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The Legacy of Patient H.M. for Neuroscience

Larry R. Squire1,2,*
1Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, San Diego, CA 92161, USA
2Departments of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
*Correspondence: lsquire@ucsd.edu
DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.12.023

H.M. is probably the best known single patient in the history of neuroscience. His severe memory impairment,
which resulted from experimental neurosurgery to control seizures, was the subject of study for five decades
until his death in December 2008. Work with H.M. established fundamental principles about how memory
functions are organized in the brain.

In 1952, Brenda Milner was completing

her doctoral research at McGill University

under the direction of Donald Hebb. At

about this time, she encountered two

patients (P.B. and F.C.) who had become

severely amnesic following unilateral

removal of the medial structures of the

left temporal lobe for the treatment of

epileptic seizures (Penfield and Milner,

1958). This unfortunate outcome was

entirely unexpected, and it was proposed

that in each case there had been a preex-

istent, but unsuspected, atrophic lesion in

the medial temporal lobe of the opposite

hemisphere. In that way, the unilateral

surgery would have resulted in a bilateral

lesion, an idea that was confirmed at

autopsy some years later for patient P.B.

After the two cases were presented at

the 1955 meeting of the American Neuro-

logical Association, Wilder Penfield (the

neurosurgeon in both cases) received

a call from William Scoville, a neurosur-

geon in Hartford, Connecticut. Scoville

told Penfield that he had seen a similar

memory impairment in one of his own

patients (H.M.) in whom he had carried

out a bilateral medial temporal lobe resec-

tion in an attempt to control epileptic

seizures. As a result of this conversation,

Brenda Milner was invited to travel to

Hartford to study H.M.

H.M. had been knocked down by

a bicycle at the age of 7, began to have

minor seizures at age 10, and had major

seizures after age 16. (The age of the

bicycle accident is given as 9 in some

reports; for clarification see Corkin,

1984.) He worked for a time on an

assembly line but, finally, in 1953 at the

age of 27 he had become so incapaci-

tated by his seizures, despite high doses

6 Neuron 61, January 15, 2009 ª2009 Elsev

of anticonvulsant medication, that he

could not work or lead a normal life. Sco-

ville offered H.M. an experimental proce-

dure that he had carried out previously in

psychotic patients, and the surgery was

then performed with the approval of the

patient and his family.

When Milner first visited H.M., she saw

that the epilepsy was now controlled but

that his memory impairment was even

more severe than in Penfield’s two

patients, P.B. and F.C. What she

observed was someone who forgot daily

events nearly as fast as they occurred,

apparently in the absence of any general

intellectual loss or perceptual disorder.

He underestimated his own age, apolo-

gized for forgetting the names of persons

to whom he had just been introduced, and

described his state as ‘‘like waking from

a dream . every day is alone in itself.’’
(Milner et al., 1968, p. 217).

The first observations of H.M., and the

results of formal testing, were reported

a few years later (Scoville and Milner,

1957). This publication became one of

the most cited papers in neuroscience

(nearly 2500 citations) and is still cited

with high frequency. H.M. continued to

be studied for five decades, principally

by Brenda Milner, her former student

Suzanne Corkin, and their colleagues

(Corkin, 1984, 2002; Milner et al., 1968).

He died on December 2, 2008, at the

age of 82. It can be said that the early

descriptions of H.M. inaugurated the

modern era of memory research. Before

H.M., due particularly to the influence of

Karl Lashley, memory functions were

thought to be widely distributed in the

cortex and to be integrated with

intellectual and perceptual functions.

ier Inc.

The findings from H.M. established the

fundamental principle that memory is

a distinct cerebral function, separable

from other perceptual and cognitive abili-

ties, and identified the medial aspect of

the temporal lobe as important for

memory. The implication was that the

brain has to some extent separated its

perceptual and intellectual functions

from its capacity to lay down in memory

the records that ordinarily result from

engaging in perceptual and intellectual

work.

The Medial Temporal Lobe Memory
System
The early paper is sometimes cited incor-

rectly as evidence that the hippocampus

is important for memory, but this partic-

ular point could not of course be estab-

lished from a lesion that, by the surgeon’s

description, included the hippocampus,

amygdala, and the adjacent parahippo-

campal gyrus. As Milner subsequently

wrote, ‘‘Despite the use of the word

‘hippocampal’ in the titles of my papers

with Scoville and Penfield, I have never

claimed that the memory loss was solely

attributable to the hippocampal lesions’’

(Milner, 1998). Indeed, the original paper

ends, quite appropriately, with the state-

ment:

It is concluded that the anterior

hippocampus and hippocampal

gyrus, either separately or together,

are critically concerned in the

retention of current experience. It

is not known whether the amygdala

plays any part in this mechanism,

since the hippocampal complex

has not been removed alone, but

mailto:lsquire@ucsd.edu

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always together with uncus and

amygdala. (Scoville and Milner,

1957, p. 21).

