TOTAL RECALL
Most of us struggle to recall what we did last week, but for some people a Proustian remembrance of things past is both a blessing and a curse
Three years ago, Rebecca Sharrock read in a newspaper that it was impossible for people to remember details of the first four years of their lives. “What absolute nonsense,” she thought, since she could clearly remember her life all the way back to when she was just 12 days old. Her parents had carried her to the driver’s seat of their car and laid her down for a photo. She remembers looking around and wondering what the seat cover and steering wheel above her were.
Sharrock, 17, from Brisbane, Australia, is just one of only 80 known people suffering from a mysterious condition called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) – but what makes her special is how far back her memories go. Other HSAM sufferers only remember details of their daily lives from when they were 10 to 14, but Sharrock recalls specific moments of her infancy, such as the dress she wore on her first birthday and how itchy it felt, how scary the Minnie Mouse plush toy she got as a present looked and how she would always push it away. She remembered the birth of her younger sister Jessica shortly after her second birthday – and how she had to hand down her clothing and toys. “I didn’t understand what a sister was back then and was far more interested in playing with my toy train,” she said.
Sharrock’s unusual case recently featured in a television documentary, where reporter Allison Langdon asked her questions about the Harry Potter books. “I tested her on the [Harry Potter] books because she says she can remember every single word from every single book,” Langdon said. “So I would pick up a book and open a page and read her a line and immediately she would name the book, chapter number, chapter name and could recite every word until I told her to stop.”
Being able to remember every little detail about most of your life is a remarkable ability, but as every HSAMer will tell you, it can be very tough to deal with. Forgetting is one of the mechanisms we use to get over tragic or sad experiences, but it’s something that HSAMers are incapable of doing. Even walking on the street and lightly bumping into somebody triggers distant memories from Sharrock’s childhood, when a boy bumped into her and knocked her over. She’s taken right back to that time, vividly reliving the experience all over again. She admits that having to emotionally relive painful experiences of her life constantly is a heavy burden. Also, people with HSAM often do poorly in school, because they have problems filtering through all the information, remembering only the important bits. To them, it’s information overload. “You would think you would blitz your tests, but it doesn’t make you a genius,” Langon said. Sharrock writes about HSAM and autism at her website, alifejournaltalks.com. D.Mail (online), 24 April; Independent (online), 25 April; odditycentral.com, 2 May 2017.
Alexandra Wolff, 25, from Maryland also has HSAM, which she says feels like “time travel”. She can remember everything she has heard and felt in a day, “right down to getting sick to my stomach or getting a headache.” This means she can relive the happiest moments in her life in minute detail, and does so often alone in her room. “It’s a huge temptation,” she said. “If I didn’t have stuff to do all day, I could probably live in the past 24/7.” Independent (online), 25 April 2017.
Jill Price from southern California, who is now 52, can remember every single event in her life, in chronological order, from the time she was 12. In 2000, she contacted memory specialist Dr James McGaugh at the University of California-Irvine, asking for “help” with her condition. 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. Brain scans showed that parts of her brain – the regions also associated with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) – were three times the size of those in other women her age. “We made the mistake of calling [her condition] ‘hyperthymesia’ [from the Greek thymesis, remembering], which was a terrible idea, because when you name it in that way, it sounds as if you know what it is,” said Dr McGaugh. ABC News, D.Telegraph, 9 May 2008; Guardian, 8 Feb 2017 (long article by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie). For our initial report, see FT298:10.
A US skier was left with superhuman mental abilities after banging her head during an accident on the slopes. Besides sustaining a broken collarbone and concussion, the unnamed woman could recall exact details about every place she had ever seen and could draw maps or diagrams of each location and building. The rare condition is known as acquired savant syndrome, a neurological trauma that leads to amazing musical, artistic, mathematical or recollection abilities. At the time, it was believed to affect just 50 people in the world. D.Mirror, 18 April 2015.
She could clearly remember her life all the way back to when she was just 12 days old