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Gary Marcus

Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

Jill Price keeps a detailed diary of her activities, including the time she spent with the author.

According to McGaugh's Neurocase article, Price is even more astounding on the events of her own life. At the scientists' behest, for example, she recalled—without warning and in just 10 minutes—what she'd done on every Easter since 1980. "April 6, 1980: 9th grade, Easter vacation ends. April 19, 1981: 10th grade, new boyfriend, H. April 11, 1982: 11th grade, grandparents visiting for Passover ..."Soon, though, the limitations of her memory begin to show. My next questionnaire is on the just-concluded 2008 presidential election, and here things go less well. She is off by a few days on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race and clueless on the Iowa caucuses. Price nails both the Republican convention and the St. Louis vice presidential debate (she was at a regular Thursday dinner that night) but can't say the precise date when Obama clinched the nomination. When it comes to the 2004 election, she opts out entirely. I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories like television and airplane crashes, Price's memory isn't much better than anyone else's. She struggled in school, is no good at history before 1965, and seems genuinely miffed that she was once asked when the Magna Carta was signed ("Do I look like I'm 500 years old?").For a scientist like me, the real test is to see how well Price can remember something new. I am especially interested in memory distortions. If you read an average person a list of words like thread , pin , eye , sewing , sharp , point , prick , thimble , haystack , thorn , hurt , injection , syringe , cloth , and knitting , and then ask them to repeat the words, they'll likely imagine they've heard needle even though it's not on the list.Can Price sail past the trap of memory distortion? No, she can't. I read her five lists of words drawn from a psychological test known as the DRM, and not only does she miss a number of words, she also recalls hearing three I didn't say. Her performance may be a little above average, but no more than that. If Price's memory of her own history is so precise, why is it so average for everything else? Or, more to the point, if her memory for everything else is so ordinary, why is her memory of her own history so extraordinary? The answer has nothing to do with memory and everything to do with personality.Price remembers so much about herself because she thinks about herself—and her past—almost constantly. She still has every stuffed animal she's ever gotten, enough (as she showed me in a photograph) to completely cover the surface of her childhood bed. She has 2,000 videotapes and countless audiotapes, not to mention more than 50,000 pages of diary entries in idiosyncratic handwriting—so dense that it's almost unreadable. Until recently she owned a copy of every TV Guide since summer 1989. I'm not sure Price wants to catalog her life like this, but she can't help herself. When she tells me that one of her biggest regrets in life is that no one followed her around with a microphone during her childhood, I'm not the least bit surprised. In her own words, she lives as if there's a split screen running in her mind—one half on the present, the other on the past.The onset of Price's exceptional recall seems to be closely tied to a painful event: her family's move from South Orange, New Jersey, to Los Angeles on June 29, 1974. For Price, life can be neatly divided into periods before and after that childhood trauma, and her detailed memories begin just after the move.Even as an adult, Price continues to be haunted by separation anxiety. She has lived with her parents her entire life, and her anxiety about moving recurred in 2003, at age 37, when her parents decided to take a smaller house. Just as Price hadn't wanted to leave South Orange as a child, she dreaded leaving the only home she'd known since she was 8. Packing her memorabilia for storage took more than a month. Perhaps the hardest part was the thought that she'd have to leave behind a piece of wallpaper on which she'd recorded minor personal details for nearly 30 years. In the end, and much to the consternation of the family's realtor, Price took a razor blade to the wall and peeled off one more cherished souvenir.In the time I spend with her, I notice that the not-particularly-foulmouthed Price is very fond of the expression that so-and-so "shits and farts just like the rest of us"—as in "Joe Movie Star might make a lot of money, but he still shits and farts like anyone else." By the third time I hear her utter this phrase, I can't help but notice its relevance to her own life: Price may display unusually complete recall of her own past, but her memory is the same blurry patchwork as everyone else's.The difference is that she scans her past relentlessly. Every time we think about something, and especially how it connects to something else, we get better at remembering it—a phenomenon that psychologists call elaborative encoding. Price has spent her whole life ruminating on the past, constructing timelines and lists, and contemplating the connections between one February 19 and the next. Dates and memories are her constant companions, and as a result she's really good at remembering her past. End of story.

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Blessed and Cursed by an Extraordinary Memory

Jill Price can recall every detail of the last three decades of her life — whether she wants to or not. A rare memory condition causes Price to experience continuous, automatic playback of events.

"My memories are like scenes from home movies of every day of my life," she writes, "constantly playing in my head, flashing forward and backward through the years relentlessly, taking me to any given moment, entirely of their own volition."

Price talks about her new memoir, The Woman Who Can't Forget, and Dr. James McGaugh , professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California talks about treating her rare hyperthymestic syndrome.

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Excerpt: 'The Woman Who Can't Forget'

People who don’t forget can still be tricked with false memories

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“Time is the thief of memory,” wrote Stephen King in one of his many books. For some people, however, that is not true. They are gifted with what scientists call highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), which means they can remember in vivid detail every day of their life going back to childhood. But new research shows that even these special people are susceptible to forming false memories, sometimes more than normal people.

The first study of a person, later identified to be Jill Price, with this special ability was published as recently as 2006. Since then the database of HSAM individuals in the US has grown to about 30 people. It includes people like Bob Petrella , who can recall the date he met every one of his friends and acquaintances. Or Brad Williams , who can remember both what he did on any day and what significant world events occurred.

James McGaugh at the University of California Irvine was the author of the 2006 study, and for the past seven years he has been working to understand what makes HSAM individuals so special. A 2012 study showed, for instance, that HSAM individuals have different brain structures. They posses more white matter in areas linked to autobiographical memory. But because there are so few of them, “We still don’t know enough to be able to draw robust conclusions,” says Martin Conway, a cognitive psychologist at City University London.

Knowing how HSAM people form memories would be a great leap in our understanding. With graduate student Lawrence Patihis, McGaugh set out to fill that gap. One way to do that would be to test if HSAM individuals are susceptible to false memories. After all, memories are easy to distort. It happens to every one: the young, the old, the intelligent and the dumb. Now, in a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Patihis finds that HSAM individuals too can be tricked to possess false memories.

Not so perfect

For the study, Patihis recruited 20 out of the 30 known HSAM individuals in the US. They were matched, by sex and age, with 38 people with normal memory. All of the participants were then given three tests.

In the first test, each participant was shown a series of words that were all supposed to be connected to a “lure word”. So if the lure word was “lamp” then they will be shown words like light, table, shade and stand, but not the word lamp. After they have seen the list, they are asked if they saw the word lamp. People with normal memories got the answer wrong seven out of ten times. HSAM individuals too got it wrong just as much.

The second test was more elaborate. It showed a slideshow of photos depicting a crime. After 40 minutes, they were then shown words describing the crime with misinformation sprinkled in them. Then 20 minutes later they were tested to see how many people believed the misinformation to be true. This time HSAM individuals did worse than normal people. They were 73% more prone to false memories. “Maybe HSAM individuals form richer memories through absorption of more information and that is why they are also more susceptible to false ones too,” says Patihis.

Perhaps it is easy to manipulate recent memories. So in the third test Patihis looked to test long-term memory. All participants were asked to recall the September 11 terrorist attacks. They were then given irrelevant facts about that event, one of which was not true (someone captured the footage of United 93 in Pennsylvania). After 15 minutes, all participants were then asked whether they had see such a footage. Like the first test, normal people and HSAM individuals performed almost equally badly on this test.

“This shows that maybe people with superior memories form them just like normal people. Thus, in the process, they are also prone to making the same mistakes,” says Patihis. Equally, they may use a different process of forming superior memories, but one that has same problems as that of the normal process.

There is still contention among experts whether HSAM individuals are “special”. K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University says , “Our work has pretty much concluded that differences in memory don’t seem to be the result of innate differences, but more the kinds of skills that are developed.” To which McGaugh says, “You’d have to assume that every day they rehearse it… The probability of these explanations dwindles as you look at the evidence.”

Price had admitted that remembering everything meant bad memories were always around to trouble her. It led researchers to believe that such superior memory may come at a cognitive cost of lost abilities, or less happier lives. But research since has shown that not to be the case. HSAM individuals tend to have similar lives to normal people. With the latest study, McGaugh has shown one more task where HSAM individuals are normal. They too may be made to believe that as a kid they were lost in a shopping mall , even if that isn’t true.

