The study by Kim et al. (2011) investigates the role of the hippocampus in visual discrimination performance, particularly when spatial processing is required and stimuli have high feature overlap. The researchers evaluated patients with circumscribed hippocampal lesions on tasks involving the discrimination of similar faces and scenes. The tasks were conducted in two conditions: one where the same stimulus set was repeated across trials (repeated condition) and another where each trial presented unique stimuli (trial-unique condition). In the repeated condition, controls showed gradual improvement in performance, suggesting they could learn from the repeated stimuli. However, patients with hippocampal lesions did not show improvement, indicating a deficit in learning rather than visual perception. In the trial-unique condition, both patients and controls performed similarly, suggesting that the patients' intact performance was not due to learning but to other cognitive abilities. The findings suggest that previous reports of impaired discrimination performance after medial temporal lobe damage may reflect impaired learning rather than impaired visual perception. This supports the idea that memory is a distinct cerebral function separable from other perceptual and cognitive abilities.The study by Kim et al. (2011) investigates the role of the hippocampus in visual discrimination performance, particularly when spatial processing is required and stimuli have high feature overlap. The researchers evaluated patients with circumscribed hippocampal lesions on tasks involving the discrimination of similar faces and scenes. The tasks were conducted in two conditions: one where the same stimulus set was repeated across trials (repeated condition) and another where each trial presented unique stimuli (trial-unique condition). In the repeated condition, controls showed gradual improvement in performance, suggesting they could learn from the repeated stimuli. However, patients with hippocampal lesions did not show improvement, indicating a deficit in learning rather than visual perception. In the trial-unique condition, both patients and controls performed similarly, suggesting that the patients' intact performance was not due to learning but to other cognitive abilities. The findings suggest that previous reports of impaired discrimination performance after medial temporal lobe damage may reflect impaired learning rather than impaired visual perception. This supports the idea that memory is a distinct cerebral function separable from other perceptual and cognitive abilities.