Kane
September 19th, 2014
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I had to brush up on this since I learned about this a while ago. I might be incorrect on some of what I say so anyone is welcome to correct me. :)
The person may be able to recall their memory over time with retrograde amnesia. It can be over a period of a couple days or may even take years. The severity really depends on the individuals' case. I don't believe that recalling is similar to the way it is normally portrayed in media with this sudden headaches or head pain. It usually comes in just pieces and can sometimes just randomly show up in memory when recalling the event. That doesn't mean that someone can't have a negative reaction when the memory comes back though. It just seems more likely that a person has a negative reaction because of the memory or injury and not because of the recall itself.
However, some memory might never be recalled, especially the memories closest to whatever event caused the amnesia. It's usually easier for older memories to be recalled as the neural pathways for older memories are stronger because of recall and reconsolidation over the years. Newer memories don't have that, and the memories closest to the event possibly could have never even been consolidated into longterm memory. This doesn't mean that huge chunks of memory are necessarily gone. It can be something like a span of a few minutes that are just black holes in the memory that can't ever be recalled.
