Brain

en Bloc

I’d never heard this phrase, en bloc. It sounds like a punk’s night out to hear the Clash in Liverpool. Here’s how I cam across the term:

“Even during a blackout, a drinker’s short-term memory is generally fine. She can carry on a conversation, though, like a human goldfish, she may quickly forget things and repeat herself. It’s episodic memory where alcohol gums up the works. These are the memories of events—what happened, but also where, when, and with whom. Alcohol impairs the encoding of these contextual memories, which happens in the hippocampus. “Your brain is sending information to the hippocampus, and it falls into a void,” White says. “The hippocampus doesn’t tie it together, or it skips a little bit.” After a fragmentary blackout, being reminded of some of that context might help someone remember what happened. After an en bloc blackout, one will need to rely on the memory of others.” (Julie Beck, via the Atlantic)

References & Reads:

• Julie Beck, Anatomy of a Blackout
• Sarah Hepola, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget (Amazon)
• En Bloc
  • Hartzler & Fromme, (2003). Fragmentary and en bloc blackouts: similarity and distinction among episodes of alcohol-induced memory loss.
  • GoAskAlice
  • National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.

Image source my own.

XO,

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