Question: Henry Gustav Molaison (February 26, 1926 - December 2, 2008), known widely as H.M., was an American memory disorder patient who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy to surgically resect the anterior two thirds of his hippocampi, parahippocampal cortices, entorhinal cortices, piriform cortices, and amygdalae in an attempt to cure his epilepsy. Although the surgery was partially successful in controlling his epilepsy, a severe side effect was that he became unable to form new memories. H.M. was widely studied from late 1957 until his death in 2008. His case played an important role in the development of theories that explain the link between brain function and memory, and in the development of cognitive neuropsychology, a branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes.

Henry Molaison was born on February 26, 1926, and experienced intractable epilepsy that has sometimes been attributed to a bicycle accident at the age of seven. (This accident was initially reported to have occurred at age nine, but was corrected by the patient's mother at a later stage.) He had partial seizures for many years, and then several tonic-clonic seizures following his 16th birthday. In 1953, he was referred to William Beecher Scoville, a neurosurgeon at Hartford Hospital, for treatment.  Scoville localized Molaison's epilepsy to his left and right medial temporal lobes (MTLs) and suggested surgical resection of the MTLs as a treatment. On September 1, 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison's bilateral medial temporal lobe resection included the removal of the hippocampal formation and adjacent structures, including most of the amygdaloid complex and entorhinal cortex. His hippocampi appeared entirely nonfunctional because the remaining 2 cm of hippocampal tissue appeared to have atrophied and because the entire entorhinal cortex, which forms the major sensory input to the hippocampus, was destroyed. Some of his anterolateral temporal cortex was also destroyed.  After the surgery, which was partially successful in its primary goal of controlling his epilepsy, Molaison developed severe anterograde amnesia: although his working memory and procedural memory were intact, he could not commit new events to his explicit memory. According to some scientists, he was impaired in his ability to form new semantic knowledge, but researchers argue over the extent of this impairment. He also had moderate retrograde amnesia, and could not remember most events in the one- to two-year period before surgery, nor some events up to 11 years before, meaning that his amnesia was temporally graded. However, his ability to form long-term procedural memories was intact; thus he could, for example, learn new motor skills, despite not being able to remember learning them.  The case was first reported in a paper by Scoville and Brenda Milner in 1957. Near the end of his life, Molaison regularly filled in crossword puzzles. He was able to fill in answers to clues that referred to pre-1953 knowledge. For post-1953 information he was able to modify old memories with new information. For instance, he could add a memory about Jonas Salk by modifying his memory of polio.  He died on December 2, 2008.

Using a quote from the above article, answer the following question: Did his memory ever improve?
HHHHHH
Answer: Near the end of his life, Molaison regularly filled in crossword puzzles. He was able to fill in answers to clues that referred to pre-1953 knowledge.


Question: Aesop ( EE-sop; Greek: Aisopos, Aisopos; c. 620 - 564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.

The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed ... in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.  The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia. The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him "Aesop of Sardis," and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him "the sage of Lydia."  From Aristotle and Herodotus we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth, where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself "was a popular contender for inclusion" in the list of Seven Sages.)  Problems of chronological reconciliation dating the death of Aesop and the reign of Croesus led the Aesop scholar (and compiler of the Perry Index) Ben Edwin Perry in 1965 to conclude that "everything in the ancient testimony about Aesop that pertains to his associations with either Croesus or with any of the so-called Seven Wise Men of Greece must be reckoned as literary fiction," and Perry likewise dismissed Aesop's death in Delphi as legendary; but subsequent research has established that a possible diplomatic mission for Croesus and a visit to Periander "are consistent with the year of Aesop's death." Still problematic is the story by Phaedrus which has Aesop in Athens, telling the fable of the frogs who asked for a king, during the reign of Peisistratos, which occurred decades after the presumed date of Aesop's death.

Using a quote from the above article, answer the following question: Where was Aesop born?
HHHHHH
Answer:
in Thrace at a site on the Black Sea coast which would later become the city Mesembria.