The Unforgettable Amnesiac 120
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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More importantly, what are we doing here?
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Re:What was I going to post? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
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Does make me wonder about our "gut feel" stuff and how accurate it is, and how it might be subverted. A lot of our decisions are not based on the "declarative" stuff.
Whether you choose chocolate or vanilla, fried chicken or something else. You might make up the reasons later (justify your decisions), but maybe your gut has already chosen. Of course if you see something gross, your gut gets informed about it
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Without disputing the Doctor's main conclusion, which goes well with the current mainstream understanding in psychology, and without having read the primary source of his study (the google sholar link only showed a summarized secondary source), I'd like to dispute the Doctor's particular line of thinking in this example (at least, the reasoning that I could glean from the secondary source, perhaps his actua
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Of course the higher the number of samples, the larger the number of unpleasant incidents and the more potential for long term harm.
Perhaps you could try it for pleasant incidents to see if it works for that first.
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Gut feel matters (Score:2)
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You forgot to mispell it in the link ;)
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Semantic and episodic memory are both subtypes of declarative memory. The ToH example showed that semantic memory (viz. declarative memory) is distinct from procedural memory (what Milner called motor memory).
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Actually, it's the difference between long-term declarative memory (which is subserved by the hippocampus, which HM had surgically resected, and the medial temporal lobe) and procedural memory (which includes cognitive skills, such as solving the TOH problem, and motor skills, and is subserved by a different network of brain structures that includes the basal ganglia).
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Re:What was I going to post? (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting case (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting case (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting case (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting case (Score:5, Funny)
...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!
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When she got back, the cake was already half-gone. Clive, seeing the cake, assumed it was for him, and so ate a slice - then, seeing the cake, assumed it was for him, and so ate a slice - then, seeing the cake...
Also, the fits and jerks mentioned in the wikipedia article don't happen so
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There's also an episode of NPR's RadioLab on memory [wnyc.org], with a segment on Clive [wnyc.org]. (Audio file [wnyc.org].)
I highly recommend listening to it (and other episodes of RadioLab), it's a great show.
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There's also an episode of NPR's RadioLab on memory [wnyc.org], with a segment on Clive [wnyc.org]. (Audio file [wnyc.org].)
I highly recommend listening to it (and other episodes of RadioLab), it's a great show.
Already heard it ;) But yes, RadioLab is an excellent podcast. Along with AstronomyCast, one of a very few I listen to regularly.
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
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...and 50 First Dates.
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...and Jaws
Re:I believe this was part of the inspiration (Score:5, Funny)
Just when you thought it was safe to form new memories...
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You mean imagine if you could actually get goatse out of your head after you saw it.
That must've been the inspiration for the movie 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'.
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Offered his brain for further scientific study (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Offered his brain for further scientific study (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Well, go over the whole thing with him and get his consent. Have him sign a paper.
Leave the room, get a new clipboard, repeat. 10/10 times and I'd say you have consent.
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So sub consciously he knew he was helping. So when asked to consent to giving his brain up, it was probably that sub conscious that gave him the feeling to say "Yes, I'll do that."
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You only have to get his signature on some paper ONCE ;)
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Evil Mad Nazi Scientists?
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Generally speaking,
consent to treatment isn't predicated on memory per se. Here is the link to a PDF file written by one the noted experts on competence to consent to treatment:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/357/18/1834.pdf [nejm.org]
The Grisso and Applebaum book "Assessing Competence to Consent for Treatment: A Guide for Physicians and Other Health Care Providers" is the defacto book for health care providers to understand and assess competence as it relates to medical decision making.
hth,
jeff
The problem of free will (Score:2)
Given the severity of his case, he certainly had some sort of legal guardian who could give consent by proxy.
What truly worries me are the intermediate cases. Where is the exact point at which you can be assumed to have free will or not? Mental impairment is relative and depends on
thanks for the memories (Score:5, Funny)
So when we see this article duped next week, now we'll know why?
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Re:thanks for the memories (Score:5, Funny)
Authored???? (Score:2, Funny)
Verbing weirds language :-(
Re:Authored???? (Score:5, Informative)
Author has been a verb (and a noun) since at least 1596 (oed) [oed.com].
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It may have been, but it 'had been out of use for a long period, [and] has been rejuvenated in recent years' [thefreedictionary.com] and with a subtly different meaning, too.
So I still claim that, in modern use at least, it's an example of verbing.
Re:Authored???? (Score:5, Informative)
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I've noticed that (at least in my generation, I'm 19 (*)) people don't think the generation before them knew many of the stuff they knew. Like swear words, expressions, jokes and other similar things. Maybe a generation is like a new day in the life of a species and that species doesn't remember the previous 'day' properly. You don't remember everything you did yesterday and feel weird when something similar happens again.
(*) notice how I have the same problem, did people
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Most parents acted so prudish we really belived they only had sex to procreate. My HS was co-ed but sexually segregated, seperate play areas, seperate rows in clas, etc. Being an Aussie slang is a national hobby, it's not that hard to work out new slang when your own kids come out with it.
