Hyperthymestic syndrome: Perfect automatic memory
Fascinating. The first case of a person with virtually perfect autobiographic memory. In the interview, she says that she runs her entire life through her head every day. Perhaps the difference isn’t in memory capacity but rather the automatic (unconscious) practicing of all past sensory experience.
NPR interview with patient, John Gabrieli and Larry Cahill.
Link to paper. Abstract:
This report describes AJ, a woman whose remembering dominates her life. Her memory is “nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic.” AJ spends an excessive amount of time recalling her personal past with considerable accuracy and reliability. If given a date, she can tell you what she was doing and what day of the week it fell on. She differs from other cases of superior memory who use practiced mnemonics to remember vast amounts of personally irrelevant information. We propose the name hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek word thymesis meaning remembering, and that AJ is the first reported case.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] syndrome: Perfect automatic memory http://neurodudes.com/2008/05/21/hyp…omatic-memory/ "Fascinating. The first case of a person with virtually perfect autobiographic memory. In the [...]