Lacuna - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Generally, a lacuna is a gap. The term may refer to:

• Lacuna (manuscripts), a missing • Petrovsky lacuna, a region where the

section of text
• Lacuna (music), an extended silence
in a piece of music
• Lacuna (linguistics), a lexical gap in a
language
• Lacuna (law) is the lack of law or of a
legal source addressing a situation
• Lacuna (histology), a small space
containing an osteocyte in bone or
chondrocyte in cartilage
• Lacuna model, a tool for unlocking
culture differences or missing "gaps"
in text
• Lacunar amnesia, in psychology,
amnesia about a specific event
• Lacuna (geology), a large gap in the
stratigraphic record, sometimes called
a hiatus or unconformity
• .
fundamental solution of a differential
equation vanishes.
Lacuna may also refer to:
• Lacuna Coil, an Italian hard
rock/metal band
• Lacuna, Inc., a fictional company in
the film Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind
• a character in the Xanth series of
books by Piers Anthony
• Lacuna Part I, an indie role-playing
game by Jared Sorenson.
• Lacuna (comics) a fictional Marvel
Comics superhero and associate of X-
Statix

Lacunar amnesia
Lacunar amnesia is the loss of memory about one specific event. It is a type of amnesia that
leaves a lacuna (a gap) in the record of memory.

This type of amnesia is used as a plot element in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, in which a company (appropriately named Lacuna) offers the service of having a
specific person erased from someone's memories by removing all memories of them.

According to Steven Johnson, (the author of Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the
Neuroscience of Everyday Life):

"Scientists believe memories are captured and stored by two separate parts of the brain, the hippocampus, the normal seat of
memory, and the amygdala, one of the brain's emotional centers. People who, due to hippocampus damage, are incapable of
forming long-term memories can still form subconscious memories of traumatic events if their amygdala is intact. Someone
suffering from the Memento condition would likely have a feeling of general unease encountering a person who had harmed
them in the past, though they wouldn't be able to put their finger on why. As the plot of Eternal Sunshine correctly suggests,
the brain is designed to preserve emotionally strong memories. Even amnesiacs, under the right circumstances, can remember
their past feelings."

Furthermore, according to Alex Chadwick speaking on NPR: Analysis: Concepts in memory-

loss movies not so far-fetched, NPR Special; 3/23/2004;

"Some scientists now believe that memories effectively get rewritten every time they're activated. Studies on rats suggest that
if you block a crucial chemical process during the execution of a learned behavior - pushing a lever to get food, for instance -
the learned behavior disappears. The rat stops remembering. Theoretically, if you could block that chemical reaction in a
human brain while triggering a specific memory, you could make a targeted erasure. Think of a dreadful fight with your
girlfriend while blocking that chemical reaction, and zap! The memory's gone."