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The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir Paperback – May 5, 2009

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‘It’s awful to be a medical exception’: the woman who cannot forget

Rebecca Sharrock is one of a handful of people worldwide with highly superior autobiographical memory. But remembering minute details of your own life has its downsides

• Read more in our Meet the superhumans series

E very morning since January 2004, Rebecca Sharrock crosses off the date on a calendar in her room. Like many people, the 31-year-old uses it to keep track of time, distinguishing the present day from the ones that came before.

Unlike many, Sharrock can remember what happened on specific days five, 10, 15 years ago.

What day was it on 21 July 2007? A Saturday, Sharrock can recall when asked. An avid Harry Potter fan, Sharrock remembers her stepdad going to the shops that day to buy a copy of the newly published Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The sensation of a warm breeze evokes positive experiences from childhood, as does a vocal workshop Sharrock attended at school when she was 13. “Coincidentally, on that day in late October in 2003, that’s when the US president visited Australia for the first time,” she recalls. (After we speak, I check this: George Bush Jr arrived in Australia for his first presidential visit on 22 October 2003.)

Sharrock remembers her mother watching the news that day. “Even though it didn’t mean anything to me, him coming here, that memory [of the vocal group] brings back that whole day,” she says.

Sharrock, who lives in Brisbane, didn’t realise there was anything unusual about her memory, until – on 23 January 2011 – her parents showed her a TV news story about people with an extraordinary ability to recall events from their own lives.

The segment featured Prof Craig Stark, a neurobiology and behaviour researcher at the University of California, Irvine. Stark’s lab studies a condition called highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), also known as hyperthymesia.

Sharrock is one of about 60 known people in the world with the condition.

In studies, Stark and his colleagues have asked people to recall memories from a particular day one week earlier, and also longer – one year ago, say, or a decade. People with HSAM are significantly better at recalling both personal and public events, and the exact days and dates on which they occurred.

“They don’t remember everything,” Stark says. People with HSAM do forget things – but compared to people with ordinary episodic memory, “it’s very, very gradual”.

Their extraordinary ability to recall lived experiences results from a type of remembering known as episodic memory. People with HSAM don’t, however, perform any better at standard laboratory memory tests such as rote memorisation tasks.

HSAM was first recognised as a condition in 2006, after American woman Jill Price contacted Dr James McGaugh, a collaborator of Stark’s at UCI.

“Whenever I see a date flash on the television (or anywhere else for that matter), I automatically go back to that day and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on,” Price wrote . “Most have called it a gift but I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!!!”

Many people with HSAM describe a similar tendency to revisit days and test their recall of events, Stark says. “They describe things like, when being young, forgetting something and being really traumatised by it, not wanting to have that happen again.”

Some structure their days using calendars, because they are able to remember the experience of marking off a specific date. “I’ll continue to have a calendar in my room until my last day of life,” Sharrock says. “I fear that I won’t know the exact date [otherwise] … Blurring days together – the possibility of that happening just scares me.”

To a person with average memory, perhaps Sharrock’s fear feels something like the discombobulating sensation when a friend reminisces about a shared experience of which you have no recollection.

“One of the things we don’t really know on these folks is how much of it is an inherent biological thing that makes their memory … better in this domain,” Stark says.

His lab has looked at the brains of people with HSAM, but didn’t find major differences in structures important for memory, such as the hippocampus and amygdala.

“We found some things in terms of the morphology and in terms of some functional conductivity [of the brain] that actually were more consistent with OCD than anything else,” Stark says, adding that people with HSAM also score highly on scales for obsessive-compulsive traits.

While having HSAM can come in handy – Sharrock’s mum checks with her whether purchases are still under warranty – it also has its downsides. “I need to have distractions such as noise and light around me to get to sleep,” Sharrock says. “If everything’s quiet, memories just flash into my mind and that keeps me awake.”

For Sharrock, who also has OCD, anxiety and autism, it makes bad memories difficult to deal with. “If I’m remembering something negative, my emotions of that experience will come back,” she says. “Sometimes people will say that I’m just deliberately not letting go, and I’m just like dwelling on the negatives in my life.

“It’s awful to be a medical exception because very few people understand what you’re going through and there just aren’t many treatments designed for it.

“Remembering this way just seems so normal to me.”

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Phenomenology and Mind

Home Numéros 18 Section 1. Philosophical Framewor... Wardens and Prisoners of Their Me...

Wardens and Prisoners of Their Memories: The Need for Autobiographical Oblivion in Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)

Human consciousness is a finite entity; therefore, memory must be selective: remembering must also mean being able to forget. In 2006, James McGaugh documented the first known case of hyperthymesia—a syndrome that affects a very limited percentage of the world population. The main symptoms of this mental disorder involve the concept of memory stuck in the past, where the individual is imprisoned by his or her own memories, and any projection towards the future is precluded. The inevitable change produced by the flowing of time naturally helps people to find reasons to live and to search for a sense of being in the world. The present study puts forward a phenomenological approach to hyperthymesia in the quest for a natural, healthy form of oblivion, or the ability to forget. Through existential analysis, it could be possible for the individual to recover the natural and necessary structure of Dasein.

Index terms

Keywords: , editor’s notes.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17454 /pam-1809

1. The role of memory in the identity construction process

1 When the individual identity of each human being is created, memory guarantees the continuity of perceptions, emotions and interpretations of reality. This mnemonic function allows people to carve out “the autobiographical Self” (Damasio, 2010, p. 210), a self-representation formed through a person’s memories and reflection on his or her past life. According to Le sens de la mémoire (J.Y.-M. Tadiè, 1999), the inner identity is therefore created starting from the autobiographical memory.

2 The story of the individual identity is variable and fluid, as a dynamic is put into operation that is both teleological and retrospective at the same time (Heller, it. trans. 2017, p. 10). Its final purpose or causa finalis (Aristotle) is the present situation as a reinterpretation of the past. According to À. Heller, no one creates their autobiographical story starting from their past self (2017, p. 13). By this, Heller does not intend that the individual needs to trace the deterministic sequence of facts in the past that have led to the present; the main idea is that “the past is at the service of the present and that the present is the key to interpret the past” (Ricoeur, 2017, my translation). The Self is not homogeneous, but it aspires to a certain level of uniformity directly dependent on the need to find new meaning in life through the mnemonic trace (Heller, it. trans. 2017, p. 20). It is quite clear that it does not seem reasonable to ask whether such mnemonic traces are true or false; it sounds more reasonable to talk about authentic or inauthentic memories.

3 The memories we retrieve of our own accord should not remain fixed and unvaried; we reinvent our personal past by sieving through our memories. As Bergson clearly explains, the reason why we identify ourselves in the images-souvenirs [memory-images] (Bergson, 1991, p. 90) is that as we recall our past, we adjust its coherence to our current personality. F. Cimatti claims: “it is the act of remembering that creates the memory, not the other way round” (Cimatti, 2016, p. 19, my translation).

2. Hyperthymesia: the story of Jill Price

4 The main symptoms of memory disorders displayed in reported cases are mostly a form of disorientation; in less serious cases, they mainly alter the perception of time, while more serious manifestations might lead to an impaired self-identity.

• 1  Parker, E.S., Cahill, L. & McGaugh, J.L. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. N (...)

5 Hyperthymesia or hyperthymestic syndrome (HSAM, Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory 1 ) makes those affected unable to forget any part of their past lives. These patients can retrieve any memories in vivid detail, going back even to their first 12 days of life. Individuals cannot usually trace back nor recall memories before the age of 3: the brain of a child is likely to receive billions of inputs, meaning that conserving every memory without selection would be dysfunctional for the normal process of adaptation to the world.

• 2  See Parker E.S., Cahill L. & McGaugh J.L. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. (...)
• 3  See Lurija A.R. (1968). The Mind of a Mnemonist. A Little Book About a Vast Memory . New York, NY: (...)

6 The syndrome was first described in the 2006 publication by the neurobiologist J.L. McGaugh 2 . It presented clear differences to the cases reported by Lurija in 1968, such as the cases of SS and others commonly known as ‘superior memory individuals’ 3 . Whereas SS could memorise long strings of digits and numbers, those affected by hyperthymestics cannot (Parker et al. , 2006, p. 36). Scientists started to pay closer attention to the case of Jill Price in 2000, when she decided to get in touch with McGaugh, in her effort to turn her life around and try to understand what was happening to her mind.

• 4  In 2008, Jill wrote her autobiography, The Woman Who Can’t Forget. The Extraordinary Story of Livi (...)

