Memory Man Remembered

One of neuroscience’s most famous patients, Henry Gustav Molaison, known as H.M., died at 82 on Tuesday night. He was an amnesiac, who lost his memory almost entirely after undergoing experimental brain surgery to correct a seizure disorder in 1953. Beyond his name and a few bits of family history, he could remember almost nothing. At the time, scientists had believed memory was distributed throughout the brain, but Molaison’s loss overturned that assumption. Though Molaison could never remember participating in experiments, he improved each time he repeated them, suggesting that there are two types of memory—“declarative memory” and “motor learning.” “He was a very gracious man, very patient, always willing to try these tasks I would give him,” said one doctor who worked with him. “And yet every time I walked in the room, it was like we’d never met.”