this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Psychology

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Saaaaame. Why are we like this 😅

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You married my girlfriend?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I toob choose this guy's wife

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

This is me except I only remember the embarrassing things

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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.