Lesley Stahl interviews the handful of individuals known to possess the skill of near endless memory, which scientists are only now beginning to study.
Have always been impressed with professional golfers' memories (and I am sure it's the same with other professional athletes). Jack Nicklaus seems to have recall of every hole he has ever played in every tournament he has ever competed in. As a golfer, when I was playing a lot, I could remember shot for shot, club for club a round of golf I had played even if it was a week before. That is until the next round of golf started to muddy the previous round. The one thing I never could get, which the pros do, is identify the which hole by number. Because the way I remember my round is sequentially, so I could never jump to hole 15. I had to sequentially get to 15 in my memory. And I was very impressed with the notion that their minds are not cluttered with all these memories because of how well organized they are. It's as if they have the most sophisticated filing systems in their brains, and an equally sophisticated sorting system to locate the data. It is the same thing with sophisticated databases. It's not how much stuff, it's how well organized and categorized the stuff is.
At 11:45 "why are we the default state? Why are we normal?" Possible clue: 4 of the 5 are not married/not in a relationship; and given their ages, are not likely to have offspring. If this is typical for those having this condition then their genes do not get passed on. Recently there was news of a woman in England that felt no pain nor sadness. Is genetic. Soooo, What would the history of humans be today, if the norm was to not feel pain/sadness and have such memory as described here? Better or worse? If the memory is genetic, then will shortly see people getting their offspring "equipped" with it.
These peoples memories are concerned with dates and events or sports scores. What about linguistical memory; or song lyric memory..... you've simply covered a narrow slice of one aspect of memory
Guys like this keep their minds so full that it would make sense to forget the little things. I read that Norbert Wiener, the famous mathematician, was like that. An incredible genius who frequently forgot the little things.
I have something that is similar to this and it happened over night for no particular reason. I've been trying to get rid of it for years if anyone has any info please contact me.
Hey there, I too have a version of this type of memory. Have you had any luck finding out what your variance(s) are? I know, for a fact, that I'm NOT crazy, & I think it rude for anyone to imply that someone with exceptional "Anything" automatically has to be. It has been over a year & a half since your post, so I don't know if you will even see this. However, I would be interested in talking about it, if you are. God, Speed!
I may not have this disorder 😐but I do remember my childhood events of my childhood that most people may forget I remember all my teachers from preschool until high school 🙂 I even though I don’t have my year book from my elementary school days from a decade ago 😐in 3rd grade in Kennedy elementary school in Michigan we had in the late 2000s we had these thinks called clock bubblys and on most Fridays we would join another class to do crafts and such 🙂 and my teacher would say ok today you are working with your 9 o’clock or 12 o’clock buddy etc I also remember that when I was in first grade we had a yellow pice of paper to change the school mascot and I remember choosing the Kennedy cobras with colors gold and green 🙂
Now I do this also. I am a teacher. I am compelled to research every day before I go to bed any facts I didn't know. Once I learn ANY facts I never forget them. Last week was discussing Dr. MLK and I knew the date of assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis outside room 302 or 304 etc. Mine seems to be retentive memory. It's a gift as a teacher.
I also remember a lot more than most people, although I’m way short of having SAM. I can remember all my schoolteachers’ names/subjects/grade they taught, which periods I had which class, about 3/4 of my classmates’ names, conversations I had with other students from 40 years ago, etc.
I remember watching this on TV shortly after it came out, but fortunately have a memory like the rest of use... Swiss cheese at certain spots. However, I do have a tendency to dwell on negative obstacles... and seeing these people with eidetic memory confess the extremity of their problems is reassuring. Stupid people do (in fact) have significant advantages and don't encounter the same spectrum of problems as these people. I am thankful for the degree of stupidity I do possess.
You should write a book entitled "The Power of Negative Thinking" I'm sure it would appeal to a lot ot Democrat NPCs. They would be flattered to read about how their stupidity is not wasted.
I can remember every since I was in diapers isn't that normal every song movie I have ever seen ect since 1974 I have anxiety bad wish I could talk to someone like me my mind never shuts off its like a movie playing over and over I'm a hypochondriac have OCD on medication for anxiety.
I can remember dates pretty closely like those guys, but I'd have to think about some of those dates...I typically remember them by month and year. hmmm...
I know it’s a rhetorical question, but you’ve brought up an interesting point. Each of the HSAM subjects can remember every day of their lives... but only from about age 9, 10, or 11! What is significant about that period of our development?? Why as far back as roughly 10, but no further? Why can’t Louise remember every day when she was 8, for example?
@@markdaniels7174 That's what I find interesting. It's not uncommon for most people to start really having sharper memories around age 8+ but I know other HSAM's such as myself who do remember before the age of a year old.
