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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio Hoe
Speaker 1: Cham and today we're talking about super memory. There are
Speaker 1: people out there that can memorize over one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: digits of pie. Others can read a series of books
Speaker 1: and then recite them by hears and still others can
Speaker 1: remember what they did every single day of their lives,
Speaker 1: some reportedly as far back to the day they were born.
Speaker 1: How are they able to do that? Is it a
Speaker 1: superpower or is it something that anyone can learn to do.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to a couple of memory scientists
Speaker 1: who are going to break down how memory works, what
Speaker 1: are its limits, and whether being able to remember everything
Speaker 1: is a gift or a curse. So get ready for
Speaker 1: a memorable episode about memory, one that you won't soon forget. Enjoy. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: So there are some people out there with amazing memory.
Speaker 1: For example, there's Akira Haragucci, who broke the world record
Speaker 1: for memorizing and reciting the most digits of pie. You
Speaker 1: know pie, It's that math number that goes three point
Speaker 1: one four one, five, nine, two, six, five, three, five,
Speaker 1: eight nine, seventy nine three two, three, eight four, and
Speaker 1: so on and so on. That's just twenty digits of it.
Speaker 1: But Akira Haragucci was able to memorize and recall one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand digits of it, a record that to this
Speaker 1: day is still unbroken. Then there's famous savant Kim Peak.
Speaker 1: Peak was the inspiration for the character in the movie
Speaker 1: rain Man. He could recide from memory over six thousand
Speaker 1: books he had read, and he could tell you the
Speaker 1: ZIP code and aera code of pretty much every city
Speaker 1: in the United States. Now, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I'm a little forgetful sometimes. So the fact that
Speaker 1: there are humans that can have this level of memory
Speaker 1: is absolutely mind boggling to me. To learn more about
Speaker 1: memory and how super memory works, I reached out to
Speaker 1: an expert in the field, doctor Daniella Palombo. Doctor Palombo
Speaker 1: is a professor at the University of British Columbia or UBC,
Speaker 1: who studies people with extraordinary memory. Now, before we got
Speaker 1: started hearing that she works at UBC, there a memory
Speaker 1: in my head.
Speaker 2: I've been to the UBC a couple of times.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, nice campus.
Speaker 2: I rememory of being there. I've been going skiing at night.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, probably app in Whistler.
Speaker 2: Uh no, just above the city there's a ski slope.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well that's a good segue into our conversation
Speaker 3: about memory. You were you out Cyprus or maybe.
Speaker 2: Gross gosh, it was a long time ago, and I've
Speaker 2: been to about four hundred universities.
Speaker 3: You didn't know I was going to grill your memory today.
Speaker 2: That did such detail a memory of us snowboarding down
Speaker 2: a mountain in Vancouver mid night.
Speaker 3: Amazing?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I would not be the poster child
Speaker 1: for people with super memory. Okay, doctor Palumbo is going
Speaker 1: to talk to us about super memory, memory athletes and
Speaker 1: people who can remember every single day of their lives.
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to ask her a basic question.
Speaker 1: What do we know about our memory? Is it like
Speaker 1: a computer hard drive that sits in one place in
Speaker 1: our brain? Does it store things as files with holders
Speaker 1: that we can just look up whenever we want. It
Speaker 1: turns out there's a lot we don't know about how
Speaker 1: memory works. First of all, I was curious to know
Speaker 1: how does memory work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a very big question. So first, memory is
Speaker 3: not just one thing. When we remember our past, we
Speaker 3: can do so with different forms of remembering. So you
Speaker 3: may have heard the our memory systems.
Speaker 1: Okay, The first thing to know about memory is that
Speaker 1: there isn't one kind of memory. There are several types
Speaker 1: of memory. The first kind is the kind that we
Speaker 1: are most familiar with, called episodic memory or basically flashbacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so episodic memory is our memory for specific events.
Speaker 3: So for example, if I asked you to remember your
Speaker 3: first date, or if I asked you to remember something
Speaker 3: unusual that happened to you, you'd be able to conjure
Speaker 3: up details that are specific to that event, like where
Speaker 3: you were sitting, what you were wearing, how you were
Speaker 3: feeling at the time. So we can really sort of
Speaker 3: it feels like we're reliving these events from our past,
Speaker 3: like we're playing back a recording. And that's very different
Speaker 3: from other forms of memory, like our semantic memory or
Speaker 3: memory for facts knowing that Paris is the capital of France,
Speaker 3: for example, or that Vancouver is in British Columbia.
Speaker 2: I see Episodic.
Speaker 3: Memory and semantic memory a are part of a broader
Speaker 3: sort of umbrella within our memory systems called declarative memory.
Speaker 3: Some people refer to it as explicit memory.
Speaker 1: So there are two basic types of memory. The first,
Speaker 1: declarative memory is basically what you consciously remember, facts, things
Speaker 1: that happen. You can bring them up in your brain
Speaker 1: and think about them. The second type of memory is
Speaker 1: the kind you remember unconsciously. It's what gets today call
Speaker 1: ball knowledge.
Speaker 3: And that's another form of remembering called implicit memory. And so,
Speaker 3: for example, do you play any instruments?
Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, little piano, little guitar, great, there's some drums.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when you sit down at the piano and
Speaker 3: you start playing, that kind of just comes back to naturally,
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily remember every piano lesson you had, but
Speaker 3: nonetheless you're able to perform that incredible feat of playing music.
Speaker 3: Another example is the first time you learn to ride
Speaker 3: a bike. Many of us don't remember that event, but
Speaker 3: we can hop on a bike kind of at any age,
Speaker 3: and we can ride.
Speaker 2: And you never forget, as they say, how to ride
Speaker 2: a bike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. And so we think of that
Speaker 3: as being a more implicit form of memory. So or
Speaker 3: memory for how to do things.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are different kinds of memory. Another interesting thing
Speaker 1: we know about memory is that it doesn't just sit
Speaker 1: in one place in our brains. It's kind of all
Speaker 1: over the place, depending on what you use it for.
Speaker 1: If it's your memory for how to physically do something
Speaker 1: like ride a bike or the baseball, that memory is
Speaker 1: in the motor areas of your brain, sort of across
Speaker 1: the top of your brain. If it's your ability to
Speaker 1: remember a song or remembering what something tastes or smells like,
Speaker 1: then it's in your sensory cortex, which is closer to
Speaker 1: the back of your head, kind of where the swirl
Speaker 1: of your hair is. And if it's your vivid dream
Speaker 1: type of memory or your memory of facts, scientists think
Speaker 1: those are kind of diffused all over the brain. In
Speaker 1: other words, there's no one central hard drive for story
Speaker 1: memories in your brain. Okay, The last interesting thing doctor
Speaker 1: Palombo says we know about memory came up when he
Speaker 1: asked me if I remember the first date.
Speaker 2: I ever went on.
Speaker 1: I do not remember my first date, but I do
Speaker 1: remember the first date I had with my spouse, So
Speaker 1: I think that's yeah, that worked it right.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is that is very good. That is very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ohether it's debated still whether it was a date
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 3: So I'm sure you have some good stories about that,
Speaker 3: and I would imagine that if you and your partner
Speaker 3: were to exchange details about that event, some of the
Speaker 3: details you would be the same, and some you'd have
Speaker 3: you have very different versions of what actually happened. And
Speaker 3: that's fascinating. So one of the things that's kind of
Speaker 3: interesting about memory is this idea that we playback events
Speaker 3: like we're playing our memories back on a recorder. Memory
Speaker 3: actually doesn't work this way at all, and in fact,
Speaker 3: when we're remembering those events like the first time we
Speaker 3: had a pomegranate, we're actually remembering a combination of what
Speaker 3: actually happened and a bunch of other stuff. And that
Speaker 3: other stuff is the general knowledge we have about the
Speaker 3: world how events should work. We're filling in the blanks
Speaker 3: of our memory, and what we ultimately remember is a
Speaker 3: combination of these two things, what actually happened and the
Speaker 3: inferences and generalizations we have about the world.
Speaker 2: I Meanan, we remember part of what happened, and part
Speaker 2: of what we remember is what we think.
Speaker 3: Happened exactly exactly, and it happens very seamlessly, so we
Speaker 3: don't really realize that we're filling in the blanks this way.
Speaker 1: In other words, memories aren't perfect. They're kind of fuzzy,
Speaker 1: at least for most of us. Okay, now we're going
Speaker 1: to get to super memory, because some people they remember
Speaker 1: a lot and sometimes quite perfectly.
Speaker 2: Well, that brings me to the topic of people who
Speaker 2: have super memory. Yeah, I guess I'm Christine. Some people,
Speaker 2: for example, are able to memorize, you know, one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand digits of pie, or you know, he can memorize
Speaker 2: the works of Shakespeare.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is such an interesting topic, and I guess
Speaker 3: I'll start a little bit broad by saying that there
Speaker 3: are many sort of types of superior memory.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Palombo, there are two basic types of
Speaker 1: super or superior memorizers. The first type are called memory athletes.
Speaker 1: In the second are people with something called highly superior
Speaker 1: autobiographical memory, or h SAM. And in each of these
Speaker 1: kinds of super memories there are surprising facts that tell
Speaker 1: us a lot about how memory works in our brains
Speaker 1: and how memory shapes who we are. So when we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll tackle the first type of super memory,
Speaker 1: memory athletes, and we'll talk about how maybe you can
Speaker 1: become one. So stay with it, don't forget.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. We're not going to talk about the
Speaker 1: first type of super or superior memory, which is a
Speaker 1: kind found in memory athletes. As I mentioned before, one
Speaker 1: of the most extreme examples of super memory are people
Speaker 1: who can memorize the digits of pie. For example, there's
Speaker 1: Akira Haraguchi, who memorized over one hundred thousand digits of it,
Speaker 1: and he's not alone. According to the Pie World Ranking
Speaker 1: List website, there are at least ten people who have
Speaker 1: memorized over thirty thousand digits of it, including Paul HEARDing,
Speaker 1: the US record holder, who is said to have memorized
Speaker 1: thirty thousand, four hundred and forty eight digits of pie.
Speaker 1: There's even an annual event called the World Memory Championships,
Speaker 1: which which is like the Olympics of memory in it,
Speaker 1: memory athletes compete in timed events like who can memorize
Speaker 1: a random deck of cards the fastest, or who can
Speaker 1: memorize the most random numbers in one hour. Last year,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, the overall winner was narranzul Ot
Speaker 1: gon Uhlan, a sixteen year old girl from Mongolia, who
Speaker 1: absolutely blew away her competition with an astonishing performance. She
Speaker 1: was able to memorize a sequence of three thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three random numbers in one hour. She
Speaker 1: memorized a six thousand, six hundred and seventy two long
Speaker 1: sequence of random ones and zeros in thirty minutes, and
Speaker 1: it only took her twenty four point two seconds to
Speaker 1: memorize the complete sequence of a shuffle deck of cards.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a hard time remembering those six
Speaker 1: verification digits they give you every time you have to
Speaker 1: log in somewhere now and memorizing a ten digit phone
Speaker 1: number these days, or get it. But here's the amazing
Speaker 1: fact about memory athleticism. According to doctor Daniella Palombo, anyone
Speaker 1: and be a memory athlete.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you can take a random selection of
Speaker 3: people from the population and you can train them to
Speaker 3: be memory athletes.
Speaker 1: Yes, anyone can train to be a memory athlete and
Speaker 1: be able to memorize really long sequences of numbers or
Speaker 1: playing cards, or names or objects. Remember Akira Haragucci, who
Speaker 1: memorized one hundred thousand digits of pie. According to interviews,
Speaker 1: he was neither a prodigy growing up or even particularly
Speaker 1: good at math. He just one day decided to start
Speaker 1: training his memory. The same goes for Alex Mullett, the
Speaker 1: first American to win the World Memory Championship, who went
Speaker 1: on to win it three years in a row. He
Speaker 1: never thought of himself as having a good memory, and
Speaker 1: none of his friends or family growing up would say
Speaker 1: that either. But one day he saw a ted talk
Speaker 1: talk about memory athletes and he decided to try it.
Speaker 1: He started to train himself, and initially, when he was
Speaker 1: able to memorize a twenty item shopping list, he was
Speaker 1: blowing away. Eventually he was able to do amazing things
Speaker 1: like memorize twenty eight decks of randomly shuffled cards in
Speaker 1: one hour. Now, I know what you're thinking. Surely these
Speaker 1: people had a gift for memorizing things, right. I Mean,
Speaker 1: it's true any one of us can learn to play basketball,
Speaker 1: but we can't all play in the NBA?
Speaker 2: Can we? Is their research saying that anybody can get
Speaker 2: to that level? Or is it sort of like playing
Speaker 2: at the NBA you need inherent talent to sort of
Speaker 2: make it to the NBA.
Speaker 3: Based on the research that's done, researchers believe that the
Speaker 3: best explanation for this type of superior memory is practice.
Speaker 3: That's not to say that innate abilities or curiosities are
Speaker 3: not at play. So, for example, if there are individual
Speaker 3: different in one's interest in organizing information, this might help
Speaker 3: use those strategies to remember leader I see. So we're
Speaker 3: still working out the details.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Palumbo, there's even been studies of the
Speaker 1: brains of memory athletes to check whether there's something special
Speaker 1: about them, and it turns out there isn't.
Speaker 3: There's a really interesting study that was done a few
Speaker 3: years ago where they took a group of people who
Speaker 3: would fall into this category or so, these memory athletes,
Speaker 3: and they scan their brains, and then they took a
Speaker 3: group of individuals who are not memory athletes and train
Speaker 3: them up. So the one finding is that when you
Speaker 3: look at the brains of people with superior memory, the
Speaker 3: structure of their brains, they don't look different from other
Speaker 3: individuals who are not superior.
Speaker 2: Memorizers, really huh.
Speaker 3: But when you look at the function of their brains,
Speaker 3: so how their brains activate when they're doing a task
Speaker 3: or when they're at rest, then you see differences between
Speaker 3: individuals who have superior memory and those who do.
Speaker 2: Not what are these differences in functionalities.
Speaker 3: What we tend to see is that the way these
Speaker 3: brain regions are talking to each other looks different. In
Speaker 3: people with superior memory, the connections between brain regions are
Speaker 3: often they're more tightly connected. They're kind of talking to
Speaker 3: each other more. And if you train everyday people like
Speaker 3: yourself or me to engage in these strategies for hours
Speaker 3: and hours, then you see a similar pattern of functional
Speaker 3: differences to those superior memory. And so that points us
Speaker 3: to the importance of training. It's not to say that
Speaker 3: inateabilities are not at all at play. We don't know
Speaker 3: for sure, but it certainly points to evidence that training
Speaker 3: is part of the story.
Speaker 1: Yes, you could train yourself to potentially play the NBA
Speaker 1: of memory athletics if you wanted to. The only caveat
Speaker 1: is that memory athletes have to train a.
Speaker 3: Lot, They have to put in a lot of effort.
Speaker 3: But you can get them trained up, and so you
Speaker 3: could be trained. For example, you refer to yourself as
Speaker 3: being somewhat forgetful, but I bet if you put in
Speaker 3: the time, you would actually impress us all.
Speaker 2: What I would have to remember it to practice.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yes, that's the first step.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is this training that you have to
Speaker 1: do to become a super memory athlete. According to doctor Palombo,
Speaker 1: the training involves learning and practicing mnemonic strategies or memorizing tricks.
Speaker 3: So what we know about these types of individuals that
Speaker 3: they are actually using strategies to remember a lot of
Speaker 3: information very quickly. And so, for example, many use a
Speaker 3: strategy you call the method of low SI. So imagine
Speaker 3: a memory appet needs to memorize long string of digits,
Speaker 3: which is quite difficult. So what they'll do is they'll
Speaker 3: take those digits and they'll associate them with some form
Speaker 3: of imagery. So maybe the digit io is associated with
Speaker 3: an image of a tiger, and so they'll build this
Speaker 3: image associations because images are easier to remember than strings
Speaker 3: of digits. They'll take those images and they will place
Speaker 3: them in a familiar space in their mind's eyes. So,
Speaker 3: for example, somebody might picture their home and all the
Speaker 3: rooms in their home, and they will place the images
Speaker 3: in different rooms, and they'll form a pathway in their
Speaker 3: mind's eye as they're visiting the different rooms in their house.
Speaker 1: Let's say this is a well known method for memorizing
Speaker 1: things Let's say you want to memorize a random sequence
Speaker 1: of words like key, woman, kangaroo, hair dryer, dinosaur. Those
Speaker 1: words are a little hard to memorize on their own,
Speaker 1: so you might instead picture your house or the house
Speaker 1: you grew up in, and then imagine yourself walking through
Speaker 1: that familiar space and finding each of the items in
Speaker 1: a different spot. For example, I walked in the front door,
Speaker 1: and I saw a key right next to the entrance.
Speaker 1: Then I went into the living room and so a
Speaker 1: woman standing there. Then I walked to the kitchen and
Speaker 1: saw a kangaroo, and so on and so on. And
Speaker 1: now imagine extending that walk around your house, adding more
Speaker 1: things to remember in every corner. You can now remember
Speaker 1: long sequences of information, and this works because you're essentially
Speaker 1: associating the things you want to remember do something familiar.
Speaker 3: At The idea is that you're linking kind of arbitrary
Speaker 3: information that doesn't mean a lot to an individual to
Speaker 3: something that's more personally relevant. So picturing your house, for example,
Speaker 3: is something that is personally connected to you. And we
Speaker 3: also know that people do best somewhat better at remembering
Speaker 3: spatial information or visual information, so rich images or rich
Speaker 3: spatial scene is maybe somewhat easier to remember than a
Speaker 3: string of digits.
Speaker 2: I see. Put it in context that my brain likes yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: And another way to remember things more easily is to
Speaker 1: make the things you're trying to remember more about you.
Speaker 3: And so there's another phenomenon called the self reference effect.
Speaker 3: This is separate from superior memory. This pertains to all
Speaker 3: of us. We tend to remember information better when it's
Speaker 3: self referential. And so if we are learning, let's say
Speaker 3: we show up at a lab and they present us
Speaker 3: a list of words, and later we're tested. The words
Speaker 3: that are personally meaningful to us are the words that
Speaker 3: we're going to tend to remember better from that list
Speaker 3: than the ones that don't have kind of a personal
Speaker 3: attachment to them. So, if I give you a list
Speaker 3: of traits and a memory test, and some of those
Speaker 3: traits resonate with you, so it could be funny, or
Speaker 3: it could be the word dad, or it could be
Speaker 3: the word partner, et cetera, and my professor, those words
Speaker 3: were going to remember better than words that don't have
Speaker 3: kind of a personal connection to us. And that's called
Speaker 3: the self reference effect.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, Yeah, we're all a little narcissistic.
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: So those are memory tricks that memory athletes use. They're more,
Speaker 1: of course, but the idea is that if you use
Speaker 1: them enough and you practice enough, then you could also
Speaker 1: become a memory athlete and memorize potentially thousands of digits
Speaker 1: of pie. Now what's interesting about memory athletes is that
Speaker 1: it really is athletic. You have to train for it,
Speaker 1: you get better over time, and if you don't use it,
Speaker 1: you lose it.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of these individuals will participate in
Speaker 3: these kind of memory championships. Yeah, and before they even
Speaker 3: get there, they're doing a lot with the memory to prepare,
Speaker 3: just like any type of athlete, but prepare for an
Speaker 3: important game. And they do this over and over again.
Speaker 3: They'll practice and it takes hours and hours of training.
Speaker 3: So by the time they get to these memory championships,
Speaker 3: they're very well prepared to remember a lot of information
Speaker 3: really quickly.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you paid the analogy to athletes and
Speaker 2: that they have to train and prepare for events, meaning
Speaker 2: like if they stop or they'll train, then they won't
Speaker 2: perform or remember as much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually have to engage in what's called maintenance,
Speaker 3: so they have to keep at it. It's not just
Speaker 3: sort of one and done you train for you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred hours. They actually have to, you know, train
Speaker 3: every day or often to keep up those skills.
Speaker 1: Okay, so here's a quick recap so far. Memory athletes
Speaker 1: are one type of super memory, and it's something anyone
Speaker 1: can learn to do. It's about picking the right mnemonic
Speaker 1: device that works for you, then scaling that up, and
Speaker 1: then keep on training. Even you can get to the
Speaker 1: point where you can memorize incredibly long sequences of random
Speaker 1: numbers or words or playing cards. And a big trick
Speaker 1: is to find ways to make what you're trying to
Speaker 1: remember relevant to you, which brings us to the second
Speaker 1: type of super memory. Imagine that you could remember not
Speaker 1: just some things that are relevant to you, but you
Speaker 1: could remember everything that happens to you. And now, I
Speaker 1: imagine what would happen if you couldn't turn it off
Speaker 1: with your head explode. Would it be a gift or
Speaker 1: a curse. When we come back, we'll get to that
Speaker 1: type of super memory, assuming we don't forget. So stay
Speaker 1: with us. We'll be right back. Hey, you remember, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about memory. And so far we talked about
Speaker 1: one kind of super memory, which is the one found
Speaker 1: in memory athletes. As we learn from doctor DANIELA. Palumbo,
Speaker 1: a researcher in memory, anyone can be a memory athlete.
Speaker 1: The ability to memorize thousands of digits of pie, or
Speaker 1: to memorize a deck of cards in twenty seconds is
Speaker 1: something that, according to brain studies, can be mostly attributed
Speaker 1: to practice, which means you can be a memory athlete too.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of you could be the next World
Speaker 1: memory champion. Now, as we learned, a trick to memorizing
Speaker 1: long sequences of abstract numbers or words or playing cards
Speaker 1: is to turn the information into something personally relevant or experiential.
Speaker 1: You can imagine, for example, turning a sequence of numbers
Speaker 1: into animals or objects you're familiar with, and then imagine
Speaker 1: yourself walking through a house or a palace and remembering
Speaker 1: running into those animals or objects in different rooms. It's
Speaker 1: a way to turn semantic information into something closer to
Speaker 1: episodic memory, which brings us to the second type of
Speaker 1: super memory, people who remember everything that happens to them.
Speaker 1: We all think we remember what we did in the past,
Speaker 1: but if I asked you, for example, what you had
Speaker 1: for lunch twelve days ago, you would probably say, I
Speaker 1: have no idea, But there are people on this planet
Speaker 1: that would remember that. And not only that, if you
Speaker 1: asked them about any date in the past, say they're
Speaker 1: ready to forty years, they could tell you what day
Speaker 1: of the week it was, where they were, what they
Speaker 1: read in the news or saw on TV that day,
Speaker 1: and yes, what they had for lunch. It's a characteristic
Speaker 1: of some people called highly superior autobiographical memory. Here's how
Speaker 1: doctor Palumbo describes it.
Speaker 3: So you can give them a date, virtually any date,
Speaker 3: and they will tell you what happened to them in
Speaker 3: their life that day. And they're also really good at
Speaker 3: remembering what happened in public, so they can remember media
Speaker 3: events really well. Is in addition to remembering their own
Speaker 3: personal experiences.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's the really interesting thing about ah SAM
Speaker 3: is that those with age SAM remember all of it.
Speaker 3: And so they remember they're really kind of inconsequential moments
Speaker 3: of their lives, including what they were wearing an event
Speaker 3: that they went to.
Speaker 2: They have a memory of what they were wearing.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. They have a really strong memory of what
Speaker 3: they were wearing and what others were wearing as well.
Speaker 3: So here you have these individuals who remember almost everything
Speaker 3: from their lives.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you remembered everything that ever happened to you.
Speaker 1: But here's the amazing thing. We don't really know how
Speaker 1: many people out there are able to do this.
Speaker 2: How common was this phenomenon of people with age?
Speaker 1: Sam?
Speaker 2: Is it the one and a million, one and a bini?
Speaker 2: What do we know about how often it happens?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I hate answering with an I don't know,
Speaker 3: But we know how many people have been identified for
Speaker 3: research studies, which is less than one hundred. So there's
Speaker 3: a very small group of individuals who have participated in
Speaker 3: research studies, and some of those studies have been published
Speaker 3: and some of them are forthcoming. But we don't know
Speaker 3: if it's more common than that.
Speaker 1: That's right, we don't know how often this phenomenon happens.
