Amnesia

Krickitt Carpenter perches on her living room couch viewing the wedding videotape and frowns when she sees the bride and groom exchanging vows. "It makes me miss her more and more, the girl in the picture," she says. "I wish I knew what she was thinking--she's just gotten married." For Krickitt, the radiant bride and happy groom in the video are just familiar-looking strangers, shadows of people she once knew. But the people on the videotape are Krickitt and her husband, Kim.

The Fat Years A Novel Chan Koonchung, translated from the Chinese by Michael S. Duke Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: 310 pp., $26.95 I've long been partial to E.M. Forster's formulation that the role of fiction - or one of them, anyway - is to suggest a "buzz of implication," a flavor of its time and place more nuanced than history allows. That's because fiction is an art of narrative, of emotion, defined by the singular movements of individuals as they navigate specific corners of the world.

A tough, tasty steak of a book, Justin Fox's "The Myth of the Rational Market" arrived last fall just in time to explain how and why the smartest economists and best-managed institutions on Wall Street nearly detonated a bomb in the world's underpants. At the risk of oversimplifying: The abstract thing we call markets (trading in stocks, bonds, options, securities, etc.) is indeed rational -- predictable, mathematical, knowable. It's the human actors who are irrational, if not downright insane.

S.J. Watson's debut novel, "Before I Go to Sleep," is a brilliant, nasty noir. It drags you down into deep, dark and disturbing waters. It entertains while touching on complex questions of the meaning of identity and memory. A young woman wakes up in bed next to a man. She doesn't know the bed. She doesn't know the man. The woman is young and single. The man is much older. And he's wearing a wedding ring. Embarrassing, at least, and socially awkward to be sure, this could be the setup of a Candace Bushnell romp, or the sequel script to "Bridesmaids.

Three weeks ago, when the Nobel committee awarded its literature prize to Romanian writer Herta Muller, it lauded her courageous and unflinching fictional portraits of "daily life in a stagnated dictatorship" in communist Romania. What they did not mention, however, was Muller's ongoing nonfictional critique of the leadership of post-communist Romania. Only days after she won the Nobel, Muller, who now lives in Germany, blasted her homeland for not having broken more completely with its communist past.

First memories—a trip to the hospital, an ice cream cone at the beach—change as children get older, a new study finds, and don’t crystallize until about age 10.  But the study raises new questions about why the first few years of life, aside from traumatic events, are so forgettable. BrainConnection from PositScience offers this perspective on what’s known as infantile amnesia: “Studies suggest that we're not simply forgetting what happened during our earliest years; far fewer autobiographical memories exist from early childhood than simple forgetting predicts.

Mary Joyce Howard, lost for two years as an amnesia victim living in an Oklahoma nursing home as Jane Doe, was reunited with her family in High Point, N.C. Her parents, brother and sister-in-law were waiting as a doctor and two paramedics, all volunteers, arrived with her following an 18-hour drive from Oklahoma City. Howard was injured in a hit-and-run highway accident in February 1998 and underwent major brain surgery.

Hospital officials said that a series of strokes last December has left William J. Schroeder with amnesia, it was reported Sunday. "His problem is his short-term memory," Linda Broadus, a spokeswoman for Humana Inc., operator of Humana Hospital Audubon, said in a report published by the New York Times. Broadus said that Schroeder has trouble remembering such things as who visited him earlier in the day, who joined him for breakfast or what he had to eat. Dr.

Free-lance photographer Michael F. Ritter, who disappeared three weeks ago from his ransacked, bloodstained office in Reno--triggering speculation that he was a victim of foul play--walked into his parish church in Reno and said he was suffering from amnesia, police reported Friday. "I don't know who I am. I want you to help find my family," Ritter told an employee at the Reno Christian Fellowship Church on Thursday afternoon, according to sources close to the investigation.

The world's most-prescribed sleeping pill can cause temporary memory loss but, because there is no evidence that it endangers public health, it should not be banned, a federal advisory panel said Friday. The Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee unanimously recommended that the agency change the label on Upjohn Co.'s sleeping pill--called Halcion--to warn doctors that the drug may be more likely to cause amnesia than similar medications.

