All hope is not lost, however: Schacter found that certain patients who received surgical anesthesia did retain information when they awoke.

While Schacter's research is not a college student's panacea, colleagues say that they are excited about its significance.

"He's going to tell us much more about the way the human brain is wired," said Dr. Verne S. Caviness Jr., Kennedy professor of child neurology and mental retardation at the Medical School.

Caviness, who also directs the division of child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), suggests that implicit memory may play a role in disorders currently attributed solely to explicit memory systems.

Schacter's research, Caviness says, will enable neurologists to see correlated defects and better understand the brain as a parallel processor.

For example, Caviness says he believes that examining the implicit memory of stroke victims will give scientists a more complete understanding of the disabilities they suffer.

Schacter's research should provide a greater ability to understand and diagnose neurological disorders. Because we do not knowingly retrieve implicit memories in our daily lives, we may be unaware of memory disorders in these systems.

Exploring implicit memory is not only useful in locating the source of dysfunction, but also in rehabilitation. According to Associate Professor of Neurology Sandra Weintraub, Schacter's research demonstrates that patients suffering from memory disorders possess information they are unable to access through usual routes. As seen in the example of Ms. H., implicit memory may provide such an alternate route.

"What Schacter has shown is that patients who have a disturbance of the memory system...can demonstrate an ability to remember some aspects of what was previously known," she says.

Cary R. Savage, a clinical fellow in psychology, said that while Schacter's techniques are accepted by the majority of neuroscientists, including himself, some in the field question whether implicit memory is really an unconscious process. Others, he says, believe that conscious awareness could be found in what is considered implicit memory if one could find the right way to question subjects.

But researchers are clearly intrigued. "I think you'd have a hard time finding someone who wouldn't want to collaborate with Dr. Schacter," says Savage.

An unexpected collaborator of Schacter's is Mary J. Olmsted, associate director of Gallery NAGA, a Boston art gallery. Together they serve as curators of the exhibit entitled "Fragile Power: Explorations of Memory," which features a collection of artistic works addressing memory.

And Schacter will be releasing a book that uses works of art to explain memory within the next two years.

You might even say, then, that the Salvador Dali painting hanging on Schacter's office wall serves more than an aesthetic purpose for this professor of psychology. The painting is a tribute to the "art" of memory--an art which colors all our lives.