The famous patient H.M. had portions of his medial temporal lobes removed bilaterally to treat his severe epilepsy. This surgery led to which of the following conditions?

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question describes HM’s bilateral medial temporal lobe removal and asks which condition resulted from that surgery.
Option a) Loss of procedural memory. In HM’s case, procedural memory (like mirror-drawing tasks) remained intact despite the surgery, so this option is incorrect because HM did not lose procedural memory.
Option b) Transient global amnesia. TGA is a temporary amnestic syndrome unrelated to HM’s surgical history, which produced a long-lasting memory impairment rather than a brief episode, making this choice inaccurate.
Option c) Anterograde amnesia. This is the hallmark effect of HM’s surgery: an inability to form new long-term memories after the procedure, while his old memories and other cognitive functions were largely preserved. This aligns with well-established findings on medial temporal lobe damage and memory consolidation.
Option d) A and C. Since A is incorrect (procedural memory was preserved), combining it with C yields an overall false statement.
Option e) All of the above were caused by H.M.’s surgery. Because A and B are not true descriptions of HM’s deficits, this broad statement is also incorrect.
Overall, the reasoning points to c) as the accurate characterization of HM’s postoperative memory condition, namely anterograde amnesia, with preserved procedural memory and nonamnestic functions. The subtlety here is distinguishing different memory systems: explicit episodic/declarative memory is disrupted, while skills and habits (procedural memory) remain intact, illustrating the classic dissociation observed in HM.

The famous patient H.M. had portions of his medial temporal lobes removed bilaterally to treat his severe epilepsy. This surgery led to which of the following conditions?

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