Acquired Savant Syndrome
Amnesia
Patient HM (Henry Molaison): Man who experienced anterograde amnesia and partial retrograde amnesia after a bilateral temporal lobectomy to cure his epilepsy.
Patient RB: Man who experienced a stroke that damaged the CA1 region of his hippocampus. As a result, he lost his ability to form new memories.
Clive Wearing: British man with a severe anterograde and retrograde amnesia. He has lost most of his declarative memory, but his implicit memory is still in tact.
Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis
Susannah Cahalan: Woman who had developed an unusual set of symptoms that included a rapid onset psychosis. Her autobiography, Brain on Fire, is a first hand narrative of this condition. Her story has also been turned into a movie.
Aphasia
Patient Tan (Victor Louis Leborgne): Man who had severe expressive aphasia after syphilis damaged his left frontal lobe. He was examined by Dr. Paul Broca, who conducted the autopsy on Tan’s brain and discovered a large lesion. His specific form of aphasia was later called Broca’s aphasia.
Lazare Lelong: A patient of Dr. Paul Broca with expressive aphasia. Post mortem examination showed injury to the same area of the brain as seen in other case studies of a similar type of aphasia.
Autism
Jebediah Buxton: Man with savant skills for mathematical calculations.
Brain Injury
Phineas Gage: Man who survived after a large metal rod was sent flying through his skull and brain. Following the injury, he had a marked change in behavior that was uncharacteristic of him before the injury.
Ischemia
Jill Bolte Taylor: Neuroscientist who experienced a rupture of an arteriovenous malformation, resulting in severe bleeding in the left hemisphere of her brain. Her autobiography, My Stroke of Insight, details her experiences from having the stroke to rehabilitation. She has also given a TED talk about her stroke.
Parkinson's Disease
"The Frozen Addicts": Group of six people in California who mistakenly took a toxin called MPTP. After exposure, the patients developed bradykinesia (slowness of movement) and tremors, which resembles the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Urbach-Wiethe Disease
Patient SM: Person with severe amygdala damage as a result of highly specific calcification. Because of this damage, she exhibited no fear on behavioral testing.