Neuroscience
For most of us, the remembrance of days and weeks gone by is rapidly obscured by the clouds of forgetting. Not so for people with what's known as hyperthymesia or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. These unusual individuals can recall most of their past with exquisite vividness and detail. For the final day of Digest Super Week, meet hyperthymesic Becky Sharrock:
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- Total Recall: The Man Who Can Remember Every Day Of His Life In Detail
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Neuroscience
Day 7 of Digest Super Week: Meet the woman who remembers most of her life in extraordinary detail
For most of us, the remembrance of days and weeks gone by is rapidly obscured by the clouds of forgetting. Not so for people with what's known as hyperthymesia or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. These unusual individuals can recall most of their past with exquisite vividness and detail. For the final day of Digest Super Week, meet hyperthymesic Becky Sharrock:
I have highly superior autobiographical memory
My name is Rebecca Sharrock and I have Hyperthymesia (commonly known as HSAM, or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory). Until the age of 21 nobody (including myself) had any idea about why distant memories kept invading my thoughts. When memories flash through they are involuntary, very vivid and make me relive past events. In other words, I’m brought back to the same emotional and psychological age I was at the time it happened. I have no control over what memories will flash through my mind, as they are an endless and random stream.
On the 23rd of January, 2011 I found out about HSAM. My Mum and I watched a television show called The View in which the first few people found to have HSAM were being interviewed. After I saw this segment, so many questions had been answered for me. Mum sent an email to the University of California, Irvine (who are studying this newly discovered memory syndrome) stating that she believed I had this condition. The UCI then sent us a reply, saying that they wanted to test me.
I did my first quiz over the phone on the 14th of April, 2011. I was very nervous to begin with, but once I started doing the test I felt relieved and found it easy to do. I was given random dates and asked to recall the day of the week it fell on; and any personal and public events I could remember.
I was told I did very well on the quiz, and I was retested by them on the 9th of April, 2013 when I was old enough to participate in their research study. I am pleased I can now help them with their research. For further HSAM information, please visit my Facebook page Superior Autobiographical Memory Australia.
Ms Rebecca Sharrock lives near Brisbane in Australia. Some of her hobbies include writing, doing Taekwondo (she was awarded her black belt in 2010), reading about foreign countries and science. Harry Potter though, has been her favourite thing since she was nine. About to turn 24 in December, her favourite animals are pigs ("as you may guess from my picture," she says).
--Further reading and watching--
-Total recall: The man who can remember every day of his life in detail - Research Digest report from last year about a case of hyperthymesia.
-Is superior memory a blessing or a curse? Memory researcher Catriona Morrison (University of Leeds) talks to mnemonists, people with HSAM and researchers.
-Channel 4 documentary: The Boy Who Can't Forget
-Endless Memory documentary from CBS news.
- How Thinking About The Future Can Cause Us To Forget The Past
We routinely envision future events, whether that be fantasising about next month’s beach retreat, or planning whether to hit the gym this afternoon before or after picking up the dry cleaning. New research supports the idea that we are able to conjure...
- Super Week Round-up
We hope you enjoyed our Super Week special feature that ran all last week to complement the Super-themed special issue of The Psychologist magazine. Each day we met a person with an extreme ability or a researcher investigating such an ability. Here's...
- Total Recall: The Man Who Can Remember Every Day Of His Life In Detail
For most of us, it's tricky enough to remember what we were doing this time last week, let alone on some random day years ago. But for a blind 20-year-old man referred to by researchers as HK, every day of his life since the age of about eleven is...
- Sensecam
Microsoft's research project: SenseCam SenseCam and memory functioning Here is a recently published research study: SenseCam improves memory for recent events and quality of life in a patient with memory retrieval difficulties. Memory. 2011 Sep 26;...
- Memories And Memories
From a press release earlier today from Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care:What happens in the brain when we remember our own past? Toronto, CANADA --Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe brain activity...