7 The case of Jill Price—well known in the literature as AJ, the woman who can’t forget 4 — is the first reported case of hyperthymesia. The syndrome of ‘super memories’ causes “continuous, automatic autobiographical recall”, in a manner that is immediate and quick rather than deliberate or reflective. Jill’s memories were vivid and full of emotion, “ uncontrollable, and totally exhausting ” (Price, 2008, p. 5). According to Jill’s report, her memories became “shockingly complete” (p. 1) probably at the time of her first house move. To her, any change felt unacceptable. She felt a “desperate need to stay” (p. 146) in her physical space, in what appeared to be an attempt to stop time. Hence, Jill had become a prisoner of her memory (p. 3): “the more pressure I felt to move on and start a new life, the more emphatically I clung to my past because, I think, the future for me was all about a continuation of the past” (p. 144).

3. Neuropsychological research on hyperthymesia

8 Memory tests have shown that patients like Jill are unable to remove any autobiographical memory, either semantic or episodic. Additional tests have also excluded the diagnosis of confabulations, namely “a falsification of memory occurring in clear consciousness in association with an organically derived amnesia” (Berlyne, 1972, p. 38).

9 Moreover, hyperthymestic patients show remarkable difficulties in controlling anxiety, together with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, which would explain their maniacal propensity to ‘hoard’ memories and why they refuse to let them go.

10 Finally, the consequence of this overload of memories is that hyperthymestics struggle to focus on present situations, and they are not able to project themselves towards the future. The memory capacity of hyperthymestics is solely “superior” with regard to autobiographical retrieval; therefore, their academic achievements are within the average range. This marks an additional difference between hyperthymestics and the case studied by Lurija.

11 Recently, neuropsychological research on hyperthymesia has achieved important results, and it seems that it might be able to provide a clearer medical explanation for this disorder in the future. At present, the neural correlates of the syndrome have been identified in a specific area of the human brain, the prefrontal-hippocampal gyrus, which consists of the prefrontal-medial cortex and hippocampus; the former is involved in the remembering process by accessing the mnemic cerebral trace, and the latter is where our memory is generally deemed to be located. Hyperactivity in these cerebral areas may explain the difference between hyperthymestics and cases such as SS: the former may have access to a more consistent number of traces than control subjects ( access phase ), whereas during the retrieval phase cerebral activity is the normal range:

we did not observe any neural difference between subjects with HSAM and control subjects during the reliving phase. In contrast, the findings suggest that the increase in neural activity was specifically involved in accessing AMs, recruiting a left-lateralized frontoparietal network […] in subjects with HSAM only during memory access (Santangelo et al. , 2018, p. 4).

4. A phenomenological perspective

• 5  See Paci E., (1971). Preface to it. trans. to Minkowski E., (1970) Lived Time. Phenomenological an (...)

12 Unlike a medical-cognitive approach, existential analysis ( Daseinanalyse ), aspires to analysing space and time as experienced by the individual not as logical categories but, as Paci describes them 5 , by living and feeling the space around us, and by measuring existential time, not by a clock but by how we live and experience it. It is in such a framework that we experience our memories and expectations, together with the structures of our relationships with others—possible or impossible, real and unreal—and the necessity and contingency of these relationships.

13 This specific perspective allows us to understand Jill’s story better. She thought there were only two stable elements in her life: being afraid of death and hating chaos. Throughout the course of her entire life, she has tried to make sense of both physical objects and memories. According to Jill’s report, this can probably be traced back to a specific childhood memory:

my mom and Diana and a third friend of theirs, Patty, were talking about Diana’s father having gone into the hospital for surgery and died. What stuck most in my mind was that they kept saying he had ‘wrapped things up’ and ‘got things in order’ […] it seemed the only thing alleviating how upset they were that Diana’s father was never coming back: he got his things in order (Price, 2008, p. 86).

14 This mnemonic feeling may provide a plausible explanation to the phenomenon of “chaining” (Price, 2008, p. 27); in other words, Jill’s unusual way of recalling episodes of her life begins in a random way, but the chain which forms is no longer random since the memories are linked by their date. Her brain makes her think about the same date in different years, not about one moment before or after the one she recalled. Moreover, “emotionally the idea of distortions is upsetting” (Price, 2008, p. 129); this may be the reason why house moving is both unacceptable and unsettling for her.

15 Jill’s memory seemed unable to ensure active and healthy oblivion, or the ability to forget. A kind of “ selective oblivion ” (Colonnello, 2017, p. 48, my translation) should filter memories in order to only hold onto those which might have some bearing on future experience. Instead, Jill got stuck in a present that was linked neither to the past nor to the future. She seemed to deny temporality and its natural flow, rejecting at the same time the idea of letting go of those memories which relentlessly filled her mind.

5. A proposal for an existential therapeutic approach

16 According to Ricoeur’s theory, confrontation with the reality of death - that is, the deaths of other people—is the first step to release the Dasein (Heidegger’s term for the body-mind paradigm in human beings, present here and now i.e. existence) from the sense of the pointlessness of its “thrownness”, i.e. “being-thrown-in-the-world” . Once we realise that death does not happen to those who die, but to those who grieve , it becomes possible to consider our thrownness as a blessing. Once freed, Dasein recovers its “ dimension of awaiting” , interpreted by Ricoeur in the Augustinian concept: “I hope to keep alive up until death: up until death - neither with a view to nor towards death” (Ricoeur, 2017, my translation).

17 During a period of family hardships, Jill needed to undergo psychotherapy. Until then, she had never told anyone about how her memory worked. She thought that it was impossible to communicate; she tried dominating her memory by writing down memories in diaries, but she never managed to make a sense out of them that could feel personal to her.

18 The human experience of the world is completely temporal. As a result of this, temporality structures the living body, which is changed by such experience; it also structures the language used by people to communicate. As custodian and dweller of his or her body-and-mind, the whole person lives and inhabits his or her timelanguage [Tempolinguaggio], i.e. the narrative structure of human identity (Biuso, 2013, p. 73, my translation). Consequently, the body-and-mind structure becomes able to rewrite its broken and fragmented identity. In fact, the body is always dynamic, present here and now and projected towards the future. Hence within the living memory, the future shapes the past, not necessarily by adhering to the accepted sequence of past, present and future, but by creating its own temporality. (Weinrich, 2010, p. 203).

19 In a specific and reinterpreted moment in time and space, experience ( Erlebnis ) is brought back into the flowing of time [ Erfahrung ]: “totally tied to temporality, the sense [Erlebnis, n.d.a. ] structures the meaning of human finitude” (Biuso, 2013, p. 90, my translation). Both psychoanalysis and existential analysis take advantage of a form of linguistic and narrative approach, which are not in contrast, but in continuity. It is the distinction between the subconscious and consciousness that marks the difference between these two approaches. Unlike the Freudian talking cure , which claims “where id was, there ego shall be” (Freud, 1933, p. 4687), Daseinanalysis invalidates this one-directional path from past to present: according to Daseinanalysis, the present gives new meaning not only to the past [ Vergangenheit ] but also to the having been [ Gewesen ].

20 Within the Daseinanalysis framework, somatic symptoms are clear expressions of an unresolved and demanding sorrow which can only be cured by allowing for a natural time flow. Indeed, time is the last hermeneutic resource for reaction: while people talk to the analyst, things to come to light that have been bottled up and unsaid; the flowing of time allows this. Little by little, patients feel relieved, “in order to rewrite in retrospect the chain of events which threw their volition into the dark heaviness of the past” (Colonnello, 2017, p. 121, my translation). The final aim is for the entirety of the individual’s body-mind to ‘dive into’ its natural temporality.

21 Throughout long months of analysis, Jill started to let time flow again and dived into her own temporality: “I felt that I was making a fresh start” (Price, 2008, p. 172). This is precisely and essentially the aim of the existential analysis: “to spread out these works [experiences] before oneself or before others is to see them fixed, shrunken, tarnished, extinguished” (Minkowski, 1970, p. 157); such works are restored to healthy oblivion—the other side of remembering. This constitutes the turning point, where Dasein discloses a new point of view and a different perspective in which it gains awareness of the flowing of time. A new sentiment [ Stimmung ] towards the past comes to life; the need for the past to stay petrified recedes, and patients become able to go beyond it by recovering a range of possibilities within their experiences. The narrative dimension of existential analysis is generally believed to offer a unique opportunity: we live one more time , repeating the autobiographical experience and allowing the body to become memory and temporality, because “memory does not consist in a regression from the present to the past, but, on the contrary, in a progress from the past to the present” (Bergson, 1991, p. 239). This is the essential therapy for people to be able to forget again.

6. Experiencing human finitude

22 Jill’s life arrived at its turning point when she met her husband. The change she experienced when her husband died can be explained by recalling the concept of “ élan ”, well described by Minkowski:

as soon as I think of an orientation in time, I feel myself irresistibly pushed forward and see the future open in front of me. And this fact of “being pushed” […] means that I tend spontaneously with all my power, with all my being, toward a future […] At the same time, […] I am immediately presented with the progression, in the same direction, of everything around me that has any relation whatever to time, that is to say, in the final analysis, the entire universe (Minkowski, 1970, p. 38).

23 Facing the impossibility to turn back time and come back from death, human existence begins a reconfiguration of its own way to experience the world:

death, in putting an end to life, completely circumscribes it, all along its way. It transforms the order and texture of the events of life into a life […] it reveal[s] to us the notion of a life in life - and [it] puts us face to face with our own life and our own mortality (Minkowski, 1970, pp. 133-134).

24 In order to understand the thesis supported by Minkowski, we should bear in mind the fact that in this instance death is not an experience which levels any difference between people. Psychiatrists have hardly ever attempted “to outline an affective psychology of death; from this point of view, we always see it through our own personalities” (Minkowski, 1970, p. 131). Free from the emotions we felt for the deceased person, death is not the experience of grieving, but the moment of time when life gets its fulfilment. Death is a part of life; it is not the opposite of life.

25 Once the awareness of her husband’s death was recovered, Jill changed the way she experienced time as well; in fact, she felt free from the need to constantly record her memories in diaries, as she no longer felt trapped in a perception of madness. When she resorted once more to writing down her memories, she did so in a more selective fashion and free “from my fear of the future and my obsession with the past” (Price, 2008, p. 222). She also became more aware of her mental disorder and had high hopes for the future of people who struggle with pathologies related to memory, as great progress has been made by researchers in the field. She ended her story on a positive and optimistic note: “I intend to use the strength and learning I have gained to work toward the day when I am no longer the prisoner of my memory, but rather I am its warden” (Price, 2008, 248).

7. Conclusions: therapeutic benefits offered by ‘oblivion’

26 The therapeutic path which allows people to look back on life experiences in a different way requires oblivion. Remembering is useful at first; later we need to forget: “the most important step of clinical therapy is not so much helping a person to remember what he or she is not able to remember, as especially to forget what she is not able to forget ” (Carignani, 2016, p. 102, my translation).

27 Memories need to be reinvented through oblivion. On one hand, this is possible because of the natural apoptosis (the programmed death of a cell) of the neurons. Moreover, there are specific neurotransmitters which make the constant renewal of synapses and the related paths for the recovery of the existential narration necessary. On the other hand, the simultaneous mental activity of the Self—which should not be seen as a mere neuronal functionality—destabilises the biological trace itself, so that it will be modified by time, and by old and new memories. We can conclude that oblivion is the natural limit of memory. Just as oblivion belongs to the authenticity of memories, so the perspective of the end belongs to the authenticity of life.

28 In the light of the close connection between remembering and forgetting, we can clearly understand how hyperthymestics can benefit from writing down their memories. Indeed, Jill’s story shows that writing procures some sort of relief because it seems to make memories immortal and offers a way to elude the necessary flowing of Time. Furthermore, transposing memories in narrative form compels the individual to select them more carefully, absorbing some and discarding others. It is similar to the cell metabolism process, but it concerns both body and mind, because it is life itself that decides such criteria of memory selection. Through the experience of its finitude, life is projected towards the future, eventually providing a new sense to the past that is coherent with the changes imposed by Time.

29 It is the selection and preservation of memories, and their consequential categorisation in the unity of consciousness flowing homogeneously, that structures the way human beings are not some kind of “garbage dump” (Borges, 1998, p. 135) into which a river of stimuli is poured but active spectators of the wonders of the world.

30 Humans are capable of taking back control over their personal lives. They are also able to come to terms with the finitude of life itself, assigning to the irreversibility of time a meaning that is stable and unstable at the same time, because “the meaning is fleeting, the truth is a wanderer” (Biuso, 2009, p. 204, my translation).

Bibliography

Bergson H. (1991). Matter and Memory and Memory . New York, NY: Zone Books;

Berlyne N. (1972). Confabulation.  British Journal of Psychiatry, 120 (554), 31-39. doi: 10.1192/bjp.120.554.31 ;

Biuso A.G. (2009). La mente temporale. Corpo Mondo Artificio . Roma, IT: Carocci;

Biuso A.G. (2013). Temporalità e Differenza . Firenze, IT: Olschki;

Borges J.L. and Hurley A. (1998). Collected Fictions . New York, NY: Viking Press;

Carignani P. (2016). I due angeli. La psicoterapia dei bambini tra oblio e memoria, in Angelucci D., Carignani P., Cimatti F., Ciocca A., Ginzburg A., Procaccio W., Vizzardelli S., Oblio , a cura di W. Procaccio (pp. 89-117). Napoli, IT:: Cronopio;

Cimatti F. (2016). Dimenticarsi. Corpo e oblio, in Angelucci D., Carignani P., Cimatti F., Ciocca A., Ginzburg A., Procaccio W., Vizzardelli S., Oblio , a cura di W. Procaccio (pp. 15-37). Napoli, IT: Cronopio;

Colonnello P. (2017). Fenomenologia e patografia del ricordo . Milano-Udine, IT: Mimesis;

Damasio A. (2010). Self Comes to Mind. Constructing the Conscious Brain . New York, NY: Pantheon Books;

Freud S. (2000). New Introductory Lections on Psycho-Analysis , in Complete Works (pp. 4617-4786), online edition;

Heller À. (2017). La memoria autobiografica . Roma, IT: Castelvecchi;

Lurija A. R. (1968). The Mind of a Mnemonist. A Little Book About a Vast Memory . New York, NY: Basic Books;

Minkowski E. (1970). Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies . Evanston, Illinois (US): Northwestern University Press;

Paci E. (1971). Prefazione, in Minkowski, Il tempo vissuto. Fenomenologia e psicopatologia . Torino, IT: Einaudi;

Parker E. S., Cahill L. & McGaugh J. L. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition , 12(1), 35-49. doi: 10.1080/13554790500473680 ;

Price J. (2008). The Woman Who Can’t Forget. The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science . New York, NY: Free Press;

Ricoeur P. (2017). Ricordare, dimenticare, perdonare. L’enigma del passato . Bologna, IT: Il Mulino;

Weinrich H. (2010). Lete. Arte e critica dell’oblio . Bologna, IT: Il Mulino;

Santangelo V., Cavallina C., Colucci P., Santori A., Macrì S., McGaugh J. L. & Campolongo P. (2018). Enhanced brain activity associated with memory access in highly superior autobiographical memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 115(30), 7795-7800. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1802730115 ;

Tadiè J.Y. & Tadiè M. (2000), Il senso della memoria . Bari, IT: Edizioni Dedalo.

1  Parker, E.S., Cahill, L. & McGaugh, J.L. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition , 12(1), 35-49; Ally, B.A., Hussey, E.P. & Donahue, J.M. (2013) A case of hyperthymesia: rethinking the role of the amygdala in autobiographical memory. Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition , 19(2), 166-181; Patihis, L. (2015). Individual differences and correlates of highly superior autobiographical memory, Memory , 24(7), 961-978; Santangelo V., Cavallina C., Colucci P., Santori A., Macrì S., McGaugh J.L. & Campolongo P. (2018). Enhanced brain activity associated with memory access in highly superior autobiographical memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 115(30), pp. 7795-7800.

2  See Parker E.S., Cahill L. & McGaugh J.L. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition , 12(1), pp. 35-49.

3  See Lurija A.R. (1968). The Mind of a Mnemonist. A Little Book About a Vast Memory . New York, NY: Basic Books. Solomon Šereševskij (well known as SS or ‘the mnemonist’ after Lurija’s publication) was able to memorise a whole set of feelings; his form of memory is called ‘synaesthesia’, while HSAM affects autobiographical memory, both in its semantic and episodic components.

4  In 2008, Jill wrote her autobiography, The Woman Who Can’t Forget. The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science .

5  See Paci E., (1971). Preface to it. trans. to Minkowski E., (1970) Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies , it. Il tempo vissuto. Fenomenologia e psicopatologia . Torino, IT: Einaudi, p. XXXII.

Bibliographical reference

Daria Baglieri , “Wardens and Prisoners of Their Memories: The Need for Autobiographical Oblivion in Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)” ,  Phenomenology and Mind , 18 | 2020, 110-117.

Electronic reference

Daria Baglieri , “Wardens and Prisoners of Their Memories: The Need for Autobiographical Oblivion in Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)” ,  Phenomenology and Mind [Online], 18 | 2020, Online since 01 May 2022 , connection on 18 April 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/phenomenology/1358

About the author

Daria baglieri.

Scuola Superiore di Catania, University of Catania – [email protected]

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The Woman Who Can't Forget

The extraordinary story of living with the most remarkable memory known to science--a memoir.

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About The Book

About the author.

Jill Price is the subject of the most exhaustive scientific inquiry into superior memory in history. She has kept her identity anonymous until now, known by the scientific community as patient "AJ," the first patient to ever be diagnosed with what the scientists who have studied her have called hyperthymestic syndrome. She lives in Los Angeles and is currently working as an administrator at an elementary school.

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• Publisher: Free Press (May 5, 2009)
• Length: 272 pages
• ISBN13: 9781416561774

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• Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
• Biography & Autobiography > Personal Memoirs
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" The Woman Who Can't Forget is fascinating, whether dealing with the details of Price's life or with the science of the brain, offering glimpses not only into the mysteries of memory but into emotional struggles like depression, anger, forgiveness and even growing up." -- BookPage.com

"[Price's] insights into the nature of memory, forgetting and the formation of our sense of self will resonate with a wide audience." -- Publishers Weekly

"Price has a knack for vividly rendering childhood memories like scenes from an impressionistic film." -- Kirkus Reviews

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The undergraduate neuroscience journal, in living memory: understanding hyperthymesia.

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Chelsea Shu

Andy chia , chelsea shu, the curious case of hyperthymesia.

When Jill Price talks about her day, she might give a full rundown of what she ate for breakfast, what commercials she saw, and what the weather was like when she went camping 23 days ago. As the conversation proceeds, she would reveal more astonishingly precise personal details: for instance, that her boyfriend ordered a prime rib during their high school senior prom. Contrary to the scant memories that an average person has, Jill’s sheer capacity to recall every minute detail about herself is simply stunning. This unique ability did not go unnoticed: Jill’s remarkable memory piqued the interest of the neurology community as well. In 2006, a team of neurologists at University of California, Irvine proved and identified Jill’s extraordinary ability as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), also known as hyperthymesia [1]. With this new discovery, they wondered what sort of breakthroughs in understanding the neural substrates of memory could arise from studying her case. Through investigating similar cases, they were able to identify a genetic and structural link to the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases.

The Impossible

When the team first received word that Jill could vividly remember every day since her adolescence, they were quite skeptical. However, they did recognize the potential of studying her case. Although scientists did know that the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe are responsible for memory formation, they wondered if the brain’s autobiographical memory, which processes the world, used the same mechanism—and if Jill’s claim could be true [2][3].

To better validate Jill’s conjecture, the team began by administering the Stanford-Binet IQ test. The scientists assumed that she would have better mental faculties overall, as they concluded that all neurons in her brain were preserved. However, the results of the IQ tests that assessed her spatial, factual, and verbal memory were shocking: Jill had an IQ of 95. This means that between all ages and sexes, her mental faculties were practically the same as anyone else in the general population [2]. Next, the researchers tried short, long, and photographic memory tests and came to a similar conclusion: Jill’s ability to retain facts was the same as anyone else’s.

However, when running tests to see how far back Mrs. Price could remember major historical and personal events in her lifetime, the scientists noted that she indeed could almost perfectly recall everything: every name, meal, face, and trivial detail they asked about [1]. The team catalogued their finding as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), and their paper soon sparked an area of cognitive research that was previously untouched.

After identifying Mrs. Price’s case, the team was able to reach out to similar individuals. Since then, researchers have interviewed, studied, and analyzed the cognition of 55 people. By 2012, the scientists christened HSAM with another name, hyperthymesia, a portmanteau of “hyper” and “thymesis” meaning “super memory.”

Eventually, organizations like the American Hyperthymesia Organization took steps to educate the public on this condition, but before long, the media began to exploit public interest and falsely portray individuals with hyperthymesia as geniuses. Journalists often misguide the public by mentioning that these individuals use memory tricks like chunking, mnemonic devices, and memory palaces—all methods used to create associations between pieces of information through trial-and-error—that result in their superior or extraordinary intelligence [4][5][6]. However, other research groups have determined that these tricks can be learned by anyone and that hyperthymesia is a congenital condition that has little to do with intelligence [2][6]. So, the major problem scientists have been trying to identify is the genetic and neurological mechanisms that lead to hyperthymesia, while also trying to understand the experience hyperthymesia patients live with.

An Inescapable Curse

Through public attention, interviewers and researchers have continuously hounded individuals with hyperthymesia. They often feel trapped, but even within the privacy of their heads there remains a never-ending torment of reminiscing.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Jill has remarked that living with the condition can be difficult because memories “constantly…[play] in my head, flashing forward and backward through the years relentlessly, taking me to any given moment, entirely of their own volition” [7]. She, like many other people with this condition, does not enjoy the rush of a memory playing back. Those with hyperthymesia often say that the intrusive nature of memories deters them from living in the present. Other people often comment on the raw nature of recall and how it often turned an experience like school, with the sheer volume of information given, into a miserable experience.

One particular account comes from Noma Veiseh, who has told the BBC that he remembers everything, but often memories can be “unwanted and even detrimental” to his mental well-being [8]. He relates the condition to being emotionally triggered by any and all sorts of stimuli. For him personally, he can recall every day since he “met [his] first girlfriend” [8]. Veiseh says that as a result, he has developed a habit of dwelling in the past and shying away from external stimuli to avoid feeling overwhelmed. This comment, and testimonies like it, gave scientists the idea that hyperthymesia had something to do with an increased linkage between memory formation and memories themselves [2].

Human Computing

One of the brain’s most fascinating features is its ability to modify neural connections due to neural plasticity. This susceptibility to change was the first conundrum scientists encountered when trying to understand why individuals with hyperthymesia had a nearly perfect ability to recall autobiographical information. They knew that a person learns a new piece of information and builds a memory, mostly through taking in sensory information or doing tasks numerous times to create an ensemble of neurons that fire in sequential order the next time stimuli are present [9]. During memory recall, the brain retrieves information from said neurons, and without doing so, the neurons start to weaken due to disuse [9]. The researchers could not understand why neural pruning, or the removal of unused neurons to save energy and space, was not occurring in patients with hyperthymesia [9][10].

When MRIs of hyperthymesia patients’ neural structures were compared to MRIs done on Einstein’s brain and the brains of other “geniuses”, the geniuses were found to have a greater neuron to glial cell ratio, with neurons storing the information and glial cells acting as the metabolites required to operate them [2][11]. Meanwhile, the people with hyperthymesia had a smaller than average neuron to glial cell ratio, meaning they should have a worse memory than an average person. This surprised the researchers as they originally postulated that people with hyperthymesia would have increased concentrations of grey and white matter, the neural networks responsible for better factual recall and tasks, and greater neuron to glial cell ratios like the brains of geniuses [2][11].

What researchers did discover was that people with hyperthymesia have a special prefrontal cortex [2][10]. Normally a person’s prefrontal cortex, among other functions, deals with memory formation, particularly for language and spatial reasoning when working in conjunction with the hippocampus, a region that helps create memories [12][13]. But in people with hyperthymesia, the prefrontal cortex is, along with the hippocampus, directly linked to the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and creating emotional responses [3][10][12][13]. Scientists have since postulated that this structure could create a scenario where every time a memory is retrieved, the amygdala works in tandem with the hippocampus to fire clusters of neurons more efficiently, leading the brain to increase networking of autobiographical neurons at the cost of other ones [2].

With this discovery, scientists were able to conclude that replicating hyperthymesia’s neural structure might not be useful for improving cognitive function, as they had originally mused. But as they delved into the genetic aspect of the condition, they discovered that it could potentially be linked to cholinesterase production, a protein responsible for neurodegeneration in diseases like Alzheimer’s [14].

The Way of the Future

Alzheimer’s disease is primarily considered a disease for the elderly. However, that stereotype, like most, is false. Cholinesterase is a protein that breaks down acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter responsible for modulating memory, muscle movement, and motivation [14][15]. When produced in normal quantities, the enzyme helps break down acetylcholine to avoid the over-firing of neurons  [14][15][16]. Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia can only occur in individuals if cholinesterase is overproduced. Normally, this enzyme helps produce and regulate the beta amyloid proteins that ensure neurons fire and the tau proteins that deliver nutrients and supplies [14][15]. However, an overabundance of cholinesterase causes the beta amyloid to form blockages and the tau proteins to tangle, causing the neurons to stop firing and degrade [15]. The disease is spurred on by apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4), an allele of a gene responsible for regulating neural pruning and maintenance [17]. However, this mutation causes an increased likelihood of creating the aforementioned protein blockages, resulting in degeneration [17]. The pathology of the disease is grim, as the protein plaque causes the brain to slowly lose the essential connections needed for cognition and memory. Neurodegeneration can be devastating for patients and their families, as patients slowly forget who they are, and their mind prohibits them from engaging in everyday activities.

Within the past couple decades, Alzheimer’s has had many proposed treatments, including drugs that increase oxygen to stimulate brain flow and synthetic proteins used to block the beta amyloid plaque from developing in the first place [16]. However, none of these methods have proved effective in reversing the process or completely curing neurodegeneration. While people who seek these treatments prolong their lives, they will still eventually die from Alzheimer’s complications.

The discovery and analysis of hyperthymesia may prove to be the solution that clinicians have searched for endlessly. Numerous groups studying the genetics of the condition have discovered that hyperthymesia develops due to an allele known as apolipoprotein E2 (APOE2), an allele of the APOE gene that has a positive correlation with improved working memory capacity and is a counterpart to APOE4 [18]. As researchers now know how APOE2 can fight pruning, many are now considering using the gene for gene therapy, a process that changes the allele of a gene in a patient, to hopefully see positive results for those with Alzheimer’s [15][16]. If this were to work, doctors could potentially help halt or reverse the ravaging effects of the disease. While much research and many clinical trials are underway to test the feasibility of this procedure, scientists are excited and hope that this proof of concept could potentially lead to other case studies being used as a template for genetic fixes for other autosomal diseases.

With the positive outcomes that can arise from medical research, individuals with hyperthymesia have found a satisfaction in knowing that their condition could one day lead to the next monumental cure. They still hope that more emphasis will be placed on alleviating their own condition, but in the meantime, many of these people have taken up creative hobbies to serve as a means of therapy and a constructive outlet.

When Veiseh first gave interviews, he often lamented his inability to function as a normal human being. At the time, he found that only researchers and the media wanted to speak with him, and they were consuming his life. To escape that attention, Veiseh has since turned to professional painting. He says that he can use any “memory or phenomenon, whether it be wind blowing through a rose bush, a star exploding, a sunrise, or any number of other things” as a means to better understand his memory [19]. Veiseh says the condition has its perks and downfalls much as any other would. However, he hopes that his art can help the spur on the current research and help others understand what living with hyperthymesia is like.

One Giant Step

Hyperthymesia is a condition that is still being intensely researched, and for good reason. Not only is there good being done in helping hyperthymesia patients better understand themselves and their condition, but this research is also helping to revolutionize the way scientists could one day treat various forms of dementia. Since the initial trials began with gene therapy, scientists have not made too much headway, but they are hopeful for what future advancements could offer. Thus far, hyperthymesia has helped the scientific community investigate how the amygdala could play a role in different forms of memory formation and retention [2]. Researchers hope that hyperthymesia will yield other findings in similar conditions to help treat malfunctions with neural pruning and other memory-related diseases.

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• Ally, B. A., Hussey, E. P., & Donahue, M. J. (2012). A Case of Hyperthymesia: Rethinking the role of the Amygdala in Autobiographical Memory. Psychology Press: Neurocase, 1-16.
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• Akyurek, E. G., Kappelmann, N., & Volkert, M. (2017). What You See Is What You Remember: Visual Chunking by Temporal Integration Enhances Working Memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 29(12), 1-12. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01175
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• Price, J. (2008, May 19). Blessed and Cursed by an Extraordinary Memory. Retrieved October 09, 2017, from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90596530
• Robson, D. (2016, January 26). Future – The blessing and curse of the people who never forget. Retrieved October 09, 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160125-the-blessing-and-curse-of-the-people-who-never-forget
• Riccomagno, M. M., & Kolodkin, A. L. (2015). Sculpting Neural Circuits by Axon and Dendrite Pruning. Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, 31 (1), 779-805. doi:10.1146/annurev-cellbio-100913-013038
• Parker, E., Cahill, L., & Mcgaugh, J. (2006). A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering. Neurocase, 12(1), 35-49.
• Diamond, M. C., Scheibel, A. B., Murphy, G. M., Jr., & Harvey, T. (1985). On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein. Experimental Neurology, 88(1), 198-204. Doi: 10.1016/0014-4886(85)90123-2
• Aggleton, J. P., Wright, N. F., Rosene, D. L., & Saunders, R. C. (2015). Complementary Patterns of Direct Amygdala and Hippocampal Projections to the Macaque Prefrontal Cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 25 (11), 4351-4373. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhv019
• Brincat, S. L., & Miller, E. K. (2016). Prefrontal Cortex Networks Shift from External to Internal Modes during Learning. Journal of Neuroscience, 36 (37), 9739-9754. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0274-16.2016
• Nelson, P. T., Alafuzoff, I., Bigio, E. H., Bouras, C., Braak, H., Cairns, N. J., . . . Beach, T. G. (2012, May). Correlation of Alzheimer Disease Neuropathologic Changes With Cognitive Status: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Neurophatology & Experimental Neurology, 71(5), 362-381. doi:10.1097/NEN.0b013e31825018f7
• Jun, G., Ibrahim-Verbaas, C. A., Vronskaya, M., Lambert, J., Chung, J., & Naj, A. C. (2016). A Novel Alzheimer Disease Locus Located NEar the Gene Encoding Tau Protein. Molecular Psychiatry, 21 (1), 108-117. doi:10.1038/mp.2015.23
• Gorelick, P., MD, MPH, Scuteri, A., MD, PhD, Black, S. E., MD, FRCPC, FAHA, Decarli, C., MD, Greenberg, S. M., MD, PhD, FAHA, & Iadecola, C., MD, FAHA. (2012). Vascular burden in cognitive impairment and dementia. Alzheimers & Dementia, 8 (4). doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2012.05.1957
• Lindsey, I. S., Pleydell-Pearce, C. W., & Day, N. I. (2017). Possible positive effect of the APOE ε2 allele on cognition in early to mid-adult life. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, (17). doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2017.10.008
• Sinclair, L. I., Button, K. S., Munafò, M. R., Day, I. N., & Lewis, G. (2015). Possible Association of APOE Genotype with Working Memory in Young Adults. Plos One, 10(8). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135894
• Sainato, M., & Skojec, C. (2016, June 22). The Artist Who Remembers Everything (And Why We Don’t). The Observer.

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Woman with perfect memory can remember every single detail of her life

Jill price can remember minute details from her everyday life since she was 14, but doesn't think it's a blessing.

A woman who has a perfect memory and can recall basically every day in her life in vivid clarity has spoken out about her…well, what would you call it? Is it a talent, a curse, or a blessing? – you can start to make up your mind in the video below:

Californian Jill Price has been studied by the University of California-Irvine since 2000 because of her remarkable memory.

In fact, Price has a condition called hyperthymesia syndrome , which you have probably never heard of because the term was coined specifically to describe Price's condition.

She claims to be able to remember just about anything from her life after the age of 14, right down to the dates of specific days and world events that were ongoing at the time, so long as she knew about them then.

Christ, imagine being able to recall every single day you spent as a teenager right up until this day.

That’s every bad hair choice, every awful romantic experience, every school embarrassment.

Obviously it’s also every happy memory you’ve ever had in that time as well, but Price doesn’t see it as a blessing necessarily.

Back in 2008, she told HQBrain: "I've been through hell in my life.”

For Price, the memory of her unhealthy relationship with her mum – who she claims is responsible for her unhealthy relationship with food, weight, and her body – is a particularly tough thing to recall.

She remembers her mum telling her: “If you eat anything bad, you’re going to die.”

