I’m always fascinated by memory, especially in the extreme. Those who have the rare ability to stretch what is seemingly inelastic are fascinating, but so are those with huge potholes in their past. And some of us consistently reorder what’s transpired to suit us, seemingly a reflexive, subconscious defense mechanism. 

Because I don’t have amnesia, I was just thinking about an obituary I read several years ago about Henry Molaison, who was a profound amnesiac. From Benedict Carey in the December 4, 2008 New York Times:

“He knew his name. That much he could remember.

He knew that his father’s family came from Thibodaux, La., and his mother was from Ireland, and he knew about the 1929 stock market crash and World War II and life in the 1940s.

But he could remember almost nothing after that.

In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.

For the next 55 years, each time he met a friend, each time he ate a meal, each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time.

And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. “