Background:
•
Clive  Wearing  was  a  musician  who  got  a  viral  infection  -­‐  encephalitis.
•
This  left  him  with  serious  brain  damage  in  the  hippocampus  (biological  cause),  which  caused  memory  impairment
(effect  on  cognition)
•
He  suffered  from  anterograde  and  retrograde  amnesia
Results:
• He  could  not  transfer  information  from  STM  to  LTM.
•
His  memory  lasted  7-­‐30  seconds,  and  he  was  unable  to  form  new  memories.
•
Wearing  still  had  the  ability  to  talk,  read,  write,  conduct  and  sight-­‐read  music  (procedural  knowledge)
• Wearing’s  episodic  memory  and  some  of  his  semantic  memory  were  lost.
•
MRI  scans  of  Wearing’s  brain  showed  damage  to  the  hippocampus  and  some  of  the  frontal  regions.
Conclusion:
•
The  case  of  Clive  Wearing  provides  insight  into  the  biological  foundation  of  different  memory  systems,  which  is  a   cognitive  process.
•
Wearing’s  case  highlights  the  interaction  between  cognition  and  physiology  as  it  establishes  the  link  by  illustrating   the  effect  of  physiological  causes  in  the  brain  (brain  damage  occurring  in  hippocampi  region,  on  the  social  and   cognitive  interactions  of  the  individual.
Evaluation:
Adapted from: http://ibguides.com/psychology/notes/