WEBVTT - Ep80 "What's it like to never forget?" 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.800 My fellow Inner Cosmonauts. With this episode, I am wrapping 0:00:03.880 --> 0:00:06.520 up season two, and I am so excited for all 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:10.840 the new topics coming in season three, like longevity and 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:15.000 the self and dementia and so many more things about 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.000 the brain that will come to understand In the new season. 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:20.640 I can have monologues, and I can have guests, and 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.439 I'm introducing some new formats. Until then, I'm going to 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:26.960 be taking a short break until mid November, and in 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.159 the meantime playing some of our favorite episodes. What do 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:35.280 we find beautiful? What is intelligence? Why do brains become depressed? 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.239 And one of my favorites, why do we see the 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:42.120 dress differently? Thank you so much for being part of 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:44.920 Inner Cosmos, where we get to take a deep dive 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:50.640 together to better understand our lives, our choices, and our experiences. 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:59.120 I'll see you next month. What would it be like 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.720 to have a vastly better memory than you do now? 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.039 What if you could remember what you were wearing on 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.920 any day back twelve years ago, or who you were with, 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.360 or what that conversation was, or whether it rained, or 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:16.920 what you heard on the radio. Would this be a 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.960 blessing or a curse? Or could it be a balance 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.480 of the two. And if you're forgetting a lot of 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.320 your life, what might you do to better remember it? 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.560 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.319 neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.800 dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.319 of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:49.800 is about memory, and specifically the most extraordinary capacities for 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:56.120 memory that we have witnessed on the planet. Now. It 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.480 happens that one of my favorite authors is Jorge Luis Borges, 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.200 and he wrote a short story in nineteen forty two 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:06.120 called Funes the Memorius. This is about a young man 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.040 who falls off his horse and hits his head, and 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:13.280 as a consequence of this accident, he develops an extraordinary 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:17.920 ability to remember everything. He can no longer forget anything. 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.160 Fus's memory becomes so vast that he can recall every 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.000 moment of his life and every nuance of what he perceives, 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.520 down to the exact positions of the clouds on any 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.960 given day. Now, obviously, keep in mind this is a 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.760 story of fiction. Borjes was a great writer of fantasy 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:41.240 and the genre that came to be known as magical realism. 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.920 So back to the story, this ability becomes, for Fuse 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.440 more of a burden than a gift. He finds himself 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:54.280 overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and he becomes 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.360 incapable of thinking abstractly because he can remember all the 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:02.799 fine details of everything. He drowns in a world of 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:07.440 infinite detail. In story foodates can no longer even sleep, 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.120 as he recalls quote every crevice and every molding of 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:16.000 the various houses which surround him end quote. It's a 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.160 great fictional short story, and very creative. But there's a 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.760 debate in the literature about whether Borhaes made up the 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.840 story whole cloth, or whether instead he knew about a 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:32.040 Soviet neuropsychologist named Alexander Luria, because Lauria had for a 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.360 couple of decades at this point been studying a man 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:41.680 named Solomon Shrishevski. Now Sharyshevski came from a modest background 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.080 and you wouldn't think he'd become internationally known and immortalized. 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.000 But everything started in the mid nineteen twenties when Sharyshevski 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.400 was working as a journalist and attended a meeting and 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.400 afterwards his editor reprimanded him for not taking any notes, 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:59.680 and the editor was then astonished to find out that 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.720 shar Arshevski was able to recall every detail of the 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:07.680 meeting word for word, just from memory. So that led 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:11.040 Sharyshevski to get referred to Lauria, who is one of 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.280 the most prominent neuropsychologists of the time, and Lauria studied 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.680 Sheryshevski and his remarkable memory over the course of several decades. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.880 Lauria eventually wrote a book called The Mind of Aneminist. 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.760 Now a neminist is a term for a person who 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:32.200 just has an untaxable memory. Because the key was that 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:37.280 Sharyshevski could memorize essentially anything. He could memorize whole strings 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.800 of random numbers, or long lists of nonsense words, or 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.400 really any kind of data presented in any kind of 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:49.600 random order. He had nearly perfect recall. So Lauria tested 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.159 him over time, and Sharyshevski could even recall these random 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.320 sequences years later, and this led Lauria to conclude that 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:02.000 Sharyshevski's memory was virtual, limitless, and this was of course 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:06.279 a very rare phenomenon. Now you may know that my 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:10.600 laboratory has studied synesthesia for many years. Synesthesia is a 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:14.920 harmless condition where people have a blending of the senses. 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.400 You can check out my books and episodes on that. 