H.M., the man who couldn't make new memories

How I got here

Started with

What did patient H.M. teach us about memory?

Ended at

Hippocampus

The Trail

1. “patient hm memory story” (google.com)
2. Henry Molaison (en.wikipedia.org)

   surgery for severe epilepsy in 1953. after that he couldn't form new long-term memories

3. Brenda Milner (en.wikipedia.org)
4. Anterograde amnesia (en.wikipedia.org)
5. Procedural memory (en.wikipedia.org)

   he got better at mirror drawing day after day without remembering ever doing it

6. Hippocampus (en.wikipedia.org)

What I came away with

Milner's mirror-drawing experiments showed he could learn new motor skills with no memory of learning them. That's a big reason we now treat remembering facts and learning skills as separate memory systems. He was studied for decades and met the same researchers 'for the first time' over and over.

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