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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.
"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
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/