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Saturday, December 6, 2008

No memories leads to thanks

H.M. has died. According to the NY Times, "In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories."

For the next 55 years, Mr. Henry Gustav Molaison cooperated with researchers seeking to understand how memory worked. While he passed away this week, he'll long be remembered in neurology studies - and perhaps in a museum too. "Dr. Corkin arranged, too, to have his brain preserved for future study, in the same spirit that Einstein’s was, as an irreplaceable artifactof scientific history."

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