At the 2019 meeting in New York we celebrated 30 years of MDRS with a special symposium reflecting on the past, present, and future of memory research. Harry Whitaker began with "Genesis: What did we know about memory and brain in 1989?" (video of talk also available), Morris Moscovitch added "Exegesis: From neuropsychology to cognitive neuroscience of memory: The deep influence of neuroimaging", and Lynn Nadel concluded with "Prophecy: Prediction is hard, especially about the future".

Henry Gustav Molaison (February 26, 1926 – December 2, 2008), known widely as H.M., was an American man 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. Read a tribute from MDRS.