ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two cases that were unique in that they provided clinical evidence that amnestic memory loss, depending on the location of the lesion, could be sensory-specific rather than multimodal, in support of the experimental animal literature discussed. The patients demonstrated that verbal and non-verbal auditory and right and left tactile recent memory functions could be preserved when there was loss of visual recent memory functions. Both patients also had other behavioral and elementary neurological deficits related to the lesion location, but none could explain their sensory-specific visual amnesia. Fleming made his inductive discovery that initiated a line of deductive research, which ultimately led to the identification and commercial development of penicillin, investigators, including Fleming, threw away their “contaminated” petri dishes. Based on a review of the literature citing Ross using the Web of Science, it is clear that the cases have not been incorporated into current neuropsychological theories of the normal mind, including memory and remembering, other than individual researchers interested in the neurobiology of disconnection syndromes or the neuroanatomical basis of clinical syndromes.