Speaker 1: Now you might be thinking, can we just figure out
Speaker 1: who has it and count them? Well, it's not that easy.
Speaker 3: That's because, at least based on the accounts of people
Speaker 3: who have been identified, many of them did not realize
Speaker 3: that their memory was any different from others until they
Speaker 3: were adults. Or in adolescents, And so it could be
Speaker 3: that a lot of people are going around with this
Speaker 3: really amazing memory ability, but they don't realize that other
Speaker 3: people don't have it as well.
Speaker 2: They didn't realize other people can't remember everything about their lives.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you happen to remember everything that ever happens
Speaker 1: to you, you know that's not common. You should contact
Speaker 1: a scientists right away so they can study this better. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of questions about this. First of all,
Speaker 1: how is this possible? What's going on in the brains
Speaker 1: of people with h SAM that gives them this superpower?
Speaker 1: Is there a limit to what they can remember? And
Speaker 1: is this a give or a curse? Will start For
Speaker 1: the first question.
Speaker 2: How is this possible? Like how can an individual fit
Speaker 2: so much in their heads?
Speaker 3: I know, it's fascinating, right, It's a big puzzle. So
Speaker 3: the why question is what stumps a lot of researchers.
Speaker 3: There's some hints and so, for example, one group of
Speaker 3: researchers looked at whether individuals with h SAM differ in
Speaker 3: the way they remember memories that are recent, let's say
Speaker 3: a week ago, versus events that they encoded a month ago,
Speaker 3: six months ago, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So this is a pretty cool experiment. Scientists ask people
Speaker 1: with and without highly superior autobiographical memory to remember something
Speaker 1: that's happened to them a week ago, you know what
Speaker 1: they remember? How much detail they remember, And it turned
Speaker 1: out that there wasn't much of a difference between the
Speaker 1: two groups.
Speaker 3: H SAM individuals did not differ from non h SAM
Speaker 3: individuals in their memory for events that were really really new.
Speaker 3: So those memories that were a week or less than
Speaker 3: a week old, what do.
Speaker 2: You mean, they didn't differ. What does it mean?
Speaker 3: So they were conjure up just as many details, the
Speaker 3: same amount of details as a person who does not
Speaker 3: have ah SAM.
Speaker 1: So for recent memories, things that happened just a few
Speaker 1: days ago, you and I are just as good as
Speaker 1: people with h SAM super memory and remembering what happened.
Speaker 1: But then in the experiment, they also asked people to
Speaker 1: remember things that happened further back, say a few weeks ago.
Speaker 3: However, when they looked at those older memories, so the
Speaker 3: memories that were more more than a week old, then
Speaker 3: you saw very large differences between individuals with h SAM
Speaker 3: and individuals without. And so the folks without ah SAM
Speaker 3: were forgetting a lot of those details, whereas the individuals
Speaker 3: with h SAM were holding on to those details for
Speaker 3: a longer period of time. And so that's really important
Speaker 3: finding because it hints at this idea that perhaps individuals
Speaker 3: with h SAM don't encode memories differently from those who
Speaker 3: do not have ah SAM, but there's something about laying
Speaker 3: down those memory traces so that they're more permanent that
Speaker 3: may differ in individuals with h SAM.
Speaker 2: Wow, meaning that people with a SAM are just as
Speaker 2: good at getting memories. They seem to be better at
Speaker 2: keeping memories.
Speaker 3: Exactly yes, that's a perfect way to put.
Speaker 2: It, oh fascinating, meaning that they're just good at not
Speaker 2: forgetting exactly yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting because it tells you that people
Speaker 1: with this kind of super memory taking the world pretty
Speaker 1: much the same way the rest of us do. It's
Speaker 1: not like they experience more or they pay attention to
Speaker 1: more details or have a heightened sense of going through life.
Speaker 1: They process the world just like we do, except whereas
Speaker 1: for most of us, most memories just fade away, for
Speaker 1: people with AHSAM, it all sticks. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: how the brain encodes memories later, but here's another fascinating
Speaker 1: thing about people with this kind of super memory. People
Speaker 1: with ah SAM are extremely good at remembering what happened
Speaker 1: to them, but they're not particularly good at remembering other things.
Speaker 3: The h SAM is quite unique in that individuals who
Speaker 3: have it are really good at remembering autobiographical content, and
Speaker 3: they don't necessarily excel when it comes to remembering other
Speaker 3: kinds of information. And so, if you bring individuals with
Speaker 3: h SAM into the laboratory and you give them memory tests,
Speaker 3: for example, tests that involve words or images, et cetera,
Speaker 3: then they do not perform any better than individuals who
Speaker 3: do not have aach SAM. Wow, so it has to
Speaker 3: be autobiographical in nature for them to remember it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Now, I know what you're probably thinking right now, which is,
Speaker 1: if you remembered everything that ever happened to you, why
Speaker 1: didn't you run out of space in your head for
Speaker 1: all those memories?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What's the limit of this super memory? I asked doctor
Speaker 1: Palombo this question.
Speaker 2: How can to be in your room in the brain
Speaker 2: to remember everything you do in your life?
Speaker 3: That is such a good question, and I think we
Speaker 3: just don't know. And so it's surprising that individuals can
Speaker 3: remember this much information.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's a limit to how much we
Speaker 2: can you remember in our brains?
Speaker 3: We used to think so, but I think people with
Speaker 3: h SAM make us.
Speaker 2: Question that maybe the limit is much higher than you think. Yeah, exactly, Okay.
Speaker 1: The last question I asked doctor Plumbo about this type
Speaker 1: of super memory was whether being able to remember everything
Speaker 1: that's ever happened to you is a gift or a curse.
Speaker 3: If you talk to different individuals, what they have in
Speaker 3: common is that they all remember events in rich and
Speaker 3: vivid detail. But the way that they feel about having
Speaker 3: really good memory differs from one individual to the next.
Speaker 3: So some will refer to their age SAM as a gift,
Speaker 3: and some feel less enthusiastic about having such a good memory.
Speaker 3: For example, there's one individual with h SAM named Mary
Speaker 3: Lou Henner, and she's a famous actress, and she describes
Speaker 3: her ah SAM as a gift, and she describes that
Speaker 3: it is something that she uses in her occupation as
Speaker 3: an actress, that she has fun with it. She really
Speaker 3: just enjoys having a really good memory, and so for
Speaker 3: her it is something that she really appreciates.
Speaker 1: So some people really like having this kind of super memory.
Speaker 1: But others describe it is a bit of a curse.
Speaker 1: One well known person with h SAM, a woman in
Speaker 1: her fifties from Los Angeles called Jill Price, can remember
Speaker 1: what she did almost every single day of her life.
Speaker 1: She even says she has memories of being a toddler
Speaker 1: in her crip. It's like she has the camera record
Speaker 1: button on all the time. And she describes the experience
Speaker 1: of having this kind of super memory as quote, NonStop,
Speaker 1: uncontrollable and totally exhausting.
Speaker 3: There are some individuals who do feel that way, yes,
Speaker 3: and that sometimes their memories can be really distracting for them.
Speaker 3: So what is common across many individuals with h SAM
Speaker 3: is the automaticity of their memories, so they come back
Speaker 3: to them really, really easily and very quickly. But there
Speaker 3: are times when remembering is not the task at hand,
Speaker 3: when we have to pay attention in the classroom, or
Speaker 3: when we have a very demanding job, and so for
Speaker 3: some individuals they have described it as distracting and even
Speaker 3: difficult because all their memories are really vivid, including the
Speaker 3: bad ones.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the topic of forgetting. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I forgot to tell you. This is actually a two
Speaker 1: part episode about super memory. We talked about people with
Speaker 1: amazing abilities to remember a lot of things, but what
Speaker 1: about the opposite, What about people with amazing abilities to
Speaker 1: forget or with the lack of ability to make new memories.
Speaker 1: Do you remember watching the movie Memento or finding dorri
Speaker 1: Well that happens to real people. On our next episode,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how the brain forgets memories, what it's
Speaker 1: like to live completely in the moment without memory, without
Speaker 1: the burden of the past. So don't forget to come
Speaker 1: back see you next week. You've been listening to Science
Speaker 1: Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by me Or Hitcham,
Speaker 1: credited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland, and audio
Speaker 1: engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram. And you can follow me
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