A tragic case, experimental surgery carried out in 1953 prevented him from forming new memories of events, while leaving other cognitive abilities intact. He had an enourmous impact on the science of memory, which, in a bitter irony, due to his amnesia he never realised.
"Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday. He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as "the amnesic patient, H.M." He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School. In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation at the Hartford Hospital to relieve his seizure disorder. Immediately after the operation, Mr. Molaison showed a profound amnesia, which became the topic of intense scientific study for more than five decades. From age 27 on, he was unable to establish new memories for events in his everyday life and to acquire general information about the world in which he lived. His memory impairment was "pure" and not accompanied by intellectual or personality disorders. For this reason, and because the operation has not been repeated, he is the most widely studied and famous case in the neuroscience literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mr. Molaison's contributions to knowledge about memory have been groundbreaking, and researchers worldwide are in his debt."
The above quote is now being passed around the net, but I believe it is originally from Suzanne Corkin of MIT | 
04-12-2008
The Meeting Place
Linear Mode
