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Meet the woman who cannot forget

Life with a highly superior autobiographical memory: Meet the woman who cannot forget

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018941885/life-with-a-highly-superior-autobiographical-memory-meet-the-woman-who-cannot-forget

Sharrock can recite the entirety of the Harry Potter books, remember every school lesson she had, and recall what she was doing on any given date.

Life with a highly superior autobiographical memory: Meet the woman who cannot forget

Imagine being able to remember every single day of your life, all the way back to when you were a newborn.

Australian woman Rebecca Sharrock is one of only 60 people in the world with a highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), also known as hyperthymesia.

22 comments

walter_wiggles

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I don't envy her one bit.

umbrella

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dunno, i have perfect recall of just my cringy shitty memories already.

might as well remember some useful shit.

bungle_in_the_jungle

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Wish she could share a slice of that power with me. I'm, like, 85% the opposite of that.

Dave

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Same here, except when it's not important, then I have perfect recall.

bungle_in_the_jungle

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Saaaaame. Why are we like this 😅

HeyJoe

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I feel like growing up I was really good at remembering things. Here I am over 40 and it's starting to be worrisome of the things I have forgotten. It's scary when someone brings up things that happened 20 years ago, and I struggle to remember what happened, or even worse, not remember it at all... the weird part is there are things my brain won't forget at all like when I listen to music I can recall specific songs playing, who I was with, and what we were doing like a decade ago with no problem.

Etterra

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I've heard of this very rare ability. The last person I saw on TV that had it years ago when Discovery was still good suffered pretty bad depression. Imagine remembering every bag thing that ever happened to you with perfect clarity, whether you wanted to or not, at the slightest reminder. Every bullying, every breakup, every fight, every injury, embarrassing moment, bad day, car accusing - all of it - as if it had literally just happened to you. My depression is bad enough; if I had this condition I'd almost certainly have ended it all.

SubArcticTundra

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Does the brain even have the capacity to remember everything since your birth? I expected forgetting to be a space saving mechanism

Speculater

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I think it's more about preserving sanity and keeping survival resources available. You don't think about last year's fight with your neighbor so you can focus on potential dangers in the moment. I believe the storage capacity of the human brain is theoretically unlimited in the timespan of a human life.

SubArcticTundra

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Interesting. But still, memories from your whole life would probably take up 100x-1000x what you currently remember, does your brain really have that much free capacity? Although I imagine the mechanism of only paying attention to the memories that are relevant could work even then

athairmor

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Your brain seems to actively forget almost everything before age ~4 and most things before age ~7. The phenomenon is known as childhood or infantile amnesia. It’s possible to retain memories from those ages just very unlikely. I think trauma and strong emotions make them more likely to be retained.

There are several theories why but we don’t really know. It’s possible these people have that shut off.

SubArcticTundra

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Honestly I wonder how many GB (or whatever the equivalent is for neural networks) the average person's long term memories take up.

originalfrozenbanana

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Yeah almost certainly. Forgetting is an adaptive mechanism, probably not concerned with space. The brain is finite of course, but I imagine other parts of your consciousness would fail before you ran out of “space”

Hikermick

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This is me except I only remember the embarrassing things

Rhynoplaz

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They have finally identified my polar opposite. According to prophecy, she must be my super villain! I think. I can't really remember.

Car

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“You did this to me! You turned me into this monster!”

“I have never seen you before in my life”

Rhynoplaz

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She would remember if she had.

ProIsh

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I think I'm dating her

NESSI3

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cgbackagain

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You married my girlfriend?

CptEnder

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I toob choose this guy's wife

quilan

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I'm pretty sure this is what Tim Rogers from Action Button Reviews has. His masterpiece Boku no Natsuyasumi review goes into a lot of detail about it. The end of part 5 had me literally sobbing in my chair for the first time in perhaps 20-some-odd years, followed immediately by a very confused laughing at a surprise hbomberguy appearance. I'd highly recommend watching it - it's quite the long form journey.