His memories are stronger than your brain

               

She was a renowned artist, whose works have been cover of New Yorker magazine six times.

I played violin in an amateur orchestra and, as a hobby, learned to fly a single-engine plane, with which made more than 400 trips.

But at 64 years, everything fell apart: a viral encephalitis destroyed the point of the brain where memories are created and hosted - the hippocampus.

Months later, however, doctors realized that, although the memories have completely disappeared, the Lonni Sue Johnson's skills were preserved.

The disease left brain Lonni with serious damage. Today, she can not remember or important events of his life - like marriage itself - or things that she just did - like brushing your teeth.

She can not learn anything new, and has no knowledge of how the world works - including what was known for her super, as the art world.

But when asked how to fly a plane, how to paint a watercolor or what are the strings of a violin, she quickly responds.

Lonni is as intriguing case now being studied by the Johns Hopkins University, where scientists have determined how much the former artist skills were maintained.

For this, they applied an oral test with specific questions about each of the areas that the woman had easier - arts, music and flight.

The questions were simple, such as "what is the best way to remove excess water watercolor?" or "how to make a plane not tip over to the side?".

The same test was applied to 80 other people with the same age Lonni - including experts in these areas.

The results surprised the researchers: Lonni exceeded lay on the issues of aviation and music, and was better than the experts on questions about art.

The case suggests that scientific design more accepted than it is "memory" is wrong.

Until now, neuroscientists believed that the memory only differed mechanical skills, like riding a bike, but Lonni table shows that the thing is different: the skills that were marked in her head are not merely physical; They are complex as flying a plane and abstract as painting and music.