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.120 So it turns out that Sherishevski had a very rich 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.400 combination of synesthesias and this is what gave him his 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:30.760 memory abilities. For him, numbers would appear in colors and 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:37.880 shapes and with personalities, Sounds triggered textures, words evoked images 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.760 where they might feel heavy or light. Here's an example 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:47.360 of Sharyshevski's internal experience as he described it. Quote, take 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.800 the number one. This is a proud, well built man. 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:56.800 Two is a high spirited woman. Three is a gloomy person. 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.680 Six is a man with a swollen foot. Seven is 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:03.839 a man with a mustache. Eight is a very stout woman, 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.400 and so on and all. This sensory overlap allowed him 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:13.520 to store information in a rich multisensory format, which in 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:18.279 turn enhanced his recollection. So if you're not synesthetic, just 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.080 think about your own examples of how a second sense 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:24.880 helps you with recall. So, for example, you might have 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:28.400 a hard time memorizing a poem. But if it's put 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.640 to music, then we call that lyrics, and you memorize 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.440 all the words perfectly because now you have some other 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.680 data stream the music that you can tie it to. 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:42.520 So what Schershevski had was one example of an extraordinary 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.000 memory where he could memorize these random lists. But more 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:50.040 recently in history, there's been the discovery of another type 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.400 of off the charts memory. And this began in two 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.039 thousand and six when my colleagues at U SEE Irvine 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.960 came in contact with a very special woman named Jill. 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.760 Jill can recite details of every day of her life 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:07.640 from the time she was about fourteen years old that 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.360 she does this in great detail. Her specialty is in 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:17.080 autobiographical memory. That means memory about your own life, like 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.040 what you did and who you were with, and what 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.440 you were and what happened to you. This is called 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:27.280 autobiographical memory. It's not about random chess positions or the 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.400 details of the history of Cambodia. It's about you and 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.880 what has happened in your life. Now, if you are 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:38.320 like most human beings, your autobiographical memory is reasonably good, 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:42.000 but it's not that good. You can't really remember what 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:46.360 you were wearing on October fifth, twenty seventeen, or what 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.360 you heard on the radio on April twenty first of 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.680 two thousand and nine, and so on, because generally speaking, 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.880 the brain is tuned to drop as many details as 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.280 it can if they're not highly important. In other words, 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:06.040 forgetting is often as important as remembering. But for Jill Price, 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:12.160 her autobiographical memory was way, way, way above average, so 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:16.360 the researchers termed her condition hyperthymesia. But since people thought 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:18.760 that sounded something like a disease, they later termed it 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:28.360 highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM for highly superior autobiographical memory. Now, 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.760 most of us can remember significant events in our lives, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.800 like the birth of a child, or a graduation or 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:39.280 a nice vacation, but those memories eventually fade where they blur, 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:43.239 where they become harder to pull up details as time passes. 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.520 But for a person with h SAM, they have the 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.960 ability to recall nearly every day of their lives with 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.040 extraordinary clarity. They can tell you what they were doing 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.839 on some random Tuesday fifteen years ago, down to the weather, 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.439 the clothes they were wearing, even the smallest details of 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.920 conversations they had. Their memories aren't just stored, they're accessible 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.280 on demand with incredible richness. Maybe you have a reasonably 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.360 good memory, but almost certainly you can't remember what the 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.319 weather was like on October fifth, twenty nineteen, or precisely 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.760 what you chose out of your closet on that day, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.080 and whether it rained or not, what piece of news 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.640 you've heard on the radio that day. But some people can. 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:31.560 Now this highly superior autobiographical memory is very rare as 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.640 right now, there's only been about one hundred people who 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.839 have been diagnosed with h SAM, And so I wanted 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.480 to find someone one of these rare people with h 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:43.200 SAM who I could talk to about this for the show. 