Brain Of World’s Best-Known Amnesiac Is Mapped
Elizbeth Landau writes for CNN:
Henry Molaison, known as H.M. in scientific literature, was perhaps the most famous patient in all of brain science in the 20th century.
“My daddy’s family came from the South and moved North, they came from Thibodaux Louisiana, and moved north,” Molaison would say. “My mother’s family came from the North and moved South.” Within 15 minutes he might repeat this exact statement twice more, unable to remember that he’d already said it. Scientists studied him for most of his adult life.
This week, researchers are dissecting his brain to figure out exactly which structures contributed to his amnesia, which he suffered for more than 50 years.
At the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego, researchers began slicing H.M.’s brain Wednesday afternoon and streaming the procedure live to the world on their Web site. Watch it live
“We’re doing it, this sort of marathon through the brain,” said Jacopo Annese, director of the Brain Observatory. By Thursday afternoon, the scientists were less than halfway through the brain, but the process was going “miraculously well,” he said.
A camera is taking a picture of each individual slice, and these pictures will also be made available on the Web. The goals are to map the human brain in new ways and correlate individual structures with specific functions such as memory.
The exciting part comes Thursday night as scientists probe deeper into the part of the brain that had been removed more than 50 years ago, causing the patient’s memory abnormalities, he said…
[continues at CNN]
