Fact
Patient H.M. could not form a new memory for fifty years
He read the same magazine daily and found it new every time. He also proved memory is not one thing.
After surgery removed much of his hippocampus in 1953 to treat epilepsy, Henry Molaison lost the ability to form new conscious memories. Yet he could learn new motor skills – improving at tracing tasks while insisting he had never tried before. That dissociation established that memory is several separate systems.