Source amnesia is the loss of the ability to remember where, when, and how previously learned information was acquired, while retaining factual knowledge of it. This branch of amnesia is associated with a deficit in an individual's declarative memory. The failure to associate knowledge with the context in which it was acquired is likely the result of a disconnect between semantic and episodic memory, where a person retains semantic knowledge but lacks episodic knowledge. Memory images reflect the encoding processes that occur during the acquisition of different information and events, which produce mental representations that the brain perceives differently from each other, causing difficulty in retrieving this information when placed in a different context from the one in which it was previously encoded. Source monitoring involves a systematic process of slow, deliberate thinking about the original place where the individual learned the information. Source amnesia is not a rare phenomenon, as almost everyone experiences it on a daily basis, because as far as we know, remembering the information itself is more important than remembering its source. However, there are extreme examples of source amnesia due to several different factors. People with damage to the frontal lobe of the brain suffer from impaired memory for temporal context, where they find Difficulties with temporal control such as: arranging events in chronological order, and they cannot trace knowledge back to its appropriate source. Individuals with frontal lobe damage can remember information but they misrepresent it to the source, and this appears within 5 minutes of learning something. It is clear from this that this damage causes a separation between semantic and episodic memory. Therefore, they cannot relate the context in which they acquired the information to the information itself. Older people have been found to be more susceptible to source amnesia than younger people. Experiments have shown that they remember less information in tasks that rely on recognition and retrieval of information, and they cannot describe the source of their information. This is due to the damage of neurons with age, which occurs primarily in the frontal lobe. Alzheimer's disease is known to be associated with dysfunction in the frontal lobe, which makes it a cause of source amnesia. A study on laboratory cases indicated that Alzheimer's patients have a weakness in source detection. This is due to the inability to monitor reality. Reality detection is the process of distinguishing between the source of information, whether it is internal or external, and depends on judging the characteristics The quality of information to determine whether the information is real or imaginary, and studies have shown that the defect occurs in this process, which makes Alzheimer's disease associated with forgetting the source. Schizophrenia associated with weakness in episodic memory is often characterized by confusion of internal stimuli and real events, and the schizophrenic patient usually fails to monitor and remember the sources of information. This is a constant feature of this disease, as there is an experiment that proved that over two years the rate of errors in schizophrenic patients in remembering the source did not change despite fluctuations in the patient's medication and symptoms. Examinations and neuroimaging have found that the areas responsible for source memory are less active in schizophrenic patients than others. The reason for the weakness of source memory in schizophrenia patients is due to the defect in forming the necessary connections to remember the source, and the defect in monitoring reality, and this is considered a contributing factor to the occurrence of hallucinations that characterize schizophrenia. A study also found that the schizophrenic patient is not only slow in tasks that include monitoring the source, but he is also inaccurate, as he cannot differentiate between information derived internally and externally, so the patient tends to attribute events generated within him, such as: hallucinations and delusions, to an external source, so he does not He can realize that he is the owner of the idea, but attributes it to an external source. All of the above makes the weaning patient act as a source amnesiac patient, attributing knowledge, ideas and beliefs to other wrong things. Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by poor episodic memory for events, and these people are exposed to distortions in memory, the construction of false memory, and the unintended integration of information that was not present in the original memory. These people not only have poor episodic memory for events, but also have difficulty identifying sources of emotional information, and generally neutral, and have a lower ability than others to retrieve sources of information due to weakness in the process of encoding information, which creates weak relationships between elements and their context. Depression is associated with all memories in general, as a person suffering from depression finds it difficult to remember sources of memories compared to other normal people, and tends to remember negative memories, and this is likely due to the activity of the amygdala during the encoding of emotional information, especially negative ones. In general, there is a relationship between the arousal of emotional memories and the recollection of their sources, and there is some evidence that enhancing the processing of negative memories is due to the lack of sources of memories, which makes them suffer from amnesia. Source. Hypnosis is a cause of source amnesia, where a person is hypnotized and taught some information and experiences, and when tested later, he is found to answer correctly, but he does not remember how or where he learned it. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test is widely used in the clinical field to test for cognitive deficits such as frontal lobe disorder associated with source amnesia. Procedure: The visuospatial component of this test consists of two sets of 12 identical cards, and the symbols on them differ in color, quantity, and shape. Participants are then given a pile of additional cards, and asked to match each card to its counterpart in the previous set. Results: People with frontal lobe dysfunction and source amnesia will find it very difficult to complete this task successfully. The verbal fluency test is used to evaluate patients with frontal lobe dysfunction. Procedure: The participant is asked to say words that begin with a specific letter, and is given three attempts, each attempt asking him to say words that begin with a specific letter in one minute, and he tries to answer with the largest number Possible words that start with the required letter in the specified time. Results: This test can assess the extent of damage to the prefrontal lobe that is associated with source amnesia. Patients with frontal lobe disorder have difficulty placing verbal elements in the correct sequential order and monitoring personal behaviors, which are required for the ability to retrieve a source memory. Research has found that the Stroop effect has many consequences related to age and