The Man Who Forgot Everything

This part made me sad

“My interest in Henry had always been primarily intellectual; how else would I explain why I had stood on a chair in the basement of Mass. General, ecstatic to see his brain removed expertly from his skull? My role as a scientist had always been perfectly clear to me.” This was no time for sentiment or reflection.

How terrible that a man who had been so wronged by "science" had a caretaker that viewed him more as an intellectual pursuit than a person who had just passed without anyone by his side that truly loved him. While I understand the remarkable learning that came about as a result of this man volunteering his life to science, you would hope that there is another part of the story that wasn't written about the people around him that truly mourned his passing.

Reminds me of an incredible story about jazz guitarist Pat Martino. The gist is, he was a brilliant jazz guitarist who had a brain aneurism and lost virtually all of his long term memory, including how to play the guitar. He spent several years after this relearning everything, from old recordings and stories from other people. Eventually, he was able to regain his stature and virtuosity! He is a really amazing person, and I'm suprised so few people have heard his story. See http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=29896#.UmL6vZ... for a summary

>> In the less cinematically attractive “anterograde amnesia”

Disagree. I find Memento to be the most successful film related to memory loss. Maybe I'm just biased because it's in my top 5 but its 2 Oscar nominations and #34 ranking on IMDB don't hurt. HIGHLY recommend this film to anyone fascinated by this story.

EDIT: finished the piece, author [briefly] references Memento

>> he put notes in his wallet telling him that his father was dead and that his mother was in a nursing home

Have studied this guy in the past but every time I read this, it's heartbreaking

>> Columbia Pictures is planning a movie from Corkin’s point of view.

I reaally hope they don't romanticize the relationship between Corkin and HM. It's fascinating as is.

A much better article is "The Brain That Changed Everything" [1], by the grandson of the surgeon who erased H.M.'s memory. It has lots of details that I've never seen anywhere else.

  There was one TV series he loved to watch, too. A sitcom. All in the Family.
  It is a show, essentially, about a man who is mystified by a world and culture
  and family that change all around him while he remains the same, a man who
  digs in his heels, who holds on to the past, refusing to be dragged into the
  present.

The part that gets me the most is when they wake H.M. up and ask him what he was dreaming about (at this point no one even knew if he DID dream), and he says "what I could have been ..."

[1] http://www.esquire.com/print-this/henry-molaison-brain-1110?...

> "On August 25, 1953, with a cheap jury-rigged hand drill, Scoville carved two holes in Molaison’s skull, one just above each of his eyes. Molaison was given only a local anesthetic, so that he could be awake to report on his sensations when different cerebral areas were stimulated. Scoville lifted up Molaison’s frontal lobes with a spatula and reached far into the center of his brain. Then, using a silver straw, Scoville sucked out fist-size chunks of the medial temporal lobes on both sides of Molaison’s brain. The excised tissue included most of the sea-horse-shaped structure called the hippocampus, as well as the parahippocampal gyrus, the uncus, the anterior temporal cortex, and the almond-shaped amygdala."

This is horrifying on an extremely deep and unsettling level. It's easy to forget how recently "medicine" was just another name for barbarism.

I don't like this kind of nonsense arrogance: "In a period when eugenic theories still circulated, Molaison’s doctors reportedly told him that he shouldn’t have sex, since he would likely reproduce children who were similarly damaged." We're still in that period and it's probably a good thing. In America you can still go to prison for having sex when there's a high risk of passing on genetic problems to your possible children, specifically by both partners being close relatives.

Those of us who study the cognitive neuroscience of memory have been waiting for Dr. Corkin to publish this book for a while. I'm looking forward to reading through.

Regarding another commenter's concerns about ensuring that severely amnesic patients are fairly compensated and participating of their own free will, this is a complex issue that those of us who study such patients deal with frequently. I can say of my own experience that patients we work with volunteer their time willingly, are remunerated for their participation, and can discontinue any task at any time. It's a privilege to work with people who have such a focal neuropsychologial deficit, and we take our responsibility for each patient's welfare during their time with us very seriously.

I hope the scientists did not take advantage of him and paid him for all the experiments they performed on him.

This also shows something that athletes have known for a long time: there is a "muscle memory" that is quite distinct from our conscious memory and that muscle memory can help us perform tasks with great precision, as long as we practice.

UCSD Brain Observertory sliced and imaged his brain http://thebrainobservatory.ucsd.edu/hm

well, i will read this later. for now, i'm just gonna say, awesome username!