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.120 And it turns out that one person who has this 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.320 is also someone you might have heard of for a 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.160 different reason. She's a famous actor, and that is Mary 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.200 Lou Henner. You may know that Mary Lou became a 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.800 well known stage actor in nineteen seventy one, appearing in 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.840 the the original production of the musical Grease with John 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:06.400 Travolta on stage, and then in seventy seven she began 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:08.520 in the movies, and in nineteen seventy eight she had 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:12.640 her breakthrough role on the television sitcom Taxi, where she 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.360 played a single mother who was working as a cabby, 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.280 and she got several Golden Globe nominations for that. She 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:20.920 later had co starring roles in a number of films 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.120 through the eighties nineties, and she continues to appear on 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.800 screen through the present day. Now, most of you will 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.520 recognize her face. But the thing that not everyone knows 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.280 about Mary Lou is that she is one of these 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:39.240 one hundred people. She has an extraordinary autobiographical memory, remembering 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.920 every day of her life. So here's my interview with 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:50.320 Mary Lou Henner. So, Mary Lou, we all assume that 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.880 everyone is having the same experience on the inside that 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:55.880 we are, but you, at this point in your life, 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.080 know that most people have a different sort of memory 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:00.960 than you do. So, so can you tell us what 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.920 is it like to have a memory like yours? What 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:04.959 is your experience? 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.959 Well, from the time I was six years old, everybody 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.800 in my sphere, my family, friends who came over, everybody 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.320 knew I had something unusual. Now, I was one of 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.000 six children, and you know, when you're one of six, 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:21.720 you look for anything that makes you a little bit different. 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.360 From your brothers and sisters, and so I was just 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:27.960 always called the memory kid, memory girl. I was called Univac, 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:30.959 which was an old computer. People would say, well tell 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.000 it to Mary Lucas, Sho'll remember it. So I was 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:36.320 clan of the family historian. And at six years old, 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:40.600 I started falling asleep at night plan of doing what 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:42.840 I call time travel. You know, I would think what 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.400 did I do when I was exactly all week ago, 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.120 two weeks ago, when I was this day in kindergarten, 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:50.360 when I was my little brother's aid, And it was 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:52.959 something that I became very good at doing. Now there 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.800 is no doubt in my mind that I was born 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.960 with something unusual. You know, They've wired me, put me 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.240 through an MRI. They took three hundred measurements of my brain. 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.000 They found nine areas ten times larger than the normal rain. 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.160 But it was definitely something that was that was nurture 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.280 as well. So there was nature and nurture because I 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.280 just loved having this. It was so it was so 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:18.840 unusual and it was kind of fun. And you know, 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.480 people would say you're such a little lo at all 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.840 and they'd say, no, I'm a remember it all, you know. 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:27.320 So It was kind of my claim to fain give. 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:29.079 Us an example of the kind of thing that you 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:30.280 would remember as a kid. 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.280 I remember like every day in school where I could remember, 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:35.480 you know, things People would come over and I would 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:37.880 tell them the last time they were at my house 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.200 with my parents, or what they were wearing or things 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.600 like that, you know. So it was it was just 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.800 memory work. It was just I would never forget anything. 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.480 And so I knew it was within my family. I 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:52.360 knew it was unusual, and everybody in my family has 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.120 a great memory. But I had this date thing I had, 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.160 you know, just the specificity of what I remembered was 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.920 so intense. And so what happened was my sphere got bigger, 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.559 and I realized, well, my friends don't have this either, 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.160 you know. And finally, when I was around eighteen years old, 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.200 a friend of mine said to me, when are you 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.120 going to realize that nobody else has this crazy memory. 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.200 So people in college knew that I had something unusual. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.439 And in fact, I'm on my third and final husband. 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.400 But we knew each other in college, went to University 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.520 of Chicago. He was my roommate's boyfriend, but he knew 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.280 that I had this unusual memory, and so we make 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.880 jokes about it. Now. We always says, well, when you're 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.240 eighteen and you remember, you know, if you remember your life, 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.160 that doesn't seem down unusual. So he didn't like, let 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:42.240 onto the whole idea of it as much as he 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.640 has now that we spent twenty one years together. 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.880 So let me drill down on this. So you you 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:52.120 remember things that are autobiographical part of your life stories. 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.480 And this person came over. I had this conversation. I 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.280 heard this on the radio. I was wearing this, But 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.560 what about other things? Like if I gave you a 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:03.960 long list of nonsense words. 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:05.960 Let me go back to the story and then that'll 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:08.880 answer some of your questions. So I had this unusual 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.839 autobiographical memory. And I was a great student. I went 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.520 to the University of Chicago. I was named Outstanding Teenager 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.400 of Illinois. I were scholarships, so I was really quite 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:24.160 the student, and people who knew me knew that I 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.160 had this unusual memory. So when a story came up 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:29.800 for Leslie Stall, who was a friend of mine because 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.600 I worked with her husband, Aaron Latham, I'm a movie 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.800 perfect she called me and she said, I want you 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.280 to have lunch with me. So we had lunch together 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.120 September twenty in two thousand and six. It was a Wednesday. 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:44.840 We went to the slune and she's naming, Oh, when 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.000 did we meet? When did we do this? Blah blah blah, 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.880 and then her her producer said oh. She mentioned that 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.440 she had gotten married on June the fifteenth of nineteen, 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:56.920 nineteen ninety eight, and I said, oh, my god, that's 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.080 so unusual. Why did you get married out on Monday? 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:01.440 And she was like, oh, she is it. I said, 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.000 what's going on with you guys? She said, well, we've 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.480 been offered a story at sixty minutes about a woman 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.120 by the name of Jill Price who came to doctor 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.280 Legau and she had a very unusual memory and she 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.040 never forgot anything. So they did all this testing on 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:19.320 her and they offered the story to sixteen minutes and 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.280 I told him, forget it. My friend, it's not that unusual. 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.880 My friend married a vender has the exact same memory. 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.520 So that was in two thousand and six, and then 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:31.880 in two thousand and nine, Leslie callin. She said, oh, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.440 because they gave the story to Primetime Live in Diamond Sawyer. 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:37.840 So in two thousand and nine, Leslie called and she said, 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.720 she said, I want you to be tested. It's very unusual. 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:45.120 They have found very few other people, so we're going 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.800 to have you tested on camera. And on camera they 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.720 tested me. They didn't use it all, but they tested 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:55.960 me for everything, sequencing, everything that you're talking about. The 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:59.240 list of items. They had me look at something for 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.520 fifteen second and then identify what corner was it. They 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.320 had me look at a face with all any hair 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.280 or you couldn't even tell what gender it was, and 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.320 they told me names associated with it. I scored high 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.640 on everything pretty much, but I really of course the 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:19.520 autobiographical stuff. I answered over five hundred questions within the day, 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.120 and then they did their wiring and asking questions and 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.520 so how it's fired up and stuff. So yeah, so 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:29.360 it's like it's a different part of the brain than 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.680 is the sequencing or anything like that. But I did still, 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.680 especially as an actress, I trained myself to be sort 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.000 of like a script supervisor. I mean, I'm sort of 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:42.360 a frustrated script supervisor where I can notice something's off 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:44.920 or where something is. In fact, they showed us a 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.760 fifteen minute movie and then asked us specific questions that 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.240 you might not notice an issue or a script supervisor 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.520 or somebody with HSAM. So yeah, there were a lot 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.320 of different types of testing that went on that day. 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.480 Most people, if you ask them, remember or eight to 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:04.600 eleven events within any given year, and people with h 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:08.760 SAM we remember two hundred to three hundred and sixty five. 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:10.879 The criteria cut off was two hundred all though I 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.680 scored in ninety nine percent off for three sixty five 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.040 because I can do a whole year. But you know, 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.359 it's like, it's like if people try to remember what 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.800 their year was like, they can probably come up with 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.080 eight to eleven and that's all, which is insane to me, 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.280 you know, because there's somebody who never loses anything. It's like, 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.840 I mean, except my assins or something key. So I 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.600 mean that I, as an actress, have trained enough to 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.440 be able to look at a script a couple times 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:38.879 and have it down. But I'll also remember where I 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.400 was when I read the script, what the character's life 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.639 reminds me of in my own life, you know, what 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:45.680 the weather was like, things like that. 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.679 So give us an example. Let's say it shows October fifth, 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:05.720 two thousand and nine. Are you able to. 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:07.480 Okay, Yeah, that was in one day. 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:09.880 And do you remember what you were doing that day? 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.840 Yeah? Of course, I was at a rehearsal for one 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:14.920 of my son's shows. We were putting on a little 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.639 play at there and he was doing he was doing 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.520 Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory. So there was a 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.440 rehearsal that day and I did all the hair and 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.320 makeup from my chid's school. Don't score warning. 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:28.840 Yeah, do you remember what you were wearing that day? 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:36.600 Yes, I was wearing like a navy blue shirt with jeans. Now, 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:40.600 to me, everyone has something they remember, especially well, it's 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.879 what I call their primary track. It's like in the 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.600 jigsaw puzzle of your life, what are your hard edged 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.480 pieces by which you can interlock all your other memories too? 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.679 And for some people it's places they live, places they worked. 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.000 It's sports is a huge one. For guys, they might 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.560 forget their anniversary, but remember how many chicken wings they 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:04.639 had that day and what the score was. And also 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.680 you know places that people's children. I've heard everything from 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.800 food to clothes to baths. There was a guy who 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.439 was obsessed with baths and new light fag information. So 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.240 that's called your primary trap and the jigsaw puzzle of 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.720 your life. What are the hardage pieces by which you 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:27.000 can inter other memories. Then everyone I believe has a 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.679 dominant sense. Everyone is a site cell, touch taste or 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.399 smell person. And if you can figure out what you 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.800 are site cell, touch taste or smell, you can figure 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.679 out how you receive and you cross connected with your 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.800 primary trap. You can figure out how you receive, retain, 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.680 and then retrieve memories. Because we just happen to have 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:53.359 an extraordinary retrieval system. Everything you have been through in 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.720 your life is on your emotional hard drive, and it 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.480 makes you behave in certain ways. So you might walk 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:01.359 into a room go like, oh my god, this smells 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.040 like my grandmother's or wow, that song on the radio 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.280 that reminds me this. Do you know what I mean? 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.359 So you people do this all day long. But people 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.480 with ASAM we remember everything in first person, in our 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.480 bodies looking out. You know, if I asked you, if 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:18.680 I said to you when you woke up this morning, 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:22.240 describe your warning, you'd probably be in first person and 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.520 talking about it, and you could say, oh, I got 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.560 to a bathroom or make coffee, or I walk my 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.400 dog or whatever but if I asked you, like three 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.680 weeks ago, you probably would be a third person. Most 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:37.680 people when they go back three weeks or beyond, they're 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.000 in third person. I gave a whole speech to all 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:44.399 these three hundred doctors in a cedar siginer, and nobody 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:47.960 had ever described the things that I'm describing from the 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.359 inside out. Now, I also believe that memory comes to 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:57.520 us in four different ways, what I call horizontally, vertically, mushrewingly, 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.160 or sporadically. So if I said to you, hey, how 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.000 is that wedding you went to a couple of weeks ago, 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:06.480 and you said, oh, man, it was brave. Friday night, 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:08.720 we went to the bar, we all had a drink, 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:10.520 there was a rehearsal dinner, we had a drink. The 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:12.480 next morning, I got up in jog and you start 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.400 telling me the whole weekend, sort of a linear horizontal, 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:18.720 you know, kind of a narrative way. If I said 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:20.840 to you, that would be a horizontal him. But I 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:22.439 said how is the wedding? And you said, oh, my 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.400 cousin and I got into a whole discussion at the wedding, 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.920 and you could probably just a pinpoint, a specific on 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.840 a line and go deep into a memory. So that's 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:35.760 kind of like a vertical memory. And if I said, 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.439 how is that wedding? And you said, oh, my gosh, 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.040 there was somebody I met. We decided to have lunch. 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:43.040 Two weeks later we're going to do a project together. 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.760 That's like a mushrooming memory. That means it came out 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.639 of the event I asked you about. But if mushrooms 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.440 somewhere else. And then if I said to you, oh, 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:54.440 how is that wedding and you said, oh my god, 0:21:54.520 --> 0:21:56.440 there was a guy there who looked like when my 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.600 old boss, and I was instantly back and when I 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:01.720 off is thinking about what a jerk this guy was 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.199 because he took credit for my work. So that's a 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:07.480 sporadic memory. So all day long, we do memory like that, 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:10.879 especially people of age Sam, And you can ask about 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:13.159 some specific day and it can be told in a 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:17.320 linear horizontal way, or a vertical way, or a mushrooming way, 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.280 or a sporadic way, do you know what I mean. Yeah, 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:23.320 So we go all over, so you have to not 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.399 think the way it happens differently for us. It just 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.959 is And it's not even like we're all consistent but 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:32.199 this is how it happens for me. 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:34.479 How far back does it go for you? What's your 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.199 earliest memory being baptized? 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:41.199 So I was like three weeks old, yeah, and you 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:43.560 know and say, oh, it was a day. I just 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:47.280 remember the feeling. I remember, you know, just the whiteness. 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:49.960 I remember things like that. I didn't have words yet, 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:51.840 but I can go way back. 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:54.680 And is that generally true that you can remember things 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:55.880 from when you were one or two? 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.120 Oh? Yeah, oh wow, yeah. I mean it's much more 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.919