patient H.M.
E537886
Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison) was a famous neurological case study whose profound memory loss after brain surgery provided crucial insights into how human memory is organized in the brain.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| patient H.M. canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T5660426 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: patient H.M. Context triple: [Brenda Milner, studied, patient H.M.]
-
A.
Brenda Milner
Brenda Milner is a pioneering neuropsychologist whose groundbreaking research on memory and the brain, particularly through studies of patient H.M., helped establish the field of cognitive neuroscience.
-
B.
Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage was a 19th-century American railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury from an iron tamping rod, becoming a famous case study in neuroscience and the relationship between brain function and personality.
-
C.
Fred Gage
Fred Gage is an American neuroscientist renowned for his pioneering work demonstrating that the adult human brain can generate new neurons, fundamentally reshaping understanding of brain plasticity.
-
D.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus was a pioneering German psychologist best known for his experimental studies of memory and the formulation of the forgetting curve and spacing effect.
-
E.
Jean-Dominique Bauby
Jean-Dominique Bauby was a French journalist and editor of Elle who, after being left almost completely paralyzed by locked-in syndrome, authored the memoir "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by blinking his left eye.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: patient H.M. Target entity description: Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison) was a famous neurological case study whose profound memory loss after brain surgery provided crucial insights into how human memory is organized in the brain.
-
A.
Brenda Milner
Brenda Milner is a pioneering neuropsychologist whose groundbreaking research on memory and the brain, particularly through studies of patient H.M., helped establish the field of cognitive neuroscience.
-
B.
Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage was a 19th-century American railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury from an iron tamping rod, becoming a famous case study in neuroscience and the relationship between brain function and personality.
-
C.
Fred Gage
Fred Gage is an American neuroscientist renowned for his pioneering work demonstrating that the adult human brain can generate new neurons, fundamentally reshaping understanding of brain plasticity.
-
D.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus was a pioneering German psychologist best known for his experimental studies of memory and the formulation of the forgetting curve and spacing effect.
-
E.
Jean-Dominique Bauby
Jean-Dominique Bauby was a French journalist and editor of Elle who, after being left almost completely paralyzed by locked-in syndrome, authored the memoir "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by blinking his left eye.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
case study subject
ⓘ
human ⓘ neurological patient ⓘ |
| ageAtSurgery | 27 ⓘ |
| birthName | Henry Gustav Molaison NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| brainDonatedTo | science ⓘ |
| brainSectionedAt | The Brain Observatory, University of California, San Diego NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| dateOfBirth | 1926-02-26 ⓘ |
| dateOfDeath | 2008-12-02 ⓘ |
| demonstrated |
dissociation between declarative and procedural memory
ⓘ
hippocampus is critical for forming new declarative memories ⓘ role of medial temporal lobe in memory consolidation ⓘ |
| ethicalNote | identity kept confidential as H.M. during his lifetime ⓘ |
| hasAlias |
H.M.
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Patient H.M. NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| identityRevealed | after his death his full name was made public ⓘ |
| impactOnField |
founded modern cognitive neuroscience of memory
ⓘ
influenced theories of memory systems ⓘ |
| knownFor |
contributions to understanding human memory
ⓘ
severe anterograde amnesia ⓘ |
| medicalCondition |
anterograde amnesia
ⓘ
epilepsy ⓘ partial retrograde amnesia ⓘ |
| memoryDeficit |
inability to form new long-term episodic memories
ⓘ
limited retrograde memory for events before surgery ⓘ |
| memoryPreserved |
procedural memory
ⓘ
short-term memory ⓘ working memory ⓘ |
| nationality | American ⓘ |
| participatedIn |
mirror-tracing task experiments
ⓘ
perceptual learning experiments ⓘ |
| placeOfBirth | Manchester, Connecticut, United States NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| placeOfDeath | Windsor Locks, Connecticut, United States NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| postmortemStudy | high-resolution brain imaging and sectioning ⓘ |
| residence |
Hartford, Connecticut, United States
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
nursing home in Connecticut ⓘ |
| showedInExperiments | improved motor skills without conscious recollection of training ⓘ |
| studiedBy |
Brenda Milner
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Suzanne Corkin NERFINISHED ⓘ neuroscientists worldwide ⓘ |
| subjectOf |
books on memory and neuroscience
ⓘ
numerous scientific papers ⓘ |
| treatedBy | William Beecher Scoville NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| underwentProcedure |
bilateral medial temporal lobe resection
ⓘ
surgical removal of amygdala tissue ⓘ surgical removal of large portions of hippocampus ⓘ surgical removal of surrounding medial temporal cortex ⓘ |
| yearOfSurgery | 1953 ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: patient H.M. Description of subject: Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison) was a famous neurological case study whose profound memory loss after brain surgery provided crucial insights into how human memory is organized in the brain.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.