The Unforgettable Amnesiac

jamie found an account in the NYTimes of the life and death of one of the most important figures in modern neuroscience, Henry Gustav Molaison — a man who could not form memories. Molaison became an amnesiac after a brain operation in 1953. Known worldwide as H.M., Molaison was studied intensively for 55 years. Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist from Montreal, was the first researcher to visit Molaison. In 1962 she authored a landmark study demonstrating that a part of Molaison's memory was fully intact. "The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. ... Another system, commonly known as motor learning, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems. This explains why people can jump on a bike after years away from one and take the thing for a ride, or why they can pick up a guitar that they have not played in years and still remember how to strum it. Soon 'everyone wanted an amnesic to study,' Dr. Milner said..."

What was I going to post?

I forgot.

Re:What was I going to post?

See? Your motor-memory posting skills are obviously intact!

Re:What was I going to post?

Let me fix this thread:

New Topic:

H.M. learned how to solve the Tower of Hanoi (documented by decreasing time to solve) but denied ever seeing the Tower of Hanoi before.

This is an example of some evidence that distinguished between semantic(facts) and episodic(event) memory systems.

Re:What was I going to post?

Here is another:

A scientist would tape a tack onto his palm. Then he would walk into the room with H.M. He would first ask him, "Have you ever seen me before?" H.M. would deny ever seeing the scientist before. Then they would shake hands. OUCH!! The scientist leaves the room, and comes back in two minutes. Rinse. Repeat. H.M. over and over would get poked by the tack.

Then one day: Scientist asks, "Have you ever seen me before?" H.M. denies seeing the scientist before. The scientist offers a hand to shake. H.M. refuses to shake hands. When asked why, H.M. responds,

"Sometimes scientists tape tacks on their palms."

Interesting case

I can't remember if it was this case or another, but in a cognitive psych class I had, we watched a video about a man who couldn't form new long-term memories. His own wife would walk into a room once, then a second time a few minutes later, and he'd greet her as if he hadn't seen her in years. The most disturbing part was the notebooks he kept. He would write, "Now I'm awake!" And "Now I'm *really* awake." He kept being on the verge of being able to remember his situation, but then losing it.

Re:Interesting case

I think the guy you mean is Clive Wearing. Whenever showed his earlier writings, he denied being responsible for them. Over time his caretakers learned to always speak to him in terms of the immediate present, and to never refer to their past time together.

Re:Interesting case

You're thinking of Clive Wearing [wikipedia.org] - pretty much the most severe case of amnesia ever recorded. His wife has written a book [amazon.com] about her experiences in dealing with it. It's really quite an interesting insight into the way memory functions; for example, he will still hoot with glee whenever his wife enters the room, believing he has not seen her in years. However, even though his illness happened over 30 years ago and his wife has of course visibly aged, he's not surprised by her current appearance.

Re:Interesting case

...and his wife has of course visibly aged, he's not surprised by her current appearance.

Well of course not, he hasn't seen her in years!

Re:

There was this one guy a few years ago who, whenever he bumped his head (not a big bump, either), he'd forget what he was doing.

He sat in a van for 2 days in the middle of winter, engine idling, trying to figure out what to do next. The Montreal police finally found him and called his wife.

Memory is a strange beast at times.

I believe this was part of the inspiration

for the movie "Memento".

Re:

...and 50 First Dates.

Re:I believe this was part of the inspiration

Just when you thought it was safe to form new memories...

Offered his brain for further scientific study

I am sure that this man's misfortune has provided the rest of us a great opportunity to benefit form the research that has been performed on him to date, and possible further gains with his brian now (or soon to be) directly accessible to scientific research.

But I do wonder how a man who was unable to create new memories (or at least had great difficulty in this area) would be able to take in what is going on around him and give informed consent to offer his brain for further study after his passing.

Re:

I'm not familiar with the details of this case, but most likely he was declared unable to manage his own affairs due to his mental status, in which case a caregiver (usually a family member) would be assigned to make decisions for him. It may not be ideal, but it's probably the best way we have of dealing with informed consent in cases of patients who are unable to give fully informed consent.

Re:Offered his brain for further scientific study

This may well be, but the NPR piece on this seem to make a big point about HM himself wanting his brain to be available for further research.

In my mind this would seem to imply that he had an understanding that he was an unusual case. The story seemed to imply that with great effort he was able to remember items beyond the 30 seconds of short term memory, but given the complexities of this case I wonder how much he himself understood of it as his life drew to a close.

Re:Offered his brain for further scientific study

Yes, H.M. was aware of his condition, which is typical of temporal lobe amnesia. (Patients who also have damage to the frontal lobes as in Korsakoff's syndrome [wikipedia.org] are often unaware of their memory deficit, a form of anosognosia [wikipedia.org].)

One of the quotes from H.M. I always read in my neuroscience classes:

"Right now I'm wondering, have I done or said anything amiss? You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before? That's what worries me. It's like waking from a dream; I just don't remember.... Every day is alone in itself, whatever enjoyment I've had, whatever sorrow."

RIP, Henry.

Re:

If he is unable or unfit to give consent, then his legal guardian would have been. How else do you think that research on children, or with people with Autism is able to get conducted?

thanks for the memories

So when we see this article duped next week, now we'll know why?

Re:thanks for the memories

Where were you last week? This is the dupe.

Hmm...

Looking down from Heaven, Gustav Molaison was surprised to learn people remembered him.

H.M. Is the Father of my Field

Seriously. As far as the summary: Decalarative vs Implicit memory systems. Yes. But also: Semantic vs. Episodic Memory Systems.

The most important contribution of H.M. is helping pin down the fact that for Episodic memory, the Medial Temporal Lobe is critical. From there a whole lot of work has been done pinning down the sub regions of the Medial Temporal Lobe with memory function:

The hippocampus: CA1 CA3 and dentate gyrus, is important for associating memory traces with contexts. The surrounding cortices important for making global assessments of the familiarity of a memory trace. Look up Professor Andrew Yonelinas at his UC Davis website for some current reviews of Recollection and Familiarity processes.

Link to another interesting article

I find this stuff fascinating. Oliver Sacks [wikipedia.org], who has researched this condition, wrote a lengthy article about Clive Wearing [newyorker.com], who is another person with the same condition as H.M.

Re:Authored????

Author has been a verb (and a noun) since at least 1596 (oed) [oed.com].

Re:Authored????

Give it up, I'm 50 and have known about it since high school.

Re:Authored????

It's been a valid use of the word for 400 years.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll