hyperthymesia or Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory

Individuals with hyperthymesia can recall almost every day of their lives in near perfect detail, as well as public events that hold some personal significance to them. Those affected describe their memories as uncontrollable associations, when they encounter a date, they "see" a vivid depiction of that day in their heads.[3] Recollection occurs without hesitation or conscious effort.

It is important to draw a distinction between those with hyperthymesia and those with other forms of exceptional memory, who generally use mnemonic or similar rehearsal strategies to memorise long strings of subjective information. Memories recalled by hyperthymestic individuals tend to be personal, autobiographical accounts of both significant and mundane events in their lives. This extensive and highly unusual memory does not derive from the use of mnemonic strategies; it is encoded involuntarily and retrieved automatically.[4] Despite being able to remember the day of the week on which a particular date fell, hyperthymestics are not calendrical calculators like some people with autism or savant syndrome. Rather, hyperthymestic recall tends to be constrained to a person’s lifetime and is believed to be an unconscious process.

Although hyperthymestics are not autistic, and likewise savants do not memorise autobiographical information, there are certain similarities between the two conditions. Like autistic savants, individuals with hyperthymesia have an unusual and obsessive interest in dates. Russian psychologist Aleksandr Luria documented the famous case of mnemonist Solomon Shereshevskii,[5] who was quite different from the first documented hyperthymestic known as AJ in that he could memorise virtually unlimited amounts of information deliberately, while AJ could not – she could only remember autobiographical information (and events she had personally seen on the news or read about). In fact, she was not very good at memorising anything at all, according to the study published in ‘’Neurocase’’. Hyperthymestic individuals appear to have poorer than average memory for arbitrary information. Another striking parallel drawn between the two cases was that Shereshevskii exemplified an interesting case of synaesthesia[6] and it has been suggested that superior autobiographical memory is intimately tied to time-space synaesthesia.[7]

Henner said her memory works like a scene selection menu on a DVD, with “little videos moving simultaneously.”

“When somebody gives me a date or a year or something, I see all these little movie montages, basically on a time continuum, and I’m scrolling through them and flashing through them,” she said.

I would love to have any kind of... how do you call it? Memory?

Jokes aside, I have a strange memory as well. I remember initials of peoples names (not remembering the names) and I remember where the information I need is - I know the book, and where on the page it is - like left top, under the picture - but not the page number.

I don't have phenomenal memory, but I do have a strange type of memory. In school and for tests, even at work, I would just "scan" the pages, then recall the page where I saw the information and "read" it. Now it makes sense that I excelled in subjects that required a lot of memorization, and not so much subjects like math that require more reasoning.

I'm curious to hear zooby's take on this and how his memory works.

Anyway, I didn't realize till you posted this that anyone outside of autistic people had this sort of cinematic memory. I'm going to start asking around and see if any of the people I know report their memory being like watching a movie.

As I understand it, this type of memory is not typical for autistic people.

I'm not sure anyone can determine how typical it is at this point. There are very few autistic people as articulate as Temple Grandin, few with her insight into the differences between autistic people and neurotypicals. (She is exceptional because she has figured out what needs to be explained about being autistic.)

It would be interesting to have an explanation of how other memories compare with this.

That's something that's bugging me, if people don't see memories play back, how exactly do they recall a memory? It seems to me that it has to be some sort of sensory replay, whether it's remembering a smell or physical sensation, audio or visual. When you remember music, you remember the sounds playing, right? So, how can any memory not be a "replay", I know it's common that when you hear a song you can also see the "video" of what was happening while you were listening. Of course, luckily, your mind doesn't simultaneously replay every instance of when you heard the song, your mind somehow selects a default "version". if you want a specific instance, you need to search for it. I would imagine having mutiple memories simultaneously come up could be caused by a malfunction of the brain.

If people could try to describe how their memory appears to them, that would be very interesting.

I wouldn't object to the term "replay" to describe my memories but only if it's understood that it is of a very low quality compared to the original experience and that, the emphasis seems to be on parsimony: I'm provided with the minimum duration and intensity needed to work with.

If the original experience can be compared to a scene from a seven-sense movie (the classic 5 plus balance and proprioception) plus emotion, then the memory could be compared to a very grainy black and white still shot; a sort of minimum-data, low budget "prompt".

All aspects of this "prompt" will be much degraded compared to the original, except the emotion, which, unless I deliberately suppress it, is very often just as vivid as during the original experience. In fact, the whole activity seems to be aimed at recovering that original emotion. It's the compact data-packet I'm searching for. Focusing my attention on that data packet calls up all the salient sub-events. I felt a certain emotion because x happened or Y said a certain thing. Finding the emotional packet leads to a mapping out of the facts, or at least the salient events.

It seems that everything that happens is tagged and stored by some sort of emotional classification. The bolder the emotional tag, the more important the event seems.