Long ago, a man walked into a hospital, his name was Henry. He complained of seizures, severe ones. The kind of seizures that take apart your life.
Doctors had tried everything but nothing seemed to work. So they decided to try something… extreme. There was a surgeon named William in that hospital. He made a decision that would change neuroscience forever. He removed a part of Henry’s brain.. the hippocampus.
At that time no one had a complete understanding as to what it did. The seizures stopped but with that something else disappeared too. After the surgery, he could talk and walk normally, recognise his parents. He was..fine, or at least it looked that way until you spoke to him twice.
If you’d leave the room and come back he would greet you again as if he’s seeing you for the first time. Henry could no longer form new memories
Anything after that surgery didn’t…stay.
It would all go back to default settings and his life became a loop.
Doctors studied him for years and they noticed something strange. Even though he couldn’t remember learning new things, he could learn new things. They made him trace a star by looking in a mirror. At first he was terrible but with days he improved, his hands remembered even if his mind didn’t. Whenever asked he would say “ I’ve never done this before”.
That day science understood something…There’s a memory we can talk about and the memory your body remembers.
Why is it that Henry couldn’t form memories but could learn things? Why did his brain forget but body remembered things?
MBH/PS