The findings from H.M. were initially

met with some resistance, especially

because of the difficulty for many years

of demonstrating anything resembling

his impairment in the experimental animal.

Efforts to establish an animal model in fact

began almost immediately when Scoville

himself came to Montreal and did the

same surgery in monkeys that he had

done with H.M. But these monkeys and

others with medial temporal lesions

seemed able to learn tasks that H.M.

could not learn. Only much later did it

become understood that apparently

similar tasks can be learned in different

ways by humans and monkeys. For

example, the visual discrimination task,

which is learned gradually by the monkey

over hundreds of trials, proved to involve

what one would now call habit learning.

In the monkey, this kind of learning

depends on the basal ganglia, not the

medial temporal lobe. Eventually, tasks

were developed for the monkey that

were exquisitely sensitive to medial

temporal lobe lesions (for example, the

one-trial, delayed nonmatching to sample

task), and an animal model of human

memory impairment thereby became

available (Mishkin, 1978).

Cumulative work with the animal model

over the next decade, together with

neuroanatomical studies, succeeded in

identifying the anatomical components

of what is now termed the medial

temporal lobe memory system (Squire

and Zola-Morgan, 1991): the hippo-

campus and the adjacent perirhinal, ento-

rhinal, and parahippocampal cortices that

make up much of the parahippocampal

gyrus. This information showed which

structures within H.M.’s large lesion

were important for understanding his

impairment and, more broadly, what

structures are important for memory.

A few years later, an improved description

of H.M.’s lesion was obtained with

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (Cor-

kin et al., 1997). MRI had been delayed

because of concerns that clips placed

on the dura during surgery made H.M.

ineligible for imaging. However, thorough

inquiry revealed that the dural clips

constituted no risk.

At this juncture, several points became

clear. First, H.M.’s lesion was less

extensive than described originally by the

surgeon in that it extended a little more

than 5 cm caudally from the temporal

pole (not 8 cm). As a result the posterior

parahippocampal gyrus was largely

spared (specifically, the parahippocampal

cortex or what in the monkey is termed

area TH TF). Second, the reason that

H.M.’s memory impairment was so severe

was that the bilateral damage included the

parahippocampal gyrus (anteriorly) and

was not restricted to the hippocampus.

Damage limited to the hippocampus

causes significant memory impairment

but considerably less impairment than in

H.M. Third, memory impairment more

severe than H.M.’s could now be under-

stood, as when the damage includes the

structures damaged in H.M. but also

extends far enough posteriorly to involve

the parahippocampal cortex (patients

E.P. and G.P.; Kirwan et al., 2008).

In the early years, the anatomy of the

medial temporal lobe was poorly under-

stood, and terms like hippocampal zone

and hippocampal complex were often

used to identify the area of damage. With

the elucidation of the boundaries and

connectivity of the structures adjacent to

the hippocampus and the discovery that

these structures are important for

memory, vague terms like hippocampal

complex became unnecessary (though

one can still find them in contemporary

writing). It is now possible to achieve care-

ful descriptions based on anatomical

measurement and modern terminology.

H.M. not only motivated the develop-

ment of an animal model of human

memory impairment and the subsequent

delineation of the medial temporal lobe

memory system. As described next, the

study of H.M. also led to fundamental

insights into the function of the medial

temporal lobe and the larger matter of

how memory is organized in the brain.

Immediate Memory and Long-Term
Memory
H.M.’s intact intellectual and perceptual

functions, and similar findings in other

patients with large medial temporal

lesions, have been well documented.

A key additional finding was that H.M.

had a remarkable capacity for sustained

attention, including the ability to retain

Neuron

information for a period of time after it

was presented. Thus, he could carry on

a conversation, and he exhibited an intact

digit span (i.e., the ability to repeat back

a string of six or seven digits). Indeed,

information remained available so long

as it could be actively maintained by

rehearsal. For example, H.M. could retain

a three-digit number for as long as 15 min

by continuous rehearsal, organizing the

digits according to an elaborate

mnemonic scheme. Yet when his atten-

tion was diverted to a new topic, he forgot

the whole event. In contrast, when the

material was not easy to rehearse (in the

case of nonverbal stimuli like faces or

designs), information slipped away in

less than a minute. These findings sup-

ported a fundamental distinction between

immediate memory and long-term

memory (what William James termed

primary memory and secondary memory).

Primary memory [immediate memory]

.comes to us as belonging to the
rearward portion of the present

space of time, and not to the

genuine past (James, 1890, p. 647).

Secondary memory [long-term memory] is

quite different.

An object which has been recol-

lected . is one which has been
absent from consciousness alto-

gether, and now revives anew. It is

brought back, recalled, fished up,

so to speak, from a reservoir in

which, with countless other

objects, it lay buried and lost from

view. (James, 1890, p. 648).

