Describe the cases of HM and Clive Wearling.

Describe the cases of HM and Clive Wearling.

On the one hand, H.M.'s hippocampus was removed by surgeons in an attempt to treat him from epilepsy; what led him to lose memory skills. On the other hand, Clive Weating was a musician wo lost his memory as a consequence of viral encephalitis. Both cases presented impairment in forming new long term memory whereas their ability to remember what happend in the last 30 seconds (short term memory) remained.

Patient HM: In 1953, at age 27, HM underwent a bilateral, medial temporal
lobecotomy. As a result the magnitude of his seizures was significantly reduced. However, it also resulted in an 11-year retrograde amnesia, which prevented him from recalling memories spanning from age 16 to 27. He have also acquired the anterograde amnesia. However, HM did demonstrate some islands of memory that remained relatively
intact. He was relatively good tempered and rarely complained. However, this was partially due to an inability to interpret internal signals such as hunger and pain. It is also good to mention that although his reaction times were significantly slower than average, his selective attention
was relatively unaffected.

Patient Clive Wearling: A gifted musician and scholar who, at the height of his career, became infected by herpes simplex encephalitis. His amnesia is extremely severe, both when it comes to his retrograde and also the anterograde amesia. Clive has marked semantic memory impairments for both visual and verbal material. What is important to mention in this case, is that he believes he has just woken up and this state of awakening has persisted for over 8 years. Surprisingly however his musical ability appears to be relatively unaffected by the amnesia.