george,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. Glad to hear you made it through a head on collision.

I doubt you will recover the 10 seconds before the collision and probably not those 8 minutes after. The 10 seconds was still 'in process' of being transferred from immediate memory to short term memory. Immediate memory is very volatile. If the neurochemical process is interrupted, the information never made it from the immediate (very volatile) to the short term (longer lasting) to be available for consolidation into long term memory during your next sleep cycle.

Think of it as spilling water on letters painted with latex paint before it has cured. The smudging and blurring will never be undone.

When someone relates what happened, it can help the smudged letters be understood making it so it appears that you remember the time period. Think of it as the comments from others was retracing over the smudged letters in the victims mind so they are easily read.

Memory is more volatile during times of stress. The most intense part of the event can be written in stone while lesser events are never transferred to longer term memory. It is like the intense event overshadows the lesser parts of the event.

I have long believed that the flashing lights of emergency vehicles are actually counter-productive to getting good and valid information from witnesses. The visual processing path in the brain uses a vast amount of the brain's processing capability.