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Henry M. dies at 82; victim of brain surgery accident offered doctors key insights into memory




















When he was asked at later times to repeat the process, he did not remember his earlier efforts, but it became progressively easier for him to learn how to do it, indicating that his muscle memory was functioning.

Milner later recalled that he said, after one of the trials, "Huh, this was easier than I thought it would be."

Studies of HM also provided new information about spatial learning. If you asked him where he lived, he was likely to give you the address of the house where he lived before his surgery. But if you asked him to draw a detailed map of the layout of the house where he lived, he could do so.

Researchers concluded that this knowledge was gained subconsciously as he walked through the house carrying out his everyday activities.

Evidence also emerged of a similar ability with words. When researchers presented him with a list of words, such as "pancake, bicycle and bazooka," he would quickly forget them. But if he was later asked to name a weapon, he was likely to say "bazooka," neurobiologist John Gabrieli of Stanford University reported.

"And then he says, 'Why, that's an odd weapon. I wonder why I picked that one?' " Gabrieli said.

Details of Henry Molaison's early life are scanty. His father was an electrician who moved from Louisiana to Hartford in the 1920s. Henry was born there on Feb. 26,1926.

He remembered roller-skating, a hike along the Mohawk trail and shooting his father's gun in the woods, but he didn't remember that his parents were dead unless he was coached.

Researchers noted, however, that his memories seemed flat and repetitive, and were not rich in detail.

After the disastrous surgery, he lived with his parents until their deaths, then with another relative. In 1980, he moved into the nursing home where he eventually died.

Molaison was a genial and meek man, eager to please, who cooperated fully with all the researchers who came to study him. No one knows if that was an inborn trait, the result of his upbringing or the aftermath of his accident.

Corkin is at work on a book about Molaison titled "A Lifetime Without Memory." After he died Tuesday evening, researchers spent most of the night taking exhaustive MRI images of his brain, data that will help them interpret their earlier studies. She has also arranged for his brain to be preserved, like Einstein's, for future study.

Molaison left no survivors.

Maugh is a Times staff writer


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