ABSTRACT
The effects of medial temporal lobe surgery in human patients (Scoville & Milner, 1957) highlighted the importance of medial temporal lobe structures in learning and memory. The severity of the amnesia in the patients appeared to correlate with the amount of damage that the surgeon believed to have occurred to the hippocampus (Scoville & Milner, 1957). The hypothesis that damage to the hippocampus was the cause of the severe anterograde amnesia, however, faced immediate problems. Attempts in monkeys to recreate the surgical approach used in the amnesic patients failed to show the severe impairments that would be expected from these patients (Correll & Scoville, 1965a,b; Orbach, Miller, & Rasmussen, 1960). However, human patients with severe amnesia and damage to the hippocampal system continued to be reported (Delay & Brion, 1969; Oxbury et al., 1997; Warrington & Duchen, 1992; Zola-Morgan, Squire, & Amaral, 1986).
