See the NYT's obituary at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?ref=science
It tells of his improving skill at drawing a line between two star shapes, a smaller one inside the other, despite never knowing he had done this many prior times and needing to have the task explained anew each time. - This clearly demonstrated some learning or at least motor skills.
I had "second hand" contact with HM in that another researcher studying him was associate of mine for the year I spent in the cognitive science department of JHU.
HM also learned to do the "Tower of Hanoi" task* with more proficiency, but of course had no memory of having ever done it before. This task clearly uses motor skills, as does the drawing between concentric stars does, but at least to me when I do it, it requires considerable conscious planning of future moves. Thus, I think, HM could learn to "reason better" as well as just learn to be more proficient in motor skills (like riding a bike, hitting a golf ball, or keeping the pencil point while drawing his closed loop line between two stars etc.)
Obviously all "learning" is some form of memory. Thus while HM lived post-OP without the ability to form any new declarative memories, he, IMHO, did have something more than just motor memory preserved.
Despite HM having unintentionally advanced mankind's understanding of memory many fold, much of memory is still a mystery.
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* "T. of H." is a well known puzzle with three posts and initially many rings stacked on one of them. Each ring has a different diameter size, and not initially nor at any time can a bigger one be placed on top of a smaller one. The complexity of legally moving the rings from their initial post to one of the other two increases very rapidly with the number of rings to be moved.
I believe the name comes for a game in progress in Hanoi where monks are moving a large number of rings. - Some think that when they finally get them all transferred to a single post (not the original one) the world will end. I forget the number of rings they are working with, but hundreds of years from now when they finish we will know it that is true (assuming the LHC does not get us first.
)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05hm.html?ref=science
It tells of his improving skill at drawing a line between two star shapes, a smaller one inside the other, despite never knowing he had done this many prior times and needing to have the task explained anew each time. - This clearly demonstrated some learning or at least motor skills.
I had "second hand" contact with HM in that another researcher studying him was associate of mine for the year I spent in the cognitive science department of JHU.
HM also learned to do the "Tower of Hanoi" task* with more proficiency, but of course had no memory of having ever done it before. This task clearly uses motor skills, as does the drawing between concentric stars does, but at least to me when I do it, it requires considerable conscious planning of future moves. Thus, I think, HM could learn to "reason better" as well as just learn to be more proficient in motor skills (like riding a bike, hitting a golf ball, or keeping the pencil point while drawing his closed loop line between two stars etc.)
Obviously all "learning" is some form of memory. Thus while HM lived post-OP without the ability to form any new declarative memories, he, IMHO, did have something more than just motor memory preserved.
Despite HM having unintentionally advanced mankind's understanding of memory many fold, much of memory is still a mystery.
-------------------
* "T. of H." is a well known puzzle with three posts and initially many rings stacked on one of them. Each ring has a different diameter size, and not initially nor at any time can a bigger one be placed on top of a smaller one. The complexity of legally moving the rings from their initial post to one of the other two increases very rapidly with the number of rings to be moved.
I believe the name comes for a game in progress in Hanoi where monks are moving a large number of rings. - Some think that when they finally get them all transferred to a single post (not the original one) the world will end. I forget the number of rings they are working with, but hundreds of years from now when they finish we will know it that is true (assuming the LHC does not get us first.
)
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