Slashdot Mirror
Brain Surgery Patient Trapped in a Mental Time Warp
diverge_s writes "BrainConnection has an interesting article about a man who lives life straight out of the movie Memento. FTA: "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.""
This case reminded me of another case I learned about in a psychology class several years ago. There is a British man named Clive Wearing who has a similar condition caused by disease. A video of Wearing showed him greeting his wife as if for the first time in months or years, even if she had only just stepped out of the room for a minute, writing in his journal every couple minutes etc. They did say that he had some vague recollection of major events like the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union, but not much beyond that. He was also shown playing the piano very fluently, although he went into a seizure as soon as he stopped playing, supposedly because of the "shock" from the music stopping.
What is happening, at least as was explained to us psych majors, is that he can learn skills, but not facts. Those parts of the brain are apparantly seperate, which is one of the major discoveries his case has lead to. So you cannot teach him facts about a bicycle that he doesn't know, but he could learn to ride a bycicle, if he doesn't know how.
I thought this story covered the term but apparently it doesn't. Anyway, the medical term for Henry's condition is called anterograde amnesia. And if it hasn't already been mentioned here, it's also the same ailment that the protagonist Leonard has in the movie Memento. And if you liked that movie I reccommend reading the short story it was based on. It's an excellent piece of prose.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
One of his doctors actually did this -- perhaps thinking it would help 'jar' his memory or something, not really thinking through the effect that suddenly seeing yourself old would have. HM's reaction was predictable -- 'Hey, Doc! What the hell is this??'
Fortunately, the doctor realized his error quickly, took away the mirror, and said, 'It's complicated, but I can explain it to you. But first, come on over to the window'. After looking out the window for a bit, HM forgot why he was there, or even that he was upset.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
"The funniest and cruelest thing you can do to him is show him his own reflection. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and had tons of wrinkles on your face where none were before."
Errr, did you read the article? He doesn't appear too bothered by the mirror thing:
"Mainly, though, he leads a life of quiet confusion, never knowing exactly how old he is (he guesses maybe thirty and is always surprised by his reflection in the mirror) and reliving his grief over the death of his mother every time he hears about it."
Actually he seems quite upbeat about the whole thing, the highlight of the article for me (as it looks like you probably missed it) has to be the following:
When walking down the corridor at M.I.T. with Henry, Dr. Suzanne Corkin made the usual kind of small talk. "Do you know where you are, Henry?"
Henry grinned. "Why, of course. I'm at M.I.T.!"
Dr. Corkin was a bit surprised. "How do you know that?"
Henry laughed. He pointed to a student nearby with a large M.I.T. emblazoned on his sweatshirt. "Got ya that time!" Henry said.
Haydn.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Curable/copable for most people using mnemonics. I can do a few people at a time now, by imagining them in a hug with someone else with the same name. I hold the pictures better than the words. Still can't cope in a new contract when I have ten people to remember: I won't be able to hold any of them.
Only works for first names, and only names I've come across before, so not a perfect solution!
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Errmmm... electroshock therapy still is used for depression. (Although you tend to be anaesthetised first.)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I would recommend to anybody who is interested Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who wrote a great book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat for other intriguing and amusing tales from the fringes of psychology and medicine. As I recall (eek!) it did a fair job of explaining our understanding of the brain (even as the book is 20 years old).
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
The removal of his hippocampus, amygdala and bits of his temporal lobes did indeed cure his seizures. While he can hardly be said to live a "normal life" now his health is fairly good. Currently suffering from osteoporosis but that's not really a function of his surgery or his former seizures :P
If you want to really dig into his case I'd suggest the following review paper that summarizes alot of the interesting things we've learned because of him much better than TFA does IMO:
http://homepage.mac.com/sanagnos/corkin2002.pdf/
Memory deficits are a risk of epilepsy surgery. As yet there's no truly reliable way to predict post-surgical memory problems, but since surgery is generally a last resort, it's a risk the patients have to take. This kind of memory problem is also typical of Wernicke-Korsakoff's Syndrome, dramatized in the second chapter of Oliver Sacks's "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat," which is often a consequence of long drinking binges (and an accompanying vitamin deficiency, I think). You don't always see the truly dense amnesia, but when you do it's striking.
Drugs used to treat schizoprenia are dangerous with severe, often irreversible, side effects. Tardive dyskinesia is a symptom of permanent neurological damage caused by long term use of neuroleptics. The benzodiazepines (used to treat anxiety disorders, among other things) are addictive with a pronounced, physically dangerous withdrawl syndrome (it can actually precipitate delerium tremens). Even the relatively benign SSRI/SNRIs are starting to show unanticipated side effects that are somewhat limiting their use.
As the previous poster said, these drugs are far better than psychosurgery, but they are far from perfect. In any event, they treat the symptoms rather than the (unknown) causes of mental illness. Hopefully that will change someday.
Shit, I just thought: how do you do, shall we say, relief?
Don't answer that, OK ;-)
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Your computer (like your body) may run fine for a while, it may even go to sleep and wake back up and go on running normally. Eventually you may come across some quirky behaviour (mental disorder) that you can't fix with patches (surgery?) or subsystem resets (drugs?). When all else fails, you reboot your computer (ECT) and everything goes back to normal.
ECT induces a seizure, and your brain sort of shuts down and resets itself. The mechanisms aren't entirely understood, but it works well to treat severe depression.
Electro-Shock Therapy has been portrayed as horrible torture (which it was used for) and has been tried for the treatment of many mental conditions (like schizophrenia and personality disorders) where it does little to no good. It definitely has a shady past, but the modern reality is much more benign and therapeutic.