Thursday, July 30, 2015

The people who can perfectly remember every single day of their lives...

We all have moments when our memory fails us. It gets to Monday morning and we can't tell a co-worker where we were Friday night, or we're doing a pub quiz and for whatever reason we struggle pathetically to remember the name of the lead singer from the Cure. However, for better or for worse, remembering stuff isn't a problem for those with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM).

HSAM – or Hyperthymesia, as it's also known – is characterised by the ability to remember almost every day of your life after the age of ten or 11 years old, down to the most minute detail. When given any past date, people with HSAM can usually recall things like what colour dress they were wearing, or even what the weather was like. It's unknown whether people are born with HSAM or develop the ability in their early years. So far, 61 people in the world have been identified as having HSAM, including 56 in America and five in the UK.

 I asked Joey DeGrandis, a 30-year-old New Yorker with HSAM, to recall what he did on the 9th of July, 1995. He answered down the phone without hesitation: "July 9th, 1995 – it was a Sunday – I was in Chicago with my family for vacation and I believe we went to Shedd Aquarium that day. Another random memory: I remember watching I Love Lucy a few days later at my friend James's house on Tuesday the 11th of July; it was an episode where Lucy and Ethel were crying at the end... but it was 'funny' crying." Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Jill Price and her awesome memory; blessing or curse?
  2. Brad Williams, the man with the amazing memory...
  3. Power naps produce a significant improvement in memory performance...
  4. Junk food linked to memory loss in NSW study on rats...
  5. Is the internet bad for the memory?

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