First memories—a trip to the hospital, an ice cream cone at the beach—change as children get older, a new study finds, and don’t crystallize until about age 10.  But the study raises new questions about why the first few years of life, aside from traumatic events, are so forgettable. BrainConnection from PositScience offers this perspective on what’s known as infantile amnesia: “Studies suggest that we're not simply forgetting what happened during our earliest years; far fewer autobiographical memories exist from early childhood than simple forgetting predicts.

My doctor prescribed Vytorin for high cholesterol. While my cholesterol went from over 350 to 190 in five weeks, I ended up having an eight-hour episode of transient global amnesia (TGA). I knew who I was, and I recognized my family and friends, but I didn't know the year. I didn't recognize streets I have driven for many years. I asked my husband the same five questions in the hospital over and over until late in the evening, when my memory returned. I immediately went off Vytorin.

Democrats, including President Obama, repeatedly say that if voters really knew all of the things Congress has done, then the people would be rushing to vote for Democrats. Now, a new poll has confirmed the Democrats' worst fears about social amnesia. According to a Gallup poll released Friday, 37% of Americans said Congress had accomplished less this year than in the last few years while just 23% said it had accomplished more. Even though Congress has passed significant legislation on healthcare, financial reform and economic stimulus, more than a third of the people say lawmakers have done little and slightly more than a third said this Congress has done just about the same as past congresses.

A tough, tasty steak of a book, Justin Fox's "The Myth of the Rational Market" arrived last fall just in time to explain how and why the smartest economists and best-managed institutions on Wall Street nearly detonated a bomb in the world's underpants. At the risk of oversimplifying: The abstract thing we call markets (trading in stocks, bonds, options, securities, etc.) is indeed rational -- predictable, mathematical, knowable. It's the human actors who are irrational, if not downright insane.

SERIES NCIS: The team's investigation into a lieutenant's death is connected to a citywide blackout in this new episode (8 p.m. CBS). 90210: Navid (Michael Steger) decides to confront Adrianna (Jessica Lowndes) about her drug use, and Debbie and Harry (Lori Loughlin, Rob Estes) are surprised when Annie (Shenae Grimes) wants to invite Jasper (Zach Sherman) over for dinner (8 p.m. KTLA). The Biggest Loser: Fashion consultant Tim Gunn ("Project Runway") and hairstylist Tabatha Coffey ("Tabatha's Salon Takeover")

Three weeks ago, when the Nobel committee awarded its literature prize to Romanian writer Herta Muller, it lauded her courageous and unflinching fictional portraits of "daily life in a stagnated dictatorship" in communist Romania. What they did not mention, however, was Muller's ongoing nonfictional critique of the leadership of post-communist Romania. Only days after she won the Nobel, Muller, who now lives in Germany, blasted her homeland for not having broken more completely with its communist past.

Police and hospital officials said Thursday that they have been unable to learn the identity of a neatly attired jogger who walked into a Newport Beach emergency room saying he didn't know who he was or where he lived. "At this point, all we can do is wait to see if somebody identifies him," said Sgt. Steve Shulman, a spokesman for the Newport Beach Police Department.

A man wandered into the Pomona police station this week and said he was "trying to find out who he is," police said. Officers took the man to the Tri-City Mental Health Center, where he was interviewed Monday by a psychologist, said Pomona Police Lt. Joe Romero, and later to the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center for examination by a physician.

George Damaa awoke after a seven-day coma in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 1995, his body shattered for reasons he couldn't remember. The last thing he recalled was driving up Pacific Coast Highway on a warm Saturday in February with the top down on his sports car and his girlfriend, Lisa Bucher, in the passenger seat. They were headed to the former PierView Cafe & Cantina in Malibu, one of Damaa's favorite restaurants. As he lay in the hospital, he learned that his pelvis was broken.

NEW YORK -- One of the Museum of Modern Art's latest film acquisitions isn't an art-house experiment by Andy Warhol or Michelangelo Antonioni. It's the spy-action blockbuster "The Bourne Identity" and its sequels. This week the museum is screening the films and hosting a panel discussion with "Bourne" director-producer Doug Liman and a noted neuroscientist to talk about memory, identity and the mysterious workings of the brain.