When an operation left Henry Molaison unable to form new
memories, he became the most important patient in the history of
brain science. Neurologist Suzanne Corkin reveals what it was
like to work with “HM” for 46 years In 1953, a young man named
Henry Gustav Molaison, of Hartford, Connecticut, lost his memory
and helped to invent neuroscience. Henry Molaison’s amnesia was
the result of a highly risky “psychosurgical” procedure, an
operation designed to cure the debilitating epilepsy he had
suffered since childhood. In an attempt to remove the part of
the brain that was causing Henry’s fits, two holes were drilled
in the front of his skull and a portion of his brain, the front
half of the hippocampus on both sides, and most of the almond-
shaped amygdala, was sucked out. The procedure, hopeful at best,
went badly wrong and Henry, then aged 27, was left with no
ability to store or retrieve new experiences. He lived the
subsequent 55 years of his life, until his death in 2008, in the
permanent present moment. He