Science News

German musician who lost nearly all memory after contracting herpes encephalitis can learn new pieces of musicA professional cellist who lost nearly all of his memory after a virus destroyed parts of his brain has astonished doctors with his remarkable recall of music.The 71-year-old, known only as PM, had played with a major German orchestra before contracting the infection that devastated his brain's memory centres in 2005.The illness left the musician with such profound amnesia he could remember almost nothing of his past and was unable to plan for the future. The only people he recognised were his brother and a care worker."He can hardly remember a thing. He has no memory of any personal or professional events," Carsten Finke, a neurologist at Charit? university hospital in Berlin, told the Guardian. "He is living in the moment, more or less. He has lost his whole life."Doctors made their discovery when they tested PM's ability to recall musical information and found he could identify the scales, rhythms