There are lots of statistics regarding the average human memory, but as you’ll know
just by talking to friends not all memories are alike.
There are people who seem to be able to remember numerous facts, dates, quotes of famous people;
those folks that you can’t do without on a quiz night at the pub Then there are those
people who might be able to recall in detail moments from childhood, but are simply useless
when it comes to memorizing things.
The science is hardly exact, but it’s thought we have around 70,000 thoughts a day, and
in a lifetime, we might process 1 quadrillion pieces of information.
Scientists in the UK in 2018 told us the average person can recognize around 5,000 faces.
But there are outliers, people with a memory superpower.
That’s who we’ll talk about in this episode of the Infographics Show, the people who remember
everything.
A UK documentary called, “The boy who can’t forget” featured a boy, called Aurelien
Hayman, who was a student.
He said in the film, “I've never met anyone who's been able to do what I do.
It just seems there are no gaps at all, I can just see it all.”
That’s not surprising because his kind are few and far between, but others do exist.
Let’s first explain what his powers consisted of.
Firstly, it doesn’t mean the young man can tell you everything he saw on a given day,
say, when he was 12.
He’s not a machine.
But what he can do is still spectacular.
Remember that the average person will only remember the details of about 11 events in
any given year of life that has passed.
And no, that doesn’t include cheating and reeling off events of yesterday and saying
it’s a new year.
So, you could ask this kid, tell us about March 31st, 2004.
He thinks for a while, tells you what day it was, what he was wearing, where he went,
perhaps something he saw on TV, a conversation he had with his mom, what he ate.
He won’t remember every detail, but he remembers a lot of details.
And this he can do for every day of the year, for all his life after early childhood.
It’s a thing to behold, and rightly there are many skeptics.
He is tested many times during the documentary.
“We were pleasantly surprised to see that he could remember so much information about
his life, with little objective details everywhere,” said a psychologist to the British media,
who tested Aurelien.
“When we checked the factual information relating to the day of the week, the weather
or a television series he said he’d watched, the information was accurate.”
It’s thought that around 20-30 people in the world have this gift, although some people
are not exactly happy about having such a superpower.
They have the ability to remember, perhaps win a lot of pub quizzes, but then they remember
all the bad stuff, too.
The rest of us thankfully can just let stuff go.
Aurelien said he had no method, no trick up his sleeve, he just thought back and the details
emerged naturally.
Some scientists tell us this is because he, and others in the world, have the ability
to form memories and retrieve memories from both the right and left frontal lobes of the
brain.
Imagine we ask you, do you remember that party you went to two years when you kissed that
girl and threw-up in the hot tub?
You might see glimpses of that night, but the details won’t be there.
But imagine you can retrieve both pictures and details.
You hear November 11, 2016, and immediately you see pictures of that date.
“It’s like being able to access something in a filing cabinet very quickly,” said
the boy.
“It’s like the dates have pictures.
It’s a very visual process – there’s a sequence of images.”
Scientists tell us that this power is called “hyperthymesia.”
Also known as “hyperthymesitic syndrome”, it can mean some people can’t stop thinking
about past events and so have an exceptional memory, or like our young student, they have
what is called a “mental calendar” from which they can pull details about almost any
date.
These people, who some scientists say have a neurological impairment rather than enhancement,
should not be compared to savants that might have extraordinary memories.
Savants can usually memorize things that are very specific, whereas these people can pull
data from any events.
The first person to be diagnosed with hyperthymesia was a woman in the USA called Jill Price.
She seemed less enamored with her skills than the boy in the UK, not always fond of the
fact she could recall memories from the past that she just wanted to forget.
While there are still skeptics regarding this condition, if you see Price in action it’s
hard to discount that she has this tremendous ability.
In fact, she was even better than Aurelien, being able to recount more details for some
days.
And that was every day of her life since she was 14 years old.
She is now 53 years old.
“Starting on February 5th, 1980, I remember everything.
That was a Tuesday,” she once said.
