This video, we're going to be talking about case studies. A case study is a very in-depth examination of one person or sometimes a small group's experiences, abilities, and behaviors. With a case study, you're going to be gathering as much information as you can about that one person. So their history, their relationships, their symptoms, behaviors, skills, you name it. Researchers can be following the same person for months, even years at times.
So you really get a lot of information with these types of studies. These are typically going to be done on a very unique person or a person in a very unique situation. To give you an example of that, one of the most famous case studies in psychology is the case of Henry Molaison, better known as H.M., who suffered from a very debilitating seizure condition. In 1953, at the age of 27, he had a surgical procedure called a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy. That means his medial temporal lobe was removed on both sides of his brain.
This surgery did cure his epilepsy, however, from this point on, he was unable to form new long-term memories. His memory span was now about 15 minutes long, and he lived with this condition right up until his eighties. Psychologists studied him for decades, and we learned so much about memory from him. He really made an incredible contribution to science, and we're very grateful. Just to give you some examples, despite the fact that he could no longer form new memories, his long-term memory was almost fully intact. He could remember his childhood, his adolescence.
He knew his family. He had skills from before his surgery. He could do crossword puzzles and play bingo. His personality was reportedly largely unaffected. He was a very kind and cheerful person for his entire life.
He could even occasionally learn a new skill, but he couldn't remember learning it. It was very interesting. He taught us that memory is a distinct function that is separate from other cognitive skills. He also taught us that memory is not just one thing; there are all different types of memory and that they seem to interact in different ways. And, of course, that the medial temporal lobe is essential for memory, particularly the formation of long-term memories.
So, that is a very famous case study that happened in psychology. Now, just to give you a sense of some of the common strengths and limitations that we see with case studies, one of the most common strengths is that they really have a high level of detail. Again, a team of researchers could be looking at the same person and putting all their time and resources into one person for months, if not years. So, you normally get a wealth of information. One other thing about case studies that can be really useful is that we can use them to research topics that practical or ethical considerations might normally prevent us from studying.
Obviously, we could never have a randomized control trial where we give 50 participants bilateral medial temporal lobectomies just to see what happens to their memory. Ethically, you can't do that. But if this happens to a person who is then able to consent, which he was, and he also had family involved in the consent process, well then we can study that one person and maybe learn some new things. So they can be useful in those situations. Now, in terms of limitations with case studies, sometimes information can be missing or hard to interpret.
For example, you could be doing a case study on a child. Maybe their history is not fully known. Maybe the person or child doesn't have the verbal skills to fully articulate what is happening to them or to accurately self-report. It can be anything. So, information can be hard to interpret at times.
One of the most important limitations to be aware of with case studies is that you cannot use them to make assumptions or generalizations about behavior. So a moment ago, I was gushing about how he taught us a ton about memory, and he did. But it was not the case that we studied and then said, "Alright. That's how memory works. Let's go home."
Instead, we studied him, got a bunch of ideas, and then scientists took those ideas and then did all kinds of controlled experiments in a laboratory with animals and humans to verify and validate those findings. And so we can get a lot of ideas from case studies, but we cannot just assume that what we learn from them will generalize to other populations. One other note that ties into that point is that they are very difficult to replicate, of course. These are unique people or people in unique situations. Odds are it's only going to happen one or two times.
You can't really replicate your findings. And so because of that, we do not want to be making generalizations about behavior. Alright. So those are case studies in a nutshell, and I'll see you guys in our next video. Bye bye.