Introduction to the Special Issue

Suzanne Hammond grew up in the Hartford, Connecticut area, a childhood friend, as circumstance would have it, of the daughter of the surgeon William Beecher Scoville. From this, many readers will have already deduced that she also spent her youth in the same region as did the patient with whom she will always be associated: H.M. Indeed, as her soon-to-be-published book (Corkin, 2012) will no doubt relate, during laboratory interviews that were to take place over ensuing decades, Henry would sometimes opine (incorrectly) that she and he “might have gone to high school together.” Her scientific career began at McGill University, where she learned from and worked with some of the giants of neuroscience, including D. O. Hebb, Wilder Penfield, Herbert Jasper, Theodore Rasmussen, Robert Malmo, and of course, her mentor Brenda Milner. The importance of Corkin and Milner's pioneering investigations of domains of intact nondeclarative memory, despite impaired...