“I remember everything”: meet the super humans
Imagine being able instantly to play any piece of music you heard, or feeling no pain. Four people with extraordinary abilities reveal how their superpower has shaped their lives. Interviews by Michael Segalov
“I’ve never felt pain”
Jo Cameron, 72, Whitebridge, Scotland
I can understand why it took so long for anyone to notice. It makes sense that the quiet, happy person in the corner gets ignored. So it was only when I was in hospital for an operation on my arthritic hand – aged 65 – that the fact I can’t feel pain finally came to light. I’d only recently had a long-overdue hip replacement. “This will hurt more than the last one,” the hospital anaesthetist had told me. I offered to bet any money it wouldn’t when I looked up at him with a smile. He came to see me after the procedure and I wiggled my hand in his face, proudly. “No painkillers,” I said, grinning. “No pain either.”
Down in London, I went for tests at University College Hospital. In the experiments, the researchers found an abundance of a substance called anandamide in my body – so much that I never experience anxiety, fear or pain. Instead, my genes make me happy and forgetful – finally, an explanation for why I lose the keys to my car so often. Before then, I’d just assumed I was clumsy, although when I thought about it properly, lots of things began to make sense. This explained why I often get undressed and see bruises that I’ve no recollection of acquiring; why during childbirth, after some serious pushing I felt nothing more than a considerable stretch. It’s why the only way I know if I’ve burned myself while cooking is when the aroma of meat reaches my nostrils. I’m a vegan, so what I’m smelling is actually my own scorched flesh.
There was even the time we went on a backpacking holiday in eastern Europe. On the first morning I fell over and went head first into a huge concrete slab. I lost my front teeth and gained a black eye – there were cuts all over my face. The family thought we’d go home, but I just whacked on my sunglasses, wrapped a scarf around my mouth, and we carried on. My happy gene also makes me incredibly positive: I’m wired to look on the bright side. I may not feel pain, but I see it on the faces of people around me. And when something sad happens, of course it affects me – but the sadness doesn’t consume me. A few minutes later I’m thinking practically, whirring into action. That’s not to say I’m complacent. I’m outraged by injustice and empathise with those having a tough time. But I’m practical. Vote! Protest! Do something! But don’t be a worrier. Why waste time being a nervous wreck?
I’m pretty certain my father had the same condition, though he’s no longer with us, so it’s impossible to be sure. He never complained about his war wound, and was very open-minded. There was no curfew for me or restrictions on outings with boys. A British Army major, he would even skip alongside me
“I’m a human calculator”
on the way to school. When a brain haemorrhage killed him – without a word of warning – he just dropped down dead where he was stood.
Once my test results were back, I told the researchers that, of course, I’d help them. I’m no neuroscientist, but if they can isolate this gene, the scientists hope to develop a natural form of pain relief. It pleases me to think what the impact on others might be. What’s inside me might be the secret to alleviating suffering.
At first, the researchers thought I was unique, but since my story went public, 80 people from across the globe have come forward to say they think they’re the same. Their bloods are being tested right now, and I’m hoping they’re correct. I’m 72, and it’s already taken us seven years to get this far. This could take decades. I might be an optimist, but I’m realistic – at some point they’re going to need some younger volunteers.
Scott Flansburg, 55, Scottsdale, Arizona, US
Pick a date, any day in your life, and I can tell you what day of the week it was. Say a number, any number, and I can multiply it all day. I’ve held the Guinness World Record as the fastest human calculator for more than 20 years. But I was just a nine-year-old pupil when my teacher wrote a list of two-digit numbers for the class to add together. My teacher could tell I wasn’t paying attention as she explained how numbers are carried over, so she decided to make an example of me by sending me up to the board. The standard way to find the total of lots of numbers is to line them up and work down right to left, if you can remember. But I assumed that you could do it in the same way you read a sentence – from left to right – and found I could. By the age of ten, my maths teachers were letting me come up with ideas rather than trying to teach me. I could see all these patterns and started discovering methods of multiplication that worked.
“The only way I’m able to tell if I’ve burned myself while cooking is when the smell of my own scorched flesh reaches my nostrils”
In the end I dropped out of high school. I never made it to college – I signed up to the air force instead. I served four years in Japan, and two in the US. Then, in 1988, when my military supervisor’s son was struggling in school with maths, I was drafted in to help. I spent an evening showing the child some tricks and shortcuts, giving him a hand. The next morning I got a call from his teacher: “Who are you,” they asked me, “and what have you done?” I’ve had an MRI scan. The doctor said he’d never seen a brain like mine. It’s almost as if it has a different set of wires. There’s a part of the brain called Brodmann area 44, or BA44, and mine is four times the normal size – I’ve met a few others with similar abilities.
I never went on to study higher level maths. I spend my life working to inspire kids to engage in the subject at that basic level, the point at which so many disconnect. That’s also how I keep myself interested – for me, it’s all about new and exciting educational ideas. My skills used to be useful for companies, who would want me to look for patterns in trades. But since the advent of the super computer, I’m a little less helpful to them. I’d have been more useful, I think, if I’d been born hundreds of years ago.
