![]() Hyperthymestic individuals appear to have poorer than average memory for arbitrary information. In fact, she was not very good at memorization in general, according to the study published in Neurocase. Shereshevsky could memorize virtually unlimited amounts of information deliberately, while Price could not – she could only remember autobiographical information (and events she had personally seen on the news or read about). As the first documented hyperthymestic, Jill Price was quite different from the famous case of mnemonist Solomon Shereshevsky (as documented by psychologist Alexander Luria). Like autistic savants, some individuals with hyperthymesia may also have an unusual and obsessive interest in dates. Īlthough people showing a high level of hyperthymesia are not regarded as autistic, certain similarities exist between the two conditions. This was published in a paper in Frontiers in Psychology which stated "hese data suggest that HSAM experience normal encoding, yet enhanced consolidation and later recall of autobiographical events." Individuals with HSAM remember their own experiences very well, but do not perform as well when recalling details of events that have been told to them. Researchers have also found that the accuracy and detail of memories of people with HSAM improves over time. Rather, hyperthymestic recall tends to be constrained to a person's lifetime and is believed to be a subconscious process. Despite perhaps being able to remember the day of the week on which a particular date fell, hyperthymestics are not calendrical calculators, like some people with savant syndrome. This extensive and highly unusual memory does not derive from the use of mnemonic strategies it is encoded involuntarily and retrieved automatically. Memories recalled by hyperthymestic individuals tend to be personal, autobiographical accounts of both significant and mundane events in their lives. There is a distinction between those with hyperthymesia and those with other forms of exceptional memory, who generally use mnemonic or similar rehearsal strategies to memorize long strings of information. One day after several hours together, she was asked to close her eyes and tell what her two interviewers were wearing. ![]() While memories are reported as vivid, they are not exact recordings of all experiences, as seen in the case of Jill Price, then anonymised as "AJ": Īlthough she describes her mind like having a movie running, she is not recording her world verbatim in its totality. Those affected describe their memories as uncontrollable associations when they encounter a date, they "see" a vivid depiction of that day in their heads without hesitation or conscious effort. Individuals with hyperthymesia can extensively recall the events of their lives, as well as public events that hold some personal significance to them. ![]() The authors wrote that they derived the word from Ancient Greek: hyper- ("excessive") and thymesis ("remembering"), but there is no such word as thymesis it may allude to the Greek enthymesis, which means "consideration", and is derived from thymos "mind". Īmerican neurobiologists Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill, and James McGaugh (2006) identified two defining characteristics of hyperthymesia: spending an excessive amount of time thinking about one's past, and displaying an extraordinary ability to recall specific events from one's past. One who has hyperthymesia is called a hyperthymesiac. ![]() It is extraordinarily rare, with only 62 people in the world having been diagnosed with the condition as of 2021. ![]() Hyperthymesia, also known as hyperthymestic syndrome or highly superior autobiographical memory ( HSAM), is a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. Psychology, psychiatry, neurology, neuropsychology Hyperthymestic syndrome, highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) ![]()
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