Henry M.

[Bernard]

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.

...

Study of Henry's case has led to some very seminal findings about memory. Specifically, it seems that the hippocampus is required for the formation of conscious, long-term memories, but not for unconscious, long-term skill memories or short-term recall. Perhaps even more importantly, Henry has vividly illustrated that there is a biological basis for memory and that it is possible to use biological techniques to study a subject as elusive as memory.

http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/hm-memory

The article is a fascinating read.

 

[Bernard]

Here's another article about him (.PDF format):

http://homepage.mac.com/sanagnos/corkin2002.pdf/

 

[ellgee]

The Wada test would have clarified the memory and nowadays, they wouldn't perform this radical type of surgery on both temporal lobes. Interesting, they dont mention if his speech was ever impaired from these surgeries, I also didn't see if the surgeries were done the same day, or if there was a time gap between when the left and right temporal lobes were operated on.