could learn new motor skills and showed improvement on motor tasks even in the absence of any memory for having performed the task before ( Corkin, 2002). M.’s memory impairment was restricted to declarative memory, or conscious (explicit) memory for facts and events. He could keep information in his short-term, or working, memory, but when his attention turned to something else, that information was lost for good. He could not remember a conversation he had a few minutes prior or recognize the face of someone who had visited him that same day. could not remember any event that occurred since his surgery, including highly significant ones, such as the death of his father. was unable to learn new information, a memory impairment called anterograde amnesia. From the time of his surgery until his death in 2008, H. with a profound and permanent memory deficit. M.’s seizures and his general intelligence was preserved, the surgery left H. Although the surgery was successful in reducing H. The medial temporal lobes encompass the hippocampus and surrounding cortical tissue. suffered from severe epilepsy, and in 1953, he underwent surgery to have both of his medial temporal lobes removed to relieve his epileptic seizures. These lesions can be due to surgical ablation, as in the case of H.M., or to other causes such as tumors, ischemic episodes, head traumas, and various forms of encephalitis.Īs a teenager, H. This syndrome results from bilateral lesions of the medial portion of the temporal lobe, and more specifically, of the hippocampus and its neighboring structures (the parahippocampal, entorhinal, and perirhinal cortices). H.M.'s disorder is an example of global amnesic syndrome characterized by severe anterograde amnesia and more moderate retrograde amnesia (see below).
Īs previously discussed, the most widely studied amnesic patient was known by his initials H. \): Patients with damage to the temporal lobes may experience anterograde amnesia and/or retrograde amnesia.
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