4 ms·

"Given how deeply all these structures are embedded in the brain, only a neurosurgeon could have destroyed them with such precision." This is just false to the

by joveian 12y ago

"Given how deeply all these structures are embedded in the brain, only a neurosurgeon could have destroyed them with such precision." This is just false to the extent it isn't nonsensical. The surgeon claimed that the destruction was precise, but the autopsy actually determined that damage was much more widespread than expected. This has resulted in reconsideration of theories that were based on assumptions that the damage was more limited. In general, when reading anything that mentions H.M. without mentioning this fact it is important to keep that in mind. This article should have taken the new knowledge into account, but continues to present false information. This is the type of jounalism that helps make it very difficult for popular but incorrect scientific information to be corrected. Another example of this I know of is how REM sleep is commonly referred to as "dream sleep" (including, unfortunately, on Wikipedia last I checked) although the idea that dreaming happens only or even primarily in REM sleep has been considered disproven for multiple decades now and was based on flawed early studies that continue to be described uncritically long after the serious flaws are well known. On the topic of books: one really excelent (although old now, mostly written in the early 90s and maybe late 80s IIRC) technical book on brain organization is Pierre Gloor's _The Temporal Lobe and Limbic System_. I haven't looked again recently, but I don't know of a comparable work where a neroscientist tries to lay out in depth (it is a neruoscience text) almost everything known about how the brain works together (it is easy to see why; it is a huge amount of work!).

slazaro 12y ago
> including, unfortunately, on Wikipedia last I checked I'm gonna be that guy: did you try editing it to make it more accurate?
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  To be fair, last time I tried to make an edit on Wikipedia, it resulted in a huge argument that spanned literally several days, at the end of which I gave up. Note that this was a tiny edit, changing the word order in a sentence or something like that on a rather niche topic. I haven't bothered trying to edit anything since then.
  - albedoa 12y ago
    While I appreciate your frustration, people are constantly trying to help (to be optimistic about their intent) by "changing the word order". The result is often a changed and inaccurate meaning. For all our sake, I hope you choose to make appropriate edits where you see they are needed. Don't be deterred by that one experience.
- epochwolf 12y ago
  It's not worth the effort to edit wikipedia.
  - hnriot 12y ago
    sure it is, and it's thanks to people not like you that we have such a beautiful repository of information. I routinely make changes to wikipedia, once you have a decent reputation and have demonstrated competency in an area it's a very fluid process. Obviously if I tried changing one of the contention pages (political, religious etc) that would be a different matter, but for the areas that I am knowledgeable, CS and art history, changes are accepted and stick.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      >once you have a decent reputation and have demonstrated competency in an area it's a very fluid process. Right, so once you have dedicated many hours of your life, editing becomes easier. I imagine that's why most consider it "not worth the effort." If I can't get a good edit with supporting evidence to stick without first spending a large amount of time in the system, I'll probably pass.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      That's not the encyclopedia that anyone can edit though. And while you might have had a good experience plenty of people get embroiled in kafkesque bureaucratic policy stuff after attempting to make small uncontroversial edits to uncontroversial articles. They'll change some spelling and punctuation without being logged in. Someone using rollback or twinkle will rapidly revert, and leave a vandalism warning on the IP page. The IP editor will remove that warning, revert the edit, and say something like "what? This isn't vandalism, read what I changed". At that point a bunch of people descend and there is little hope of getting the edits to stick. Someone will suggest creating an account to look more legit (even though most useful edits are made by anon accounts). The IP will create an account and log in to continue the discussion. Even though their name passes the strict software-enforced requirements they might find someone taking them to one of the noticeboards for usernames (the fact that WP has more than one admin area for usernames, on top of software enforced policy, is an elegant example of how out of control bureaucracy is.). Assuming they get through this someone back at the talk page will accuse them of sock-puppeting and will template their page. Someone will slap up a welcome template. So the new users sends them a message asking for help. The other user will maybe say "I can't actually help you; i don't really know that much about policy; I'm just doing this on my way to get admin rights". Or they will agree to help, at which point the new user is accused of forum shopping. I'd love to see some decent research on the experience of new editors at WP. I know several people who attempted to make good quality edits to uncontroversial articles who had a horrible experience. WP is, for some people, thoroughly toxic.
- aidenn0 12y ago
  It's extremely hard to get an edit in Wikipedia to stick if you only have primary sources; with a recent, reliable secondary source you often can get it to stick though. If you have a citation in an undergraduate (or even better high school) level neurology textbook then go ahead and make the effort, otherwise don't bother.
nomurrcy 12y ago
Are there any other more modern (read: available) books you recommend on the topic? Gloor's work is about $500 presently on amazon and not available electronically.
dewarrn1 12y ago
"The surgeon claimed that the destruction was precise, but the autopsy actually determined that damage was much more widespread than expected." This is flat wrong. Based on structural neuroimaging evidence, Corkin et al. (1997) showed that HM's resection was less extensive than Scoville's notes suggested, not more extensive. The more recent post-mortem analysis of HM's brain (Annese et al., 2014) concurs, and in fact gives an even more conservative estimate of the resection. As a researcher who studies memory and works with severely amnesic patients, I think that it's important to point out that the precision of HM's lesion was unique in our field because every other bilateral hippocampal amnesic patient has a naturally-occurring lesion. Etiologies vary (herpes simplex encephalitis, anoxia, and, historically, Korsakoff's), but common to each etiology is the potential for widespread damage beyond the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (MTL). Given that HM's surgery predated sophisticated neuroimaging methods, his case provided researchers of the era the very best possibility of isolating the cognitive processes that depended on the MTL. There have been many methodological and theoretical improvements over the intervening decades, but the work that Brenda Milner, Sue Corkin, and many others carried out with HM was seminal for the field. Annese, J., Schenker-Ahmed, N. M., Bartsch, H., Maechler, P., Sheh, C., Thomas, N., … Corkin, S. (2014). Postmortem examination of patient H.M.’s brain based on histological sectioning and digital 3D reconstruction. Nature Communications, 5, 3122. doi:10.1038/ncomms4122 Corkin, S., Amaral, D. G., Gonzalez, R. G., Johnson, K. A., & Hyman, B. T. (1997). H.M.’s medial temporal lobe lesion: findings from magnetic resonance imaging. J. Neurosci., 17, 3964–3979.
- joveian 12y ago
  Thanks for the excellent references; I obviously should have checked my facts before posting. The quote I quoted also makes sense in the context you mention of being in contrast to naturally occurring lesions, which looking again seems clear enough from the story. I think part of what I was thinking of was from this previous wired article on the study you mention: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/hm-brain-closeup http://www.wired.com/2014/01/hm-brain-closeup Particularly Suzane Corkin's quote about shifting the emphasis from the hippocampus to the entorhinal cortex. The wider damage I was misremembering the extent and cause of looks like it was the combination of the left orbitofrontal legion (possibly but not necessarily connected to the accident or surgery) and the cerebellar atrophy (attributed to anticonvulsant medication). The most recent paper suggest that the cerebellar atrophy was likely to do lifelong medication, but I'm not sure if the higher does of whatever medication he took prior to sugery could have caused that as well. In any case, little if any of the additional damage was likely related to the sugery so as you say that point I made is wrong. Apologies to all for the misinformation and thanks for the correction and references. Edit: Also, I suspect I was partly thinking of this article as well and others along these lines (rather than what I actually said): http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/HM.htm http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/HM.htm

