Brain Surgery Patient Trapped in a Mental Time Warp 338
diverge_s writes "BrainConnection has an interesting article about a man who lives life straight out of the movie Memento. FTA: "When twenty-seven year old Henry M. entered the hospital in 1953 for radical brain surgery that was supposed to cure his epilepsy, he was hopeful that the procedure would change his life for the better. Instead, it trapped him in a mental time warp where TV is always a new invention and Truman is forever president. The removal of large sections of his temporal lobes left Henry unable to form any new personal memories, but his tragic loss revolutionized the field of psychology and made "H.M." the most-studied individual in the history of brain research.""
Clive Wearing... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A bit more about him (Score:5, Informative)
I've read about this before (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror, mirror (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunately, the doctor realized his error quickly, took away the mirror, and said, 'It's complicated, but I can explain it to you. But first, come on over to the window'. After looking out the window for a bit, HM forgot why he was there, or even that he was upset.
Re:Mirror, mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Errr, did you read the article? He doesn't appear too bothered by the mirror thing:
"Mainly, though, he leads a life of quiet confusion, never knowing exactly how old he is (he guesses maybe thirty and is always surprised by his reflection in the mirror) and reliving his grief over the death of his mother every time he hears about it."
Actually he seems quite upbeat about the whole thing, the highlight of the article for me (as it looks like you probably missed it) has to be the following:
When walking down the corridor at M.I.T. with Henry, Dr. Suzanne Corkin made the usual kind of small talk. "Do you know where you are, Henry?"
Henry grinned. "Why, of course. I'm at M.I.T.!"
Dr. Corkin was a bit surprised. "How do you know that?"
Henry laughed. He pointed to a student nearby with a large M.I.T. emblazoned on his sweatshirt. "Got ya that time!" Henry said.
Haydn.
Re:Is there a name for what *I* have? (Score:5, Informative)
Curable/copable for most people using mnemonics. I can do a few people at a time now, by imagining them in a hug with someone else with the same name. I hold the pictures better than the words. Still can't cope in a new contract when I have ten people to remember: I won't be able to hold any of them.
Only works for first names, and only names I've come across before, so not a perfect solution!
Justin.
Re:Experimental brain surgery (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A bit more about him (Score:5, Informative)
Re:On the bright side... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to really dig into his case I'd suggest the following review paper that summarizes alot of the interesting things we've learned because of him much better than TFA does IMO:
http://homepage.mac.com/sanagnos/corkin2002.pdf/ [mac.com]
sort of common (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Experimental brain surgery (Score:2, Informative)
Drugs used to treat schizoprenia are dangerous with severe, often irreversible, side effects. Tardive dyskinesia is a symptom of permanent neurological damage caused by long term use of neuroleptics. The benzodiazepines (used to treat anxiety disorders, among other things) are addictive with a pronounced, physically dangerous withdrawl syndrome (it can actually precipitate delerium tremens). Even the relatively benign SSRI/SNRIs are starting to show unanticipated side effects that are somewhat limiting their use.
As the previous poster said, these drugs are far better than psychosurgery, but they are far from perfect. In any event, they treat the symptoms rather than the (unknown) causes of mental illness. Hopefully that will change someday.
Re:Is there a name for what *I* have? (Score:3, Informative)
Shit, I just thought: how do you do, shall we say, relief?
Don't answer that, OK ;-)
Justin.
Re:Shock Therapy (Score:5, Informative)
Your computer (like your body) may run fine for a while, it may even go to sleep and wake back up and go on running normally. Eventually you may come across some quirky behaviour (mental disorder) that you can't fix with patches (surgery?) or subsystem resets (drugs?). When all else fails, you reboot your computer (ECT) and everything goes back to normal.
ECT induces a seizure [wikipedia.org], and your brain sort of shuts down and resets itself. The mechanisms aren't entirely understood, but it works well to treat severe depression.
Electro-Shock Therapy has been portrayed as horrible torture (which it was used for) and has been tried for the treatment of many mental conditions (like schizophrenia and personality disorders) where it does little to no good. It definitely has a shady past, but the modern reality is much more benign and therapeutic.