Price believes that moving from New York to Los Angeles as a child might have been a trigger for her condition, which has been observed in less than 100 people ever.

Scientists are obviously very interested, as Price’s syndrome directs a challenge to the idea that memory changes over time, along with the emotional power of events we recall.

Sadly, it doesn’t mean that Price can remember all sorts of pieces of knowledge too, as her own huge personal life memory makes it hard for her to complete other memory exercises, such as remembering and reciting poetry.

Price said: “When I first went to the doctors, they were like, 'Oh, you must have been really good in school.

"I went, 'Nope.' In fact, I hated school. School was very painful for me."

When things have become too much to control, Price has kept journals to try to cope.

"It's all swirling and kind of in the front of my head because it's not written down," she said.

"As soon as I write it down, it kind of relaxes everything."

In the time since her diagnosis, she’s written a book called The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science but largely keeps her life private.

She did appear on a Channel 4 show about another person with hyperthymestic syndrome, entitled The Boy Who Can’t Forget in 2012, but that’s one of her most recent interviews.

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Tom Wood is a LADbible journalist and Twin Peaks enthusiast. Despite having a career in football cut short by a chronic lack of talent, he managed to obtain degrees from both the University of London and Salford. According to his French teacher, at the weekend he mostly likes to play football and go to the park with his brother. Contact Tom on [email protected]

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Psychology Case Study Examples

Experiments are often used to help researchers understand how the human mind works. There have been many famous examples in psychology over the years. Some have shown how phenomena like memory and personality work. Others have been disproven over time. Understanding the study design, data, content, and analytical approach of case studies is important to verifying the validity of each study.

In considering case studies, researchers continuously test and reevaluate the conclusions made by past psychologists to continue offering the most up-to-date and effective care to modern clients. Prospective case studies are continually being developed based on previous findings and multiple case studies done in one area can lend credence to the findings. Learning about the famous psychology case studies can help you understand how research continues to shape what psychologists know about the human experience and mind. 

Examples of the most famous case study in psychology

Hundreds of thousands of case studies have been done in psychology, and narrowing a list of the most ground-breaking studies can be challenging. However, the following seven case studies present findings that have defied expectations, achieved positive outcomes for humanity, and launched further research into existing knowledge gaps within the niche.

Phineas Gage

The case of Phineas Gage is perhaps the  most cited study  in psychology. This famous case study showed how different areas of the brain affect personality and cognitive ability. While working as a construction foreman on a railroad, Phineas Gage was involved in an accident in which a rod was pushed through his cheek and brain. He survived, but because of the accident, both his personality and his ability to learn new skills were affected.

Although the case is frequently cited and referenced in psychology, relatively little information about Gage's life before and after the accident is known. Researchers have discovered that the last two decades of his life were spent in his original job, which may have been unlikely to have been possible if the extent of his injuries were as severe as initially believed. Still, his case was a starting point for psychology research on how memory and personality work in the brain, and it is a seminal study for that reason.

Genie the "feral child"

Although an outdated term, "feral children" referred to children raised without human interaction, often due to abuse or neglect. One  famous case study of a neglected child was done with a child known as Genie. She was raised in a single bedroom with little human interaction. She never gained the cognitive ability of an average adult, even though she was found at age 13. Later in life, she regressed and stopped speaking altogether. Her case has been studied extensively by psychologists who want to understand how enculturation affects cognitive development. It's one of many cognitive psychology examples that have had an impact on this field.

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Henry Molaison

The case study  of Henry Molaison has helped psychologists understand memory. It is one of the most famous case studies in neuroscience. Henry Molaison was in a childhood accident that left him with debilitating seizures. Doctors could stop the seizures by removing slivers of his brain's hippocampus, though they did not fully understand what they were doing at the time. As a result, scientists learned how important the hippocampus is to forming long-term memories. After the surgery, Molaison could no longer form long-term memories, and his short-term memory was brief. The case study started further research into memory and the brain.

Jill Price had one of a few documented cases of hyperthymesia, a term for an overactive memory that allowed her to remember such mundane things as what she had for dinner on an average day in August 20th years previously. Her  case study  was used as a jumping-off point to research how memory works and why some people have exceptional memories. 

However, through more research, it was discovered that her overall memory was not exceptional. Rather, she only remembered details of her own life. She was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with memories being part of her obsession. This case study is still relevant because it has helped modern psychologists understand how mental illness affects memory.

In the John/Joan  case study , a reputable sexologist tested his theory that nurture, not nature, determined gender. The case study has been cited extensively and laid the groundwork for other research into gender identity. However, the case study was not legitimate. In this study, Dr. John Money performed surgery on an infant whose genitals were damaged during circumcision. 

The boy was raised as a girl; however, he never identified as female and eventually underwent gender-affirming surgery as an adult. Because Dr. Money didn't follow up with the patient appropriately and did not report adverse findings, the case study is still often cited as successful.

Anna O. was the pseudonym given to a German woman who was one of the first to undergo psychoanalysis. Her case inspired many of the theories of Freud and other prominent psychologists of the time. It was determined at the time that Anna's symptoms of depression were eliminated through talk therapy. More recently, it has been suggested that Anna O. had another illness, such as epilepsy, from which she may have recovered during the therapy. This  case study is still cited as a reason psychologists believe that psychotherapy, or talk therapy, can be helpful to many patients. 

Victor the "wild boy" of Aveyron

Another study done on a child that had grown up without parents was done with a boy named "Victor" who had been found wandering in the wilderness and was thought to have been living alone for years. The boy could not speak, use the bathroom, or connect with others. However, through the study of his condition, he was able to learn bathroom habits, how to dress, writing, and primary language. Psychologists today speculate that he may have been autistic. 

Ethical concerns for doing a case study

When case studies are flawed through not having enough information or having the wrong information, they can be harmful. Valuable research hours and other resources can be wasted while theories are used for inappropriate treatment. Case studies can therefore cause as much harm as benefit, and psychologists are often careful about how and when they are used.

Those who are not psychologists and are interacting with studies can also practice caution. Psychologists and doctors often disagree on how case studies should be applied. In addition, people without education in psychology may struggle to know whether a case study is built on a faulty premise or misinformation. It can also be possible to generalize case studies to situations they do not apply. If you think a case study might apply to your case or that of a loved one, consider asking a therapist for guidance. 

Case studies are descriptions of real people. The individuals in the studies are studied intensively and often written about in medical journals and textbooks. While some clients may be comfortable being studied for science, others may not have consented due to the inability or lack of consent laws at the time. In addition, some subjects may not have been treated with dignity and respect. 

When considering case study content and findings from psychology, it can be helpful to think of the cases as stories of real individuals. When you strip away the science and look at the case as a whole person in a unique situation, you may get more out of the study than if you look at it as research that proves a theory. 

Therapeutic implications of a case study

Case examples are sometimes used in therapy to determine the best course of treatment. If a typical case study from psychology aligns with your situation, your therapist may use the treatment methods outlined in the study. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals also use case examples to understand mental illness and its treatment.

Researchers have reviewed the role of case studies in counseling and psychotherapy. In  one study , the authors discussed how reading case studies benefits therapists, providing a conceptual guide for clinical work and an understanding of the theory behind the practice. They also stressed the importance of teaching psychotherapy trainees to do better case study research. They encouraged practitioners to publish more case studies documenting the methods they use in their practice.

How a case study is used in counseling

If you want to meet with a psychologist, counseling may benefit you. Therapists often use theories behind popular case studies and can discuss their implications with you. In addition, you may be able to participate in case studies in your area, as psychologists and psychiatrists often perform clinical trials to understand treatments on a deeper level.

Online therapy can also be beneficial if you cannot find a therapist in your area. Through a platform like BetterHelp , you can get matched with a provider meeting your needs and choose between phone, video, or live chat sessions. When experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition, it can sometimes be hard to leave home for therapy. You can use many online therapy platforms from the comfort and safe space of your own home. 

Therapy is a personal experience; not everyone will go into it seeking the same outcomes. Keeping this in mind may ensure you get the most out of online therapy, regardless of your specific goals. If you're interested in learning more about the effectiveness of online therapy, you can look into various clinical studies that have shown it can be as effective , if not more effective, than in-person options. 

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What it's like to live, when you're incapable of forgetting.

Jill Price can forgive, but she can’t forget. And that’s absolutely not by choice.