My next big thing is a calendar I’ve invented.
I’m all about efficiency, and the way we measure time is a mess. Sure, we have no control over the fact there are 365 days in a year, but there’s simply no way to make that divide neatly into 12. If you ask me, there should be 13 months in a year, each lasting 28 days, plus a zero day to kick each year off. I hope to convince the world to try it out in 2023, the next time my calendar matches up with yours.
“I can play any piece of music I’ve ever heard”
Derek Paravicini, 40, London
Like most children, I spent my early years surrounded by music. I was born extremely prematurely, and I’ve always been blind, so it is through sound that I experience the world. I had a nanny who tried everything she could to interest me. Then one day, when I was 18 months old, she had a brainwave, and retrieved a toy organ from the loft that someone had bought in Woolworths. Of course, I don’t remember, but what my family found I could do with it was amazing. Without any help, I could play the music I’d heard, from Cockles and Mussels to hymns we sang in church. Being blind, I’d never even seen a piano, but I could copy tunes note for note.
It quickly became obvious that my musical brain was wired up in an extraordinary way and, once my parents purchased a piano, I’d use everything, from my hands to my head and my elbows, to play what I could hear in my head. They soon realised that my fingers would need help to catch up. Aged four, at a school for the blind in south London called Linden Lodge, I met Adam Ockelford, the music teacher, and he took me under his wing. He started out by teaching me at home. He tells me I didn’t take kindly to being told what to do. I’d push him out of the way so he’d pick me up and place me in the corner of the children’s room where we practised. He’d play a tune while I found my way back to the piano and then I’d repeat what I’d heard, just like that.
I worked hard, practising every day before breakfast and in the evenings. I first appeared on TV when I was only eight, in 1988, on Derek Jameson’s show, People. The next year, I hit the big time, playing the Pink Panther theme for Terry Wogan, with an audience of millions. Suddenly, the world was interested. Today, playing the piano isn’t just my vocation – it’s key to my well-being as well. It’s hard to explain, but any time I hear a piece of music it goes straight into my memory and stays there. I don’t know how many songs I know. But it must be hundreds of thousands.
For me, playing the piano is as easy as breathing. At a gig a few years back I fell asleep when I was accompanying my friend, the singer Hannah Davey, but I carried on playing. And there doesn’t seem to be a limit on what I can learn. I memorised a full piano concerto with 11,000 notes just by listening, and played it with orchestras in London and California. People are mystified when I ask for requests.
They can choose anything they like, and I can reproduce it, even if I’ve never played it before. If I haven’t heard it, they can just play it on their phone and I’m off.
I’m a person of extremes: playing the piano I find easy, but I can’t read or write, and, aged 40, I still don’t reliably know my left from my right, so I need help with everyday tasks. But that doesn’t matter, because I’m a great people person. I love my family and friends from all over the world. I think that’s the main reason I like playing the piano – it’s my way of keeping in touch. Music is what helps me connect with others; it has become my identity. I’m Derek the piano player, the entertainer. I’m Derek, the musician.
“My brain has no capacity to forget”
Rebecca Sharrock, 30, Brisbane, Australia
I remember 6 July 2014 like yesterday – and my memories of 5 July 2005 are just as clear. In fact, I can remember every minute of every day in the finest of detail, and each time I experience the emotions I felt afresh. That’s what life with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is like. It means I remember everything – but also that my brain has no capacity to forget.
It was no great surprise when, at 15, I was diagnosed with autism. A year later I was told I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, but my parents and I knew there was something more. And then we saw a TV show about HSAM. My mum recognised it in me instantly. From a very young age I would talk to her about things that had happened years before, right down to the back-andforth of conversations.
“Nobody is sure how my brain holds all this information. It’s why medical researchers
are so keen to poke around up there”
I can remember all the way back to the beginning, being held in my mum’s arms. From then on it’s every conversation, every day out, every celebration. It’s mostly useless – like what I had for breakfast, or mundane thoughts. If I go back to the days before I understood calendars, I use the image of my birthday cake and its number of candles as a reference to start. I even remember dreams: when I had my first at eight months it was quite a shock. I’ll be honest: it does get annoying. I get headaches and it causes anxiety; I have to listen to music as I fall asleep, or else I have flashbacks. For a long time I saw it as a curse. But slowly, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate what my brain gives me.
Nobody is sure how my brain holds all this information. It’s why medical researchers from around the world are so keen to poke around up there. They’re attempting to discover which part of the brain is responsible for long-term memory, in order to help those affected by Alzheimer’s, brain damage or strokes. I spent 90 minutes in an MRI scanner, which showed how the conscious and subconscious parts of my mind are more strongly connected than usual. I like to joke that people like me are human lab rats, though we’re human lab rats who are very well cared for and loved.
When I’m bored, I sometimes take myself back to a time when I worried about everything and anxiety crippled me. I think about what the 14-year-old me wished for her future, and that makes me appreciate the small things that I now take for granted. I think about what I thought my life might look like – and I’m proud of just how far I’ve come.
A longer version of this article appeared in The Observer. © Guardian News & Media 2020.