Scientists in the USA jumped at the chance to research what was going on in this woman’s
brain.
Under brain scans it seems everything was normal, although she showed signs of obsessive
compulsive disorder.
Some have said her ability stems from making notes of her life, a lot of notes, although
she has strenuously denied this.
In fact, those notes were used when scientists tested her, and indeed, if they asked her
what was happening on July 3, 1997, she could give them an answer in an instant and when
the notes were checked she was right.
Others have said the ability is a kind of synesthesia, which means the senses can get
crossed.
Maybe you can smell a sound, for instance.
To be honest, science is still in the dark about this, but then you can’t doubt what
you can see with your own eyes.
That is, these people are certainly remembering days of their lives in detail.
The BBC in 2016, talked about another case of a person with this condition.
His name is Nima Veiseh.
He told the BBC, “My memory is like a library of VHS tapes, walk-throughs of every day of
my life from waking to sleeping.”
This is similar to another person interviewed by Vice, who said, “The best way I can describe
it is that I view my life like a movie.
It’s almost like when you go to a DVD and you’re scrolling through the different chapter
scenes.”
Veiseh said he always had a good memory, but the older he got the better it got.
Scientists have also said this condition improves, if we think of it as being positive, over
time.
Another term for the condition is ‘Highly superior autobiographical memory’, and Veiseh
is among the very few people who have been diagnosed with it.
During one test scientists thought they had caught him out, asking him the date Michael
Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Ha, said the scientists, you’re wrong.
He said, no, you’re wrong, go check again- and he was right.
Despite what some scientists say about being able to use more areas of the brain, it’s
still something of a mystery.
As one expert said, “It’s not like they had some extra lobe or a ‘third’ hemisphere
of the brain.”
But tests have revealed that these people can be more prone to fantasy, and that they
do seem to absorb the present more than others.
They are constantly pulling in data, which one would think would make them seem distant
at times.
“The absorption helps them to establish strong foundations for a recollection,”
a scientist told the BBC, “and the fantasy proneness means that they revisit those memories
again and again in the coming weeks and months.
Each time this initial memory trace is ‘replayed’, it becomes even stronger.”
Maybe you are one of the people we described at the start of the show, that struggles to
remember information, say, for an exam, but can pull details from days in life.
Perhaps these people fantasize more, or that’s what the BBC scientist seemed to say.
Some of the people, as we said, see it as a blessing, others a curse, or both.
One man had travelled the world, visited wonders, seen great art, colorful cultures, and he
had fond and clear memories of it all.
But life has its low points, too.
Another person with the condition told the BBC, “You feel the same emotions – it
is just as raw, just as fresh…
You can’t turn off that stream of memories, no matter how hard you try.”
In that Vice interview we mentioned the person said his mind was his own worst enemy at times.
He recalled being bullied in school.
“I don’t remember what the bully was wearing or what I was wearing, but I remember exactly
what he said to me and I remember how I felt as I was walking back to the water fountain,”
he said.
“I remember fighting back tears and I remember the hallway and the tiles on the floor.”
Hmm, that doesn’t sound like such a cool thought to have rattling around your head.
He even said it’s hard to form new intimate relationships because he remembers only too
well all the bad stuff that happened in his last ones.
It’s too raw for him, while the rest of us just get over it.
Time may well be a great healer for some people, but not for these folks.
He said he went as far as to go back to his old lovers to make things better, just so
he could have a happier memory and more confidence to start a new relationship.
Some scientists admit that it is “baffling”, but are working on working it out.
At the University of California, Irvine, they examined 500 people who thought they might
have this special kind of memory.
After the tests, UCI researchers confirmed that 33 of them did have it, and another 37
might have it but needed to be tested more.
Science is certainly excited by these people.
One researcher in the UK said, “It is these exceptional cases that give the first clue
to something that might change the way we think about how personal memory works, so
it is really an exciting moment.”
Would you like to have this condition, why or why not?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video The Luckiest Man That Ever Lived!
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.