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

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