Many of us have a question in their mind - "Why a person doesn't forget his language even after the memory loss?"
The answer is very simple, and I think you all should know it. When our memory is lost, all the information in our brain is not damaged at all. Injury to any one part or any other cause causes loss of memory, just only that part is damaged.
The question may also arise as to why we do not forget to walk after losing our memory! When you learn to walk or talk, the skill is not "stored" in memory.
There are, in fact, many "systems" involved in producing speech, memory processing, walking (motoric control), etc. Some systems are spread out across different areas of the brain; some are very localized. Some are highly specialized; some are more general. If you receive some damage to your brain, it will only affect that particular "system" located at that spot. Not the general skill - such as memory or speech.
But one system may impact the other. Memory, knowledge, and skill are pretty intertwined in the brain. Let's say you suffer damage to the motor area of the brain that gives you the motor control over the tongue that is used to produce speech. You would think this would only affect your speaking skills; the memory should be fine, right? In fact, the region that produces speech is also present in-memory processing. Words are remembered (among other things) as to how they are produced (motorically). So if your motor center is gone, a part of your memory will be affected as well.
So when you "lose your memory," you probably don't lose all "systems" involved in-memory processing. You probably lost one out of a bunch of "systems." Maybe you lost the "system" of storing new memories, or short-term memory or face recognition, etc.
There are lots of bizarre examples of people with different brain damages that have the most remarkable effects. E.g., there are examples of people who lost their ability to speak in their native tongue but was still able to speak in their second language.
Colen Gerber, a Parkinson's Researcher, said that -
There are two different types of memory, declarative (implicit) and procedural (explicit) [1]. Within declarative memory, there are two subcategories, semantic and episodic. Semantic memory consists of facts that are independent of context (for example, 2 + 2 = 4), and episodic memory deals with information related to a certain context like time or place (for example, what cake you had on your 16th birthday). Procedural memory deals with things along the lines of motor learning (for example, learning how to walk).
These systems are different from each other, and when someone has amnesia from head trauma, they will generally only lose one of the types of memory. The case you are referring to would mean that they lost their episodic memory. Since the systems are separate and only one was damaged, it is possible for someone to not know their name but to remember how to talk and know what the capital of California is. It is also possible to lose your semantic memory while keeping your episodic memory intact. This would result in losing the ability to recall facts and even simple words but still being able to recall who you are and different events from your life [2].
So it's pretty clear why we don't forget our language and other daily works though our memory has lost.
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