A Man With Lost Identity

Henry Gustav Molaison (H.M.) was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science by participating in hundreds of brain studies after the radical change happened to his life after the surgery in his brain.

H.M. has suffered from seizures and convulsions since he was 9 years old, after being hit by a bicycle rider. 18 years after the bicycle accident, H.M. and his doctor decided to remove two finger-shaped slivers called "hippocampus". H.M's seizures abated, but his memories went through abrupt changes. Some part of H.M.'s memory stayed intact, but he failed in converting short term memory to long term memory. For example, H.M. could talk and have a good time with a doctor, just that the next day he would never remember the doctor and what they did the day before. 

At the time, scientists didn't believe that memory was dependent on any one neural organ or region. But later scientists saw that there were at least two systems in brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. This system depends on the function of medial temporal areas, particularly an organ called the hippocampus. Apparently H.M. got damaged in the hippocampus, and that was why he couldn't convert short term memory to long term memory.

False Memory - Is Eyewitness Testimony Reliable?

The story of Ronald Cotton astonishes everyone. On August 1, 1984, Ronald Cotton was arrested for rape and burglary. Jennifer Thompson, the victim of the crime, studied the assailant’s face carefully so that she could bring him to the court. But later when she had come to choose an assailant’s photo, she chose a wrong guy – Cotton – and kept asserting he’s the one who raped her while Cotton kept denying the crime. On top of the suspicious behaviors of Cotton (giving false alibi) was the eyewitness’s testimony, which played a definitive role in sentencing Cotton to life plus 54 years in prison. Couple of years later, Cotton hears another inmate’s bragger about how he raped Jennifer and asks for a second trial. But once again in the court where the real rapist, Bobby Poole was seated, Jennifer appointed Cotton as the rapist and didn’t doubt the fact. Cotton was sent back to prison with heavier sentence. Cotton was exonerated in 1995, after DNA testing vindicated Cotton to be innocent.

Why did Jennifer point at Cotton again in the second trial, when she was actually facing the real rapist? Why didn’t she doubt her choice? Why was she so sure about it?

Everything comes down to her memory. When Jennifer was to choose the criminal’s photo, with many photos given, she assumed one of the photos was the photo of a real rapist. And even when there was no correct photo in the deck, she picked one up (actually the one who looked very similar to the real rapist) and started to believe that the person in the photo was a rapist. That belief caused her memory to change and to adopt into that fact. This process made her wrong eyewitness memory so firm that later when she saw the real rapist in the court, she still couldn't realize that. 

Is eyewitness testimony reliable? The answer is no, and for sure. There always exist a danger that eyewitness's memory could be manipulated. And this slight change in the memory, which then is used in court for an evidence, could doom innocent people's lives. Even if the eyewitness might not do it in purpose, there can exist an error since the testimony is completely relying on memory, and because memory too is not stable and lasting forever intact.