BTW: Your species idea is a good one, Richard Dawkins compares what he calls memes [wikipedia.org] in a po
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One thing your generation doesn't realize is that every generation is like this. :-)
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You've really never heard the word "authored" before? It's not that uncommon.
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> It's not that uncommon.
Neither is herpes.
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Re:Authored???? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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No; it fell out of common use and returned with a slightly different meaning [thefreedictionary.com].
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I posted this exact quote on my tumblelog back in 2007, but I still laugh out loud every time I read it for the first time.
Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Looking down from Heaven, Gustav Molaison was surprised to learn people remembered him.
H.M. Is the Father of my Field (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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When I see slashdot stories like this, I'm always hopeful that someone will post links to relevant and insightful research information that I might use to glean more insight into how intelligence works. I do realize that this last sentence might not have been overly intelligent, but I do have a notion that the human brain (in fact all mammalian brains) function as several highly integrated processors might. I've tried finding discussions and research along these lines, but it would seem non-existent or not
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FSM Google Search [google.com]
Not the first results surely?
Explain.
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mea culpa - Yes, I did mean finite state machine. Though a complex cascade of flying spaghetti monsters has a certain ring to it.
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Sounds like a hit Broadway musical to me!
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I once wrote such a story - On humans, personalities, software and hardware [railean.net]. Note that I am not qualified to write this kind of material, so this text is different from what you expect to find.
I described the human as a layered system with interfaces between its subsystems and the surrounding world.
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Nice story. I replied to you in the comments of your story. Thanks
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Funny I always thought there was more then 1 type of memory, guess I was right. Although
it isn't always needed, triggering a traumatic episode during a course you need to remember, makes things easier to remember. Shock memory therapy I call it....when you remember that mugging like it was yesterday better then what you DID eat yesterday.
Link to another interesting article (Score:5, Informative)
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.
H.M. RIP (Score:1)
One of the best ways to explore motor control (Score:3, Interesting)
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This is interesting. I will commonly try to think about tough programming problems just before going to sleep, and generally find that in the morning the solution is apparent. I've also used to notice I did better when studying at night, knowing information I was shaky on well in the morning. I had no idea it also worked with motor skills.
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I have a defect in this area - the more I do something the worse I get. I am unable to memorize rote motions.
Although nominally athletic, I have only been able to have an somewhat repeatable motion in athletics (golf, shooting a basketball) by letting my arms follow the path that my stiff joints want to go.
Light practice is helpful for my basketball shot, but my best golf days were always after months of not playing.
As an 17 year old employee of a grocery store, I was unable to comp
It doesn't matter. (Score:2, Informative)
This is obvious if you have experienced it (Score:3, Interesting)
H.M. on tape (Score:1)
Here is an interview with Suzanne Corkin [mit.edu] that includes taped dialog with H.M. featured at NPR.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7584970 [npr.org]
He sounds like a very nice person. Dr. Corkin is with the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
3 Case Studies (Score:3, Informative)
Due to an accidental needle stick while working in surgery, I contracted hepatitis C. I didn't know it until my liver almost stopped working. The way I found out about it was being told that I'd totaled my van the day before as well as having two other accidents. In all 3 cases the police came and didn't detect any evidence of intoxication. And I wasn't intoxicated. But I was anesthetized. I was taking prescribed amounts of Ativan and Benadryl. My liver wasn't clearing them out of me, and they built up to a level that made me a fully functional zombie. I've since had another episode of amnesia caused by medication, and my liver is running at 100% now. I took Ambien, and ended up 2 days later finding out that I'd spent the previous 2 days eating all 30 days worth of the stuff, forgetting that I'd taken any previously. The first dose caused it. And it's even listed as a side effect: "can cause sleep walking with no memory of the event". It's not sleepwalking, but it's a good description anyway.
The most distressing case of amnesia I ever saw was an educational movie about a man who had been an orchestra conductor, had been in an accident, and due to the whiplash effect of the brain inside the skull, sustained brain damage in the hippocampus, where memories are formed. The best (or worst, you decide) example of what a person goes through was shown in the movie as he wrote in his journal "I have just woken up. I have only just this moment become aware." Over, and over, and over, day after day.
I once visited a man in a nursing home who had amnesia. He was due to all the thiamine (vitamin B-1) being washed out of his hippocampus by alcohol. Commonly called "wet brain", its clinical name is Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. It appears almost exactly like Alzheimer's. You can tell the difference by giving the person a list of words to remember. Later, ask them to recall the words, and neither can. But give the first two letters of the words, and the W-K patients can recall the words. They have implicit memory -- they can remember, but they don't know they remember. The Alzheimer's patients can't recall even having been given the list if shown the complete list later. As I spoke with this man, he frequently interrupted and asked me my name, what I do for a living, and similar questions, and asked these same questions again every couple minutes. He never once caught on to the fact that I was his son, and I didn't bother to tell him, because he wouldn't have remembered it just a few minutes later.
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Just FYI, the conductor is Clive Wearing, and it was caused by Herpes Encephalitis rather than whiplash.
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Just FYI, the conductor is Clive Wearing, and it was caused by Herpes Encephalitis rather than whiplash.
Thanks for the correction. The memory of the movie is 20 years old. It was probably another case in that same movie that was whiplash.
Freaks me out (Score:2)