ABSTRACT
This chapter explains an appreciation of the scope of the evidence and to stimulate thought about the benefits and limitations of the evidence, as well as how that evidence might be put to best use. It discusses challenges facing the field of memory-disorder case studies, including dissociations as reflecting just half of the necessary equation, the possibility of non-modularity of processing making it difficult to find dissociations, inter- and intra-patient variability, the role of investigators’ theoretical lenses with which they approach a case, the importance of undiscovered cases, and challenges with institutional review boards. Some functions that an ordinary person can accomplish though what is easy for the ordinary person can occur only with considerable effort in the brain-damaged individual. Investigators’ theoretical lenses influence which tests are run, because the tests are chosen so as to confirm the patient’s functioning with respect to the investigators’ beliefs about the nature of the malady and about their theoretical interpretation of that malady.