Notably, time is not the key factor that

determines how long patients like H.M.

can retain information in memory. The rele-

vant factors are the capacity of immediate

memory and attention, i.e., the amount of

material that can be held in mind and

how successfully it can be rehearsed.

The work with H.M. demonstrated that

the psychological distinction between

immediate memory and long-term

memory is a prominent feature of how the

brain has organized its memory functions.

Multiple Memory Systems
Perhaps the most unexpected discovery

about H.M., given his profound and global

61, January 15, 2009 ª2009 Elsevier Inc. 7

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memory impairment, came when Brenda

Milner tested his ability to acquire a visuo-

motor skill (Milner, 1962). H.M. was shown

a five-pointed star, with a double contour,

and asked to trace its outline with a pencil,

but in a condition when he could only

see his hand and the star as reflected

in a mirror. H.M. acquired this mirror-

drawing skill during ten trials and

exhibited excellent retention across 3

days. Yet at the end of testing, he had

no recollection of having done the task

before. This demonstration provided the

first hint that there was more than one

kind of memory in the brain and sug-

gested that some kinds of memory (motor

skills) must lie outside the province of the

medial temporal lobe.

For a time, it was rather thought that

motor skills were a special case and that

all the rest of memory is impaired in

patients like H.M. Later it became appre-

ciated that motor skills are but a subset

of a larger domain of skill-like abilities, all

of which are preserved in amnesia. The

demonstration of a fully preserved ability

to learn the perceptual skill of mirror

reading suggested a distinction between

two broad classes of knowledge: declara-

tive and procedural (Cohen and Squire,

1980). Declarative memory is what is

meant when the term ‘‘memory’’ is used

in everyday language, i.e., conscious

knowledge of facts and events. Proce-

dural memory refers to skill-based knowl-

edge that develops gradually but with little

ability to report what is being learned.

In the years that followed, other

preserved learning abilities began to be

reported for amnesic patients, and the

perspective shifted to a framework that

accommodated multiple (i.e., more than

two) memory systems. As Endel Tulving

wrote:

But even if we accept the broad

division of memory into procedural

and propositional forms . there
are phenomena that do not seem

to fit readily into such a taxonomy

(Tulving et al., 1982, p.336).

Subsequently, the terms declarative

and nondeclarative were introduced with

the idea that declarative memory refers

to the kind of memory that is impaired in

H.M. and is dependent on the medial

temporal lobe. Nondeclarative memory

8 Neuron 61, January 15, 2009 ª2009 Elsev

is an umbrella term referring to additional

memory systems. These include systems

that support skill learning, habit learning,

simple conditioning, emotional learning,

as well as priming and perceptual

learning. The structures with special

importance for these kinds of memory

include the basal ganglia, the cerebellum,

the amygdala, and the neocortex. The

starting point for these developments

was the early discovery that motor skill

learning was preserved in H.M. This

finding revealed that memory is not

a single faculty of the mind and led ulti-

mately to the identification of the multiple

memory systems of the mammalian brain.

Remote Memory
H.M.’s memory impairment has generally

been taken as reflecting a failure to convert

transient, immediate memory into stable

long-term memory. A key insight about

the organization of memory, and medial

temporal lobe function, came with

a consideration of his capacity to

remember information that he had

acquired before his surgery. The first

exploration of this issue with formal tests

asked H.M. to recognize faces of persons

who had become famous in different

decades, 1920–1970 (Marslen-Wilson

and Teuber, 1975). As expected, H.M.

was severely impaired at recognizing faces

from his postmorbid period (the 1950s and

1960s), but he performed as well as or

better than age-matched controls at

recognizing faces of persons who were in

the news before his surgery. This important

finding implied that the medial temporal

lobe is not the ultimate storage site for

previously acquired knowledge. The early

descriptions of H.M. conform to this view.

Thus, H.M. was described as having

a partial loss of memory (retrograde

amnesia) for the 3 years leading up to his

surgery, with early memories ‘‘seemingly

normal’’ (Scoville and Milner, 1957, p. 17).

Similarly, about 10 years later it was

remarked that there did not appear

to have been any change in H.M.’s

capacity to recall remote events

antedating his operation, such as

incidents from his early school

years, a high-school attachment,

or jobs he had held in his late teens

and early twenties (Milner et al.,

1968, p. 216).

ier Inc.

Subsequently, a particular interest

developed in the status of autobiograph-

ical memories for unique events, which

are specific to time and place, and

methods were developed to assess the

specificity and the detail with which such

recollections could be reproduced. In

the earliest efforts along these lines, as

summarized by Suzanne Corkin (Corkin,

1984), H.M. produced well-formed auto-

biographical memories, from age 16 years

or younger. It was concluded that H.M’s

remote memory impairment now

extended back to 11 years before his

surgery. The situation seemed to change

further as H.M. aged. In an update

prepared nearly 20 years later (Corkin,

2002), H.M. (now 76 years old) was

described as having memories of child-

hood, but his memories appeared more

like remembered facts than like memories

of specific episodes. It was also said that

he could not narrate a single event that

occurred at a specific time and place.

