amnesia; retrograde and anterograde. Retrograde
deals with memories lost from before the incident that caused the amnesia took place.
Anterograde amnesia means that there no new memories are able to be formed. It is
rarefor a patient to have just one or the other type, although it's rarely an equal balance
ofboth. Kakashi has more retrograde amnesia than anterograde. Because of this,
Kakashi will probably be slightly OOC because events that caused a change in his
outlook of lifemight not be there anymore. Now, people who have amnesia do not forget
everything.They remember general knowledge (the sky is blue, for example) and they
remember procedures (just how to shove the kunai into the back of the skull). They can
also recognize people and things, just not consciously. (For example, Kakashi knows
that he used to make Iruka blush. He doesn't know that he's thinking of blushing, or
that he caused it, he just knows that it happened)
If you have any more questions in reguards to the story, please just let me know. I'm
more than happy to clarify things for you.