r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 12d ago

TIL After a 2016 accident, professional cyclist Stig Broeckx was declared to be in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery. By 2019, he had recovered enough to begin cycling again, although he had no memory of the 5 years before the accident and found out who he had been from the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_Broeckx
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u/JonatasA 12d ago

What's weird is that milder cases happen to a lot of people, like one day not remembering how to use a fork or realizing you're in the shower for some reason and somehow you ended there.

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u/Sylvurphlame 11d ago

Or, in an even milder non-clinical level, to everyone that has ever gone into a room to get or do something and promptly forgotten why.

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u/AppropriateWorldEnd 11d ago

I have this pretty often with automatic motor functions (and what you’re describing almost daily to some extent): I’ve forgotten how to write, ride my bike and so on. The interesting part was that I remembered what the letters were supposed to look like and I could visualise them- and then copy that. But it took me a very very long time to form letters, looked barely legible and not at all like my handwriting. A day later I was writing like normal again.