Price was the first person in the world to be diagnosed with hyperthymesia, a condition which is characterised by a highly superior autobiographical memory. In simple terms, Price has an unbelievable memory. Scarily so. She can remember, in great detail, almost every part of her life from the age of about 14.

She’s now 51.

In a episode of This American Life titled “In Defence of Ignorance”, Price recalls how her life differs to so many others because of this one fact. And how more than anything, she recounts how the condition invites a whole lot of unwelcome resentment. After all, she doesn’t have the gift of a fading memory. Things that annoyed her once probably still annoy her now.

“I’m still pissed about stuff from when I was five. And that’s ridiculous,” she tells reporter Stephanie Foo.

While you or I probably can’t remember the specific details of our schooling lives, or the reasons why – at any given point in time – someone would annoy us or hurt us, Price can remember them with vivid clarity. And because of this, she can find it hard to let go. Even from events that hurt her over 30 years ago.

There’s a universal, and scientific, truth in humans blocking out moments of trauma – that our memory’s instinct is to repress things that hurt us. So, when you’re memory doesn’t have that physical capability, where does that leave your emotions after trauma?

“It didn’t paralyse me until my husband died. Like, his death has really paralysed me,” Price told the radio show about her husband’s death some 11 years ago.

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When probed by Foo as to why her husband's death has had such a consistent and profound mental and emotional affect on her wellbeing, Price's answer is simple: "Because I will never, ever, ever, ever forget that."

Imagine the most horrifically tragic moment of your life. And then imagine teleporting your body and emotions back to that moment - the moment you felt intense grief or trauma. That's what Price's life is like every single day - she relives the short period, the excruciating moments, after her husband's death more than 10 times a day.

"Even though I get up every day, I feel like I'm still standing in the same place. It's really being stuck. It's being stuck in a moment that you can't-- there's no escaping it," she says.

LISTEN: The seven stages of grief. (Post continues...) 

So what would her life be like without such an unnatural, almost-photographic memory? By her own admission, Price believes it would be a very different life. One where she could let go more.

"I think that I would have been able to move forward. I think I probably would be married today. I don't think I would be so scared. I would be able to just walk forward instead of constantly looking back," she said.

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Jill Price – The Woman Who Can Remember Everything

• April 28, 2015

Price is able to recite details of every day of her life since she was fourteen years old. She can recall various obscure moments of her life in great detail. Her condition, termed hyperthymesia, or “hyperthymestic syndrome”, is characterized by a highly superior autobiographical memory.

She described her life as like a split-screen television, with one side showing what she is doing in the present, and the other showing the memories which she cannot hold back.

Every detail about every day since 1980 – what time she got up, who she met, what she did, even what she ate – is locked in her brain and can be released to come flooding back by common triggers like songs, smells or place names. Mrs Price, a widow who is a school administrator, sometimes struggles to sleep because the vivid memories crowd her mind and stop her relaxing.

Her condition is so rare that scientists had to coin a term for her condition – hyperthymestic syndrome from the Greek thymesis, for remembering, and hyper, meaning well above normal.

For years she remained anonymous, referred to only by initials in scientific journals while experts at the University of California-Irvine tested her ability. Mrs Price said her memory started working overtime after her family moved to Los Angeles when she was eight and from the time she was 14, in 1980, she can remember absolutely everything.

Neuroscientists say a trauma such as moving the family home can trigger major, lingering changes in the brain, especially in children who cling to memories of how their life had been. Mrs Price said: “Some memories are good and give me a warm, safe feeling.

“But I also recall every bad decision, insult and excruciating embarrassment. Over the years it has eaten me up. It has kind of paralysed me.”

Mrs Price was so worried by her condition that in 2000 she asked neuroscientist Professor James McGaugh, a world expert on memory, what was wrong. She wrote to him: “My memory is too strong. It’s like a running movie that never stops.

“Most have called it a gift. But I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!”

Professor McGaugh spoke to her and was astonished. He said: “You could give her a date picked at random from years ago and within seconds she’d tell you what day of the week it was, and not only what she did but other key events of the day.”

From the age of 10 until she was 34, Mrs Price kept a daily diary, which allowed scientists to check events as she remembered them now against what she wrote down at the time. Mrs Price, who has written a book called The Woman Who Can’t Forget, blames her vivid memories for many years of depression.

Professor McGaugh has since discovered five other adults with similar powers and 50 more “possibles”. He said MRI scans indicated their brains were a slightly different shape to normal.

Two other patterns have emerged. Mrs Price and three of the other five are left-handed and they all compulsively collect things like TV guides, old films and theatre programmes.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Jake Carter

Jake Carter is a researcher and a prolific writer who has been fascinated by science and the unexplained since childhood.

He is not afraid to challenge the official narratives and expose the cover-ups and lies that keep us in the dark. He is always eager to share his findings and insights with the readers of anomalien.com, a website he created in 2013.

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Woman who has a perfect memory says she's been through hell

California woman jill price lives with hyperthymestic syndrome, a condition which allows her to remember every detail of her life..

Stefania Sarrubba

A Californian woman named Jill Price has a condition which allows her to remember every day of her life in vivid details, but she wouldn't call this a blessing.

In 2000, researchers at the University of California-Irvine began studying Price, who would later be diagnosed with the first case of hyperthymesia syndrome, a term coined specifically for her.

In interviews, Price confirmed she could recall all details of her life from age 14 onwards, including the dates on which these occurred and the wider world events happening at the time, as long as she was aware of them at the time.

The Los Angeles woman can breeze through awkward first dates and happy memories as easily as she can dwell on less fun events, including childhood trauma, dramatic arguments and losses.

"I've been through hell in my life," she told HQBrain in 2008.

She finds it particularly hard to shake her complicated relationship with her mother, a former member of the June Taylor Dancers who Price claimed pressured her into an unhealthy relationship with food and weight.

"If you eat anything bad, I'm going to die," Price claimed her mum would tell her.

According to Price, one of the triggers for her conditions may have been moving to Los Angeles from New Jersey when she was eight.

"I really loved my life there," she said of New Jersey .

"I should have been born, lived and died in the same house. That's how much I don’t like change."

Price's syndrome challenges the assumption that human memory tends to rework past events, with recollection being altered by the passing of time and the emotional impact said events may have had on us.

Ironically, her spontaneous, personal memorisation only applies to her own life, while she struggle with reciting poems and completing other memory exercises.

"When I first went to the doctors, they were like, 'Oh, you must have been really good in school,'" Price explained.

"I went, 'Nope.' In fact, I hated school. School was very painful for me."

Price revealed that keeping a journal helped her 'relax' when she felt her spontaneous recollection was out of control.

"It's all swirling and kind of in the front of my head because it's not written down," she said of her memory.

"As soon as I write it down, it kind of relaxes everything."

After writing a memoir titled The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science in 2008, Price has remained private.

One of her most recent interviews dates back to 2012. At the time, she appeared on Channel 4 documentary The Boy Who Can't Forget , providing insights into living with hyperthymestic syndrome.

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The Perfect Memory: The Curious Case of Jill Price

By hadar gerlitz.

Can you imagine remembering almost every moment in your life, like it just happened? I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but Jill Price can remember what she had for breakfast twenty years ago. Many of us live pretty chaotic lives, and our brains filter out what is important, and we tend to forget about less significant things.

Source: Getty Images

Jill Price can remember almost every day of her life in clear detail. This psychological phenomenon is shared by just 60-100 people in the world population and can really take a toll on your daily life. Jill explained her experience as difficult because she can’t turn her memory off. It is like memories are always playing back in her brain, making it more difficult for her to concentrate or clear her mind.

This is her incredible story.

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ARC Network

Research Associate

ARC Network Our Team

Phone: (306) 337 8441

Email: [email protected]

Province: Saskatchewan

Affiliation: PSPNET

Languages: English (fluent spoken), English (fluent written)

Dr. Jill Price is an Experimental and Applied Psychologist and Sessional Member at the University of Regina. She completed her undergraduate (honours), M.A., and Ph.D. in Experimental and Applied Psychology at the University of Regina with a focus on statistics and cognitive development. Dr. Price also completed a four-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment (CIPSRT) under supervision of Dr. R Nicholas Carleton. Her research focused on the mental health resources available to public safety personnel in Canada. This fellowship led to the development of the website PSP Mental Health as well as several publications and conference presentations. She is currently a Research Associate at CIPSRT evaluating the Public Safety Personnel Internet-Delivered Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (PSPNET) for public safety personnel and their families in Canada.

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