Amnesia: H.M., Clive Wearing & the Science of Memory
Clive Wearing, the man who fell in love with his wife, Deborah - over, and over, and over again.
60 Minutes episode about Clive and Deborah Wearing
Strapping gent, William Beecher Scoville, the neurosurgeon who lobotomized his own wife.
Emily Barrett Learned was a high-spirited woman when she married Scoville in June 1934.
By 1944, while Scoville served in the Army medical corps, Emily discovered he was having an affair.
She became deeply distraught, experienced hallucinations, and attempted suicide.
She was institutionalized at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, where she received various treatments like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
Scoville performed a lobotomy on Emily himself.
Following her release, Emily was notably withdrawn and lacked personal initiative.
Scoville and Learned in happier times, aka, prior to his removing part of her frontal lobe.
Henry Molaison aka patient, H.M. - Scoville lobotomized him on the “hunch” that it would help cure his epilepsy.
While Molaison’s epilepsy did improve, he also lost his ability to form new episodic memories.
However, through his work with neuropsychologist Brenda Milner, researchers discovered that H.M. was still capable of learning procedural tasks.
The mirror star drawing task was pivotal in this dicovery.
Equally as remarkable is the fact that Milner is still alive and kicking at 108 YEARS OLD.
Milner’s secret.
EP. 16
Amnesia
In this episode of Strange Mind, we dive into: William Scoville's infamous brain surgeries on both his wife, and H.M. (Henry Molaison); the devastating memory loss of Clive Wearing; and the different types of memory that make up who we are. We break down anterograde and retrograde amnesia, episodic, semantic, procedural, explicit and implicit memory, and explain how you can lose one kind of memory while another remains completely intact.
Click HERE for the full episode
