We begin this lesson by talking about Henry Molaison. One thing we didn't
discuss about HM was the task they had him engage in. In this task,
neuropsychologist, Brenda Milner, who was working with HM, had him perform a
mirror tracing task like this one. HM was to track within two lines of the
star, while viewing it only through a mirror. Which was the reverse image. So,
if his hand moved one way, the hand in the mirror moved the other. They asked
HN to perform this task up to ten times each day for three days. They counted
the errors each time he went outside of the lines. What's interesting is that
HM's drawings improved even though he couldn't recall having done this task
before. Now you're looking at the times that I tried it, and I'll be honest,
this task was really hard to do. So what does this tell us about the brain? HM
didn't remember engaging in this task, but he visibly improved. Well, it turns
out that he couldn't form new explicit long-term memories due to damage to his
hippocampus and surrounding areas, but he could learn new skills. As was
demonstrated by his performance on this task.
