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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.""
It means he never has to put up with re-runs on television and got to escape the entire disco era unscathed.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"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 ..."
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.
...is better known as Cowboy Neal.
(Caption on the screen: 'IT'S THE MIND -- A WEEKLY MAGAZINE OF THINGS PSYCHIATRIC' Cut to montage of photographs again with captions and music. Cut to a man sitting at usual desk. He is Mr Boniface.)
... (looks puzzled fir a moment) Anyway, tonight on 'It's the Mind' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu, that strange...
... that ... we've lived through something...
Boniface: Good evening. Tonight on 'It's the Mind', we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu. That strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before, that what is happening now has already happened. Tonight on 'It's the Mind' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu, that strange feeling we sometimes get that we've
(Cut to opening title sequence with montage of psychiatric photos and the two captions and music over. Cut back to Mr Boniface at desk, shaken. Caption on screen: 'IT'S THE MIND')
Boniface: Good evening. Tonight on 'It's the Mind' we examine the phenomenon of déjà vu, that strange feeling we someti... mes get
(Cut to opening titles again. Back then to Boniface, now very shaken. Caption on screen: 'IT'S THE MIND')
It is to him!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
When my mother had a stroke when she was dying of cancer, a very odd thing happened.
I rushed to the hospital, she seemed ok, but weak. We talked for hours, everything seemed fine. I still don't know what prompted me to ask the question as our converstation was pretty much normal. I asked her "Do you know you who I am?"
She said "No, should I?". Pretty much the worst moment of my life. As it turned out, she though it was 1968 and she was in there to give birth to what would be my brother Kevin.
Thankfully, over the next few weeks, most of it came back, but it all came back in chronological order.
She was back to the 1980's within a few hours, but the next 12 years came back much slower. She thought I was still with my first girlfriend circa 1990, that we had our old pets. The last few years were the only thing that remained somewhat little fuzzy.
I always thought that was very telling about the mind. Not sure exactly what it says, but it definitely says something. Maybe memory is stored tree-like. The other thing that was odd, was the closer to the present it got, the slower it came back.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
"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
Complex partial seizures originating in the temporal lobe have one of the best success rates in epilepsy surgery, but surgery is only offered to patients whos epilepsy is medically refractive (cannot be controlled by drugs) and affects their life in such as way that they would strongly benefit from surgery. Temporal lobe epilepsy is most often caused by mesial temporal or hippocampal sclerosis, this means that that part of the brain has become scarred and shrunk and this damage is causing the seizures. So this part of the brain supports a minimal amount of function. As your seizures are probably well controlled by drugs, you would never have been offered a surgical option.
we still don't know enough about the way it works to reliably fix problems that the brain itself cannot handle.
That's correct to a certain extent, but we do know a lot more and one of them is how to avoid causing the sort of condition that HM suffers.
I just wanna say, you are a really smart buncha nerdy people. How you ended up on my TV isn't even relevant right now. I'm truly inspired by your fresh approach to scientific criticism and humour. kudos to you all and let the show go on!
I just wanna say, you are a really smart buncha nerdy people. How you ended up on my TV isn't even relevant right now. I'm truly inspired by your fresh approach to scientific criticism and humour. praise to you all and let the show go on!