its effect on memory. The test measures the skills of speed and accuracy of naming colors and colored words, to determine the effect of aging on the brain, which is believed to be one of the causes of source amnesia. Procedure: The participant is asked to read a set of related words and to name some colors. During the first component of the test, which is the task of reading a set of words, he is asked to read the names of colors written in white, or other colors as quickly as possible and is required to read the word itself “green” and not the color of the font printed in it. Then he is asked to name the colors of a set of colored blocks. The second component of the test consists of the task of naming the colors of a set of words written in certain colors but whose meaning indicates another color and the participant is required to The color of the printed font is called the word “green” and not the meaning of the word. Results: The color-naming task is slower than the word-reading task in healthy individuals, while patients with prefrontal damage will name the color and ignore the word, even if they are required to read the word. With reference to age, it has been found that advancing age affects the ability to complete the test correctly, especially in the sixth and seventh decades of life. The Stroop Color Naming Test measures the degree of a person’s source amnesia. The severity of the damage to the prefrontal lobe is directly related to the speed at which the individual completes the Stroop Color Naming Task; the more damage to this area of the brain, the slower the test is completed. Decisions made during this old-new recognition test are based on knowledge rather than on in-depth examination of the contents of memories. During this test, patients with source amnesia experience a phantom knowledge of linguistic words such as candy and sugar, and claim more than once to have seen words that are not on the test. Procedure: The participant is presented with a list of words to study, and at different intervals is evaluated whether he or she can remember which words were on the list and which were not. The participant passes the test if he can distinguish between the original and the deceptive words. This experiment can be conducted with the same participant many times at different time intervals. Results: Participants show loss of source memory with the deceptive words but not with the new words in the list, which means that their knowledge is mixed between words that are semantically similar to the words they studied in the original list. Research has shown that poor encoding of information in memory may be responsible for source amnesia, as it becomes difficult for a person to retrieve the source of a particular memory in the future if it was not encoded correctly before, which makes it difficult to create a treatment for source amnesia, as the information has not been properly integrated in the brain. Some preventive strategies have been studied that target a group of people at risk, and teach them how to prevent loss of memory context, and how to improve source memory among the general population. Source amnesia is common among people with certain brain disorders, but it can also affect healthy individuals. It occurs when the human brain encodes only the content of the information without integrating it with the specific context of the information in memory, and research indicates that information retrieval Context-specificity is best in situations that involve emotional stimuli and words, suggesting that source memory may benefit from thinking about the emotions associated with the information content, which helps to better encode it in memory. This is related to theories of evoked memory. Children are better able to correctly identify the source of information if they are taught to think about the relationship between the speaker and the information they are sharing. Children think about sensory and emotional relationships to the speaker. However, children who are better at encoding sources are less able to control this when retrieving linguistic information, or without a source. This suggests that there may be a trade-off in their brains when it comes to different types of memories because they are only able to attend to a certain amount of information at a time. Adults can suffer from memory impairments due to the natural aging process, as a result of frontal lobe atrophy or other age-related changes. Prevention of source amnesia in these individuals includes memory training programs that aim to increase the thickness of the cerebral cortex, and research suggests that the brains of older adults still have the ability to adapt and respond. A study in which older adults underwent an eight-week memory training program showed significant improvements, especially in source memory, and MRI scans showed increased thickness of the cerebral cortex. Another way older adults can prevent source amnesia is to think about the relationship between the content and context of the memory, which helps them pay attention to the source when encoding information. Eyewitness testimony is an integral part of criminal court, as judges and juries rely on it to determine a verdict, but studies have shown that source amnesia interferes with testimony because any incorrect information after the event leads to distorted memories and source confusion. Post-event information comes from questioning, statements made by the media, and fellow witnesses, which leads to incorrect details being encoded in Their memory. They claim to see things that only happened in their imagination, which has serious legal implications, leading to false convictions, so the interrogation process must be carried out carefully. It is a phenomenon in which a person learns information under the influence of hypnosis, and when asked about it after regaining consciousness, they do not remember when or how they learned it. Studies have indicated that they are unable to remember anything that happened during the period of hypnosis, and when asked about how they know the answers to questions, they indicate their inability to know how they learned it. This phenomenon is similar to flashbacks, or the tip of the tongue phenomenon. It is the failure to be able to retrieve the correct source of information, but rather attribute it to incorrect sources, due to an error in the decision-making process that confuses the origin of the information. It occurs when a person is certain that a word, idea, or a particular song is their original idea, but it is someone else's idea in the first place, which leads to plagiarism. This occurs in the music industry, and includes copyright infringement of songs, as well as in scientific research ideas. It is a doubt in the person's own memory that includes the content and context of events, and this occurs due to problems in encoding and integration Memories. These people rely on external sources of information, which affects the testimony of eyewitnesses; because these people are highly susceptible to suggestion and influence. This syndrome is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as it was found that repeated confirmation of rituals leads to a lack of confidence in memory.