While doing lesson seven for cognitive psychology, we were asked to watch a short video on Clive Wearing, a man with the worst amnesia case ever known. As I started to think back to when I first learned about HM, I realized I have never actually watched a video on him, only read stories and listened to what my professors had to say. So, of course with my attention span of a gnat, I went digging.
I decided to Youtube “HM Memory.” Unfortunately, no real videos of him popped up. I started watching the first thing that was in my search results: “Bringing new life to ‘Patient H.M.,’ the man who couldn’t make memories.” It was an interesting interview with a man named Luke Dittrich, the grandson of the surgeon that preformed HM’s surgery. He discussed how his grandfather had helped make the lobotomy popular and a “quick fix” concept for all psychological problems in a time where lines between medical practice and medical research was blurry and when lines that shouldn’t be crossed were more often crossed than not (Brown, 2016). He spoke of how his grandfather, Dr. William Scofield, became such a world renowned surgeon and why psychosurgery was so important to him at the time. It turns out that Dr. Scofield’s wife was institutionalized in the same hospital that he practiced in and was searching for a cure for his ill wife.
After learning some fun facts and cool details on HM’s life, the next video came on of a professor by the name of “Professor B.” from the University of California, San Diego (Flactemb, 2013). It seemed to be an introductory course for Psychology where he discusses the basic facts of HM. But as I am about to turn it off and go back to the lesson (something I should have done 30 minutes before this video even started), he mentions a book. I am not a person who will read a book for fun at all, but something about what he said really caught my ears. This book is called Memory’s Ghost.
Of course, I go to amazon and it’s only $2. I have to buy it. It arrived to my house 4 days later and I start reading. Holy moly, this book is fascinating. I don’t understand half of the words in it, but I’m drawn in by this person’s interest in the case, just as I was when I first heard about it back in 2012.
This book has truly sparked an interest for memory in me. Although it is a non-fiction auto-biography/biography, I am completely indulged in learning everything and anything about HM and who he was as a person with no new long-term memory. For the first time ever, I am grateful for my short attention span for allowing me to discover this cool find. If memory is something that also sparks your interest, I highly suggest spending the $2 to learn something from an insighter’s point-of-view.
Flactemb. 05 Mar. 2013. “Patient HM and Jacopo Annese.” YouTube. YouTube, 05 Mar. 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqVUVREIXKg
“Bringing New Life to ‘Patient H.M.,’ the Man Who Couldn’t Make Memories.” Interview by Jeffrey Brown. PBS News Hour. PBS. Washington, DC, 9 Aug. 2016. Television.
Hilts, Philip J. (1995). Memory’s Ghost: The Nature of Memory and the Strange Tale of Mr. M. New York, New York. Touchstone.