Day 7 of Digest Super Week: Meet the woman who remembers most of her life in extraordinary detail

For most of us, the remembrance of days and weeks gone by is rapidly obscured by the clouds of forgetting. Not so for people with what's known as hyperthymesia or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. These unusual individuals can recall most of their past with exquisite vividness and detail. For the final day of Digest Super Week, meet hyperthymesic Becky Sharrock: I have highly superior autobiographical memory My name is Rebecca Sharrock and I have Hyperthymesia (commonly known as HSAM, or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory). Until the age of 21 nobody (including myself) had any idea about why distant memories kept invading my thoughts. When memories flash through they are involuntary, very vivid and make me relive past events. In other words, I’m brought back to the same emotional and psychological age I was at the time it happened. I have no control over what memories will flash through my mind, as they are an endless and random stream. On the 23rd of January, 2011 I found out about HSAM. My Mum and I watched a television show called The View in which the first few people found to have HSAM were being interviewed. After I saw this segment, so many questions had been answered for me. Mum sent an email to the University of California, Irvine (who are studying this newly discovered memory syndrome) stating that she believed I had this condition. The UCI then sent us a reply, saying that they wanted to test me. I did my first quiz over the phone o...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs