Many of us are familiar with the movie Memento, about a man who, due to a brain injury, lost his ability to form new memories. But few people know that the story was inspired by a real-life person. That person, Henry Gustav Molaison, died this past Tuesday. He was 82.
When he was 9 years old, he banged his head in an accident and started having seizures. When he was 27, he agreed to have brain surgery to relieve the seizures. The surgery involved cutting into the hippocampus. The surgery in fact relieved the seizures, but the surgical trauma to his hippocampus left him unable to form new memories. Yet, like the main character in Memento, he was able to learn how to do things through conditioning (though he had no memory of the learning process). He spent the rest of his life as a test subject, helping neuroscientists understand how our brains work.
News writer Scott LaFee describes Molaison as “a single, unforgettable man.” Yep.
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