Essentially the same conclusion was

reached a few years later when new

methods, intended to be particularly

sensitive, were used to assess H.M.’s

remote memory for autobiographical

events (Steinvorth et al., 2005). These

later findings led to the proposal that,

whatever might be the case for fact

memory, autobiographical memories,

i.e., memories that are specific to time

and place, depend on the medial temporal

lobe so long as the memories persist.

There are reasons to be cautious about

this idea. In 2002–2003, new MRI scans of

H.M. were obtained (Salat et al., 2006).

These scans documented a number of

changes since his first MRI scans from

1992–1993 (Corkin et al., 1997), including

cortical thinning, subcortical atrophy,

large amounts of abnormal white matter,

and subcortical infarcts. These findings

were thought to have appeared during

the past decade, and they complicate

the interpretation of neuropsychological

data collected during the same time

period. Another consideration is that

remote memories could have been intact

in the early years after surgery but then

have faded with time because they could

not be strengthened through rehearsal

and relearning. In any case, the optimal

time to assess the status of past memory

is soon after the onset of memory

impairment.

Neuron
NeuroView

Other work has tended to support the

earlier estimates that H.M.’s remote

memories were intact. First, Penfield’s

two patients described above, P.B. and

F.C., were reported after their surgeries

to have memory loss extending back

a few months and 4 years, respectively,

and intact memory from before that time

(Penfield and Milner, 1958). Second,

methods like those used recently to

assess H.M. have also been used to eval-

uate autobiographical memory in other

patients, including patients like E.P. and

G.P. who have very severe memory

impairment (Kirwan et al., 2008). In these

cases, autobiographical recollection was

impaired when memories were drawn

from the recent past but fully intact when

memories were drawn from the remote

past.

Memory loss can sometimes extend

back for decades in the case of large

medial temporal lobe lesions (though

additional damage to anterolateral

temporal cortex may be important in this

circumstance). In any case, memories

from early life appear to be intact unless

the damage extends well into the lateral

temporal lobe or the frontal lobe. These

findings are typically interpreted to mean

that the structures damaged in H.M. are

important for the formation of long-term

memory and its maintenance for a period

of time after learning. During this period

gradual changes are thought to occur in

neocortex (memory consolidation) that

increase the complexity, distribution,

and connectivity among multiple cortical

regions. Eventually, memory can be sup-

ported by the neocortex and becomes

independent of the medial temporal

lobe. The surprising observation that

H.M. had access to old memories, in the

face of an inability to establish new

ones, motivated an enormous body of

work, both in humans and experimental

animals, on the topic of remote memory

and continues to stimulate discussion

about the nature and significance of retro-

grade amnesia.

Perspective
H.M. was likely the most studied

individual in the history of neuroscience.

Interest in the case can be attributed to

a number of factors, including the unusual

purity and severity of the memory impair-

ment, its stability, its well-described

anatomical basis, and H.M.’s willingness

to be studied. He was a quiet and cour-

teous man with a sense of humor and

insight into his condition. Speaking of his

neurosurgeon, he once said, ‘‘What he

learned about me helped others, and I’m

glad about that.’’ (Corkin, 2002, p. 159).

An additional aspect of H.M.’s circum-

stance, which assured his eventual place

in the history of neuroscience, was the

fact that Brenda Milner was the young

scientist who first studied him. She is

a superb experimentalist with a strong

conceptual orientation that allowed her

to draw from her data deep insights about

the organization of memory. Because he

was the first well-studied patient with

amnesia, H.M. became the yardstick

against which other patients with memory

impairment would be compared. It is now

clear that his memory impairment was not

absolute and that he was able to acquire

significant new knowledge (Corkin,

2002). Thus, memory impairment can be

either more severe or less severe than in

H.M. But the study of H.M. established

key principles about how memory is orga-

nized that continue to guide the discipline.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Supported by the Medical Research Service of the
Department of Veterans Affairs, The National Insti-
tute of Mental Health (MH24600), and the Metro-

Neuro

politan Life Foundation. I thank Nicola Broadbent,
Robert Clark, Christine Smith, Ryan Squire, and
Wendy Suzuki for their helpful comments.

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n 61, January 15, 2009 ª2009 Elsevier Inc. 9

The Legacy of Patient H.M. for Neuroscience
The Medial Temporal Lobe Memory System
Immediate Memory and Long-Term Memory
Multiple Memory Systems
Remote Memory
Perspective
Acknowledgments
References