PSY-0001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Henry Molaison, Substantia Nigra, Phineas Gage
7 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Severe anterograde declarative memory disorder, 11-year retrograde memory disorder. He was in an accident, and started suffering from extreme epileptic seizures with no available medication. Surgeons removed his hippocampus, which stopped his seizures but removed his declarative memory (although not his immediate/procedural memory) Suffered an accident - railroad spike straight through left frontal lobe. Changed from non-aggressive to aggressive and uninhibited. Showed that frontal lobe has an important role in executive function. Some of his patients had problems with language skills. These patients had a damaged area of the brain between the frontal and temporal lobes (now referred to as broca"s area) Wernicke"s area is another such area which, when damaged, lets the affected person speak but not make sense (confabulation), which is common among alcoholics. Post-mortems revealed a diminished substantia nigra in certain people, which is a dark substance of cells that produce dopamine.