by joveian 12y ago

slazaro 12y ago

> including, unfortunately, on Wikipedia last I checked I'm gonna be that guy: did you try editing it to make it more accurate?

enraged_camel 12y ago
To be fair, last time I tried to make an edit on Wikipedia, it resulted in a huge argument that spanned literally several days, at the end of which I gave up. Note that this was a tiny edit, changing the word order in a sentence or something like that on a rather niche topic. I haven't bothered trying to edit anything since then.
- albedoa 12y ago
  While I appreciate your frustration, people are constantly trying to help (to be optimistic about their intent) by "changing the word order". The result is often a changed and inaccurate meaning. For all our sake, I hope you choose to make appropriate edits where you see they are needed. Don't be deterred by that one experience.
epochwolf 12y ago
It's not worth the effort to edit wikipedia.
- hnriot 12y ago
  sure it is, and it's thanks to people not like you that we have such a beautiful repository of information. I routinely make changes to wikipedia, once you have a decent reputation and have demonstrated competency in an area it's a very fluid process. Obviously if I tried changing one of the contention pages (political, religious etc) that would be a different matter, but for the areas that I am knowledgeable, CS and art history, changes are accepted and stick.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    >once you have a decent reputation and have demonstrated competency in an area it's a very fluid process. Right, so once you have dedicated many hours of your life, editing becomes easier. I imagine that's why most consider it "not worth the effort." If I can't get a good edit with supporting evidence to stick without first spending a large amount of time in the system, I'll probably pass.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    That's not the encyclopedia that anyone can edit though. And while you might have had a good experience plenty of people get embroiled in kafkesque bureaucratic policy stuff after attempting to make small uncontroversial edits to uncontroversial articles. They'll change some spelling and punctuation without being logged in. Someone using rollback or twinkle will rapidly revert, and leave a vandalism warning on the IP page. The IP editor will remove that warning, revert the edit, and say something like "what? This isn't vandalism, read what I changed". At that point a bunch of people descend and there is little hope of getting the edits to stick. Someone will suggest creating an account to look more legit (even though most useful edits are made by anon accounts). The IP will create an account and log in to continue the discussion. Even though their name passes the strict software-enforced requirements they might find someone taking them to one of the noticeboards for usernames (the fact that WP has more than one admin area for usernames, on top of software enforced policy, is an elegant example of how out of control bureaucracy is.). Assuming they get through this someone back at the talk page will accuse them of sock-puppeting and will template their page. Someone will slap up a welcome template. So the new users sends them a message asking for help. The other user will maybe say "I can't actually help you; i don't really know that much about policy; I'm just doing this on my way to get admin rights". Or they will agree to help, at which point the new user is accused of forum shopping. I'd love to see some decent research on the experience of new editors at WP. I know several people who attempted to make good quality edits to uncontroversial articles who had a horrible experience. WP is, for some people, thoroughly toxic.
aidenn0 12y ago
It's extremely hard to get an edit in Wikipedia to stick if you only have primary sources; with a recent, reliable secondary source you often can get it to stick though. If you have a citation in an undergraduate (or even better high school) level neurology textbook then go ahead and make the effort, otherwise don't bother.

nomurrcy 12y ago

Are there any other more modern (read: available) books you recommend on the topic? Gloor's work is about $500 presently on amazon and not available electronically.

dewarrn1 12y ago

"The surgeon claimed that the destruction was precise, but the autopsy actually determined that damage was much more widespread than expected." This is flat wrong. Based on structural neuroimaging evidence, Corkin et al. (1997) showed that HM's resection was less extensive than Scoville's notes suggested, not more extensive. The more recent post-mortem analysis of HM's brain (Annese et al., 2014) concurs, and in fact gives an even more conservative estimate of the resection. As a researcher who studies memory and works with severely amnesic patients, I think that it's important to point out that the precision of HM's lesion was unique in our field because every other bilateral hippocampal amnesic patient has a naturally-occurring lesion. Etiologies vary (herpes simplex encephalitis, anoxia, and, historically, Korsakoff's), but common to each etiology is the potential for widespread damage beyond the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (MTL). Given that HM's surgery predated sophisticated neuroimaging methods, his case provided researchers of the era the very best possibility of isolating the cognitive processes that depended on the MTL. There have been many methodological and theoretical improvements over the intervening decades, but the work that Brenda Milner, Sue Corkin, and many others carried out with HM was seminal for the field. Annese, J., Schenker-Ahmed, N. M., Bartsch, H., Maechler, P., Sheh, C., Thomas, N., … Corkin, S. (2014). Postmortem examination of patient H.M.’s brain based on histological sectioning and digital 3D reconstruction. Nature Communications, 5, 3122. doi:10.1038/ncomms4122 Corkin, S., Amaral, D. G., Gonzalez, R. G., Johnson, K. A., & Hyman, B. T. (1997). H.M.’s medial temporal lobe lesion: findings from magnetic resonance imaging. J. Neurosci., 17, 3964–3979.

joveian 12y ago
Thanks for the excellent references; I obviously should have checked my facts before posting. The quote I quoted also makes sense in the context you mention of being in contrast to naturally occurring lesions, which looking again seems clear enough from the story. I think part of what I was thinking of was from this previous wired article on the study you mention: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/hm-brain-closeup http://www.wired.com/2014/01/hm-brain-closeup Particularly Suzane Corkin's quote about shifting the emphasis from the hippocampus to the entorhinal cortex. The wider damage I was misremembering the extent and cause of looks like it was the combination of the left orbitofrontal legion (possibly but not necessarily connected to the accident or surgery) and the cerebellar atrophy (attributed to anticonvulsant medication). The most recent paper suggest that the cerebellar atrophy was likely to do lifelong medication, but I'm not sure if the higher does of whatever medication he took prior to sugery could have caused that as well. In any case, little if any of the additional damage was likely related to the sugery so as you say that point I made is wrong. Apologies to all for the misinformation and thanks for the correction and references. Edit: Also, I suspect I was partly thinking of this article as well and others along these lines (rather than what I actually said): http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/HM.htm http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/HM.htm