I have a higher cognitive memory than average, but it's certainly nowhere near as what you see here with hyperthemesia. My memories and experiences are usually triggered by a scent, sound, thought, or visual, pretty much like most people, except I usually have more detail, and I'm able to go further back. My memories seem to revolve around an important lesson, or learning something significant, or coming up with a theory unlike any other I've seen, heard, or read. If it's something I consider to be of little value, or just mundane, it's tossed out. I do this consciously in hopes that the chemical strength of the memory is so weak that it can be overwritten by something more significant. Hence, making more efficient use of the finite real estate in my skull. Medical science isn't advanced enough to test this yet though. I could just be ensuring limited access to a permanent imprint.
Haplo Teromaximus same here my WMI (Working Memory Index) is equal to 125. In virtually any moment in time if I have a certain thought, I will remember it if something similar to that moment occurs, but this memory is insane.
I'm not certain that I can recall specific dates, but every other aspect of my memory is a flawless HD video, sound included. Do these people see every little change if something is different ? Meaning, as an example, if I am driving on the interstate, if I have been on that route even one time before, I notice ANY changes. Crusing along at 70 and a half mile away, a bird is on top of a tree motionless..I notice things like that instantly even though I'm not looking for changes. I was diagnosed with OCD, mine manifests as unwanted thoughts. I don't know, these people seem happy. Remembering everything is nothing short of a living nightmare for me.
No One It sounds like their memories are a big part of their lives, but not what necessarily drives them. Meaning, they live “normal” lives but can recall every day of them when they think about. Is your situation a constant presence-something you are, for lack of a better word, obsessed about in the present, as it happens? The example you gave about the bird on your drive, do you anticipate it in the moment with a sense of dread? I find this fascinating, and I hope you don’t mind me asking. Do you find anything about your condition to be a positive?
Hey you might have it!! an easy test I say is just start following every month by date and day and by the end see if you are able too sandwich the dates and times at random correctly and keep doing it every month and go back and see if time has affected your memory.
Internally Screaming but aren't they few of them lives like that now? I guess he was just saying that if the time comes all of them died we hope there another generation of them.
Honestly that's the future... Admit it or not, the regular people now are just failures of evolution. We might be the last failures of the generation, as genetic breeding progresses the "regular" people will be no more. And that's for the better honestly.
I can see why you’d suggest this but I honestly wouldn’t be too sure. Massive benefits to this in small proportions but hard to say how it would be in larger ones. PTSD comes to mind as a susceptibility of this part of the population, as well as obsessive interests which might not lend to team work as well. In general, I think you want as much functional genetic diversity as possible in order not to have any genetic defects become suddenly prevalent.
geno pal: This is exactly the question I want to ask her. I'm fairly certain I saw her walking through Union Square Park in NYC about 14 years ago, and while I thought to say "hi" as she passed, I didn't want to disrupt her as she smiled on past me and my friend hocking my product. My friend had a distinct outfit on, and I figured while we were just two faces in a sea of people, that my friends outfit might have made an imprint.
I want to know if they do anything out of the ordinary during the day to "burn" these things into their memory. do they purposefully try to remember their meals or make a mental note to connect the date to the meal they ate, etc. At the end of the day are they thinking, ok today is the 12th, it's a wednesday, etc
Lady Luck I don’t think they do this, and here’s why: it’s just “memory.” You and I remember yesterday and maybe last Friday, but we made no special attempts to remember. I think it’s the same with these people, only they go back much much further than yesterday or last week... all the way back to 10 or 11. They just REMEMBER, in the same way we might remember yesterday.
I have an idea of how this happens Ok so first people with hsam all seem to have either an average or low average IQ I've actually met someone with hsam NEXT Their intelligence matters because the bigger a brain is the less efficient an example is Einsteins brain was actually smaller than average likely had to do with how efficient it was it didn't need more power. SO THEIR BRAIN IS SO UN EFFICIENT that is stores everything because it didn't adapt to save as much energy as possible. This is the reason their temporal lobe is bigger that normal because of the lack of efficiency.. If we measure the amounts of calories their brain uses and oxygen we could confirm My theory
The violinist is BEAUTIFUL. Especially on the inside!
Have always been impressed with professional golfers' memories (and I am sure it's the same with other professional athletes). Jack Nicklaus seems to have recall of every hole he has ever played in every tournament he has ever competed in. As a golfer, when I was playing a lot, I could remember shot for shot, club for club a round of golf I had played even if it was a week before. That is until the next round of golf started to muddy the previous round. The one thing I never could get, which the pros do, is identify the which hole by number. Because the way I remember my round is sequentially, so I could never jump to hole 15. I had to sequentially get to 15 in my memory.
And I was very impressed with the notion that their minds are not cluttered with all these memories because of how well organized they are. It's as if they have the most sophisticated filing systems in their brains, and an equally sophisticated sorting system to locate the data. It is the same thing with sophisticated databases. It's not how much stuff, it's how well organized and categorized the stuff is.
I would love to see them go through a round of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire of a similar game.
she will remember everyone on earth who wants to be a millionaire, winning a million dollars
MrBigdrewbowski the game “guess who?” Would be interesting to see them play
"It was on CBS so you can get that game"
just imagine that guy working as an archivist.
Indeed. I don’t think anyone with a memory like that would ever be without work, and probably well paid work.
At 11:45 "why are we the default state? Why are we normal?" Possible clue: 4 of the 5 are not married/not in a relationship; and given their ages, are not likely to have offspring. If this is typical for those having this condition then their genes do not get passed on.
Recently there was news of a woman in England that felt no pain nor sadness. Is genetic. Soooo, What would the history of humans be today, if the norm was to not feel pain/sadness and have such memory as described here? Better or worse?
If the memory is genetic, then will shortly see people getting their offspring "equipped" with it.
I could bearly remember events of last week..
Or yesterday! Or where my keys are!
I can't remember days of the week but I can remember visuals and conversations and the things that took place back to 1987 and I born in 1985....
These peoples memories are concerned with dates and events or sports scores. What about linguistical memory; or song lyric memory..... you've simply covered a narrow slice of one aspect of memory
You've made a great point! I wish they would've shown us more into the testing of different kinds of memory
Who are from quarantine Psyc class and followed to PART II
Dude....same
WHAT LOL SAME... where do you go :O
Same just a virtual class not quarantined
So fascinating the human mind isso unbelievable 🎉🎉🎉
I think these ppl are a evolutionary step forward.. there the first known so its seems odd.. but in the future these abilities will be normal
I can remember every one of my farts and instantly rate its stink factor on scale of 1-5. Few have expressed interest in interviewing me🤷♂️
I wish I had your ability, considering I do an unusual amount of farting.
Funniest comment ever! HAHAHAHHA
Last date of back-to-back 5s, go!
Lol, whenever I think back to this I go "Why don't they just read the dictionary and win every Spelling Bee!?!?"
I wonder if they ever lose their car keys ... or forget an appointment.
Amberjack1973 I've seen one guy of them in another interview and he said he sometimes forgets where he put his keys etc.
Guys like this keep their minds so full that it would make sense to forget the little things. I read that Norbert Wiener, the famous mathematician, was like that. An incredible genius who frequently forgot the little things.
This is literally the episode of That's So Raven when Raven meets other people like her
No, it L-Word isn't. You can tell by the lack of Raven and the fact that this is a documentary series instead of a sitcom.
Did anyone notice @10:38 the ladies had the same head movements?
Hahaha
robots built by musk!
this is really cool
When I think back ten or twenty years, there are whole years lost to my memory.
The Cowboys-Steelers game from 1979 was just a special game--a rematch of the last year's Super Bowl contestants. Of course, he remembered details.
Unless you could care less about football. Lol
I have something that is similar to this and it happened over night for no particular reason. I've been trying to get rid of it for years if anyone has any info please contact me.
Thank you. I will check that out, I am not mentally ill though.
Hey there, I too have a version of this type of memory. Have you had any luck finding out what your variance(s) are? I know, for a fact, that I'm NOT crazy, & I think it rude for anyone to imply that someone with exceptional "Anything" automatically has to be. It has been over a year & a half since your post, so I don't know if you will even see this. However, I would be interested in talking about it, if you are. God, Speed!
you could've done so much with all of these memories
4:18 July 14th was my birthday... Wonder if he'll remember me some day if I get well known :D
I may not have this disorder 😐but I do remember my childhood events of my childhood that most people may forget I remember all my teachers from preschool until high school 🙂 I even though I don’t have my year book from my elementary school days from a decade ago 😐in 3rd grade in Kennedy elementary school in Michigan we had in the late 2000s we had these thinks called clock bubblys and on most Fridays we would join another class to do crafts and such 🙂 and my teacher would say ok today you are working with your 9 o’clock or 12 o’clock buddy etc I also remember that when I was in first grade we had a yellow pice of paper to change the school mascot and I remember choosing the Kennedy cobras with colors gold and green 🙂
Now I do this also. I am a teacher. I am compelled to research every day before I go to bed any facts I didn't know. Once I learn ANY facts I never forget them. Last week was discussing Dr. MLK and I knew the date of assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis outside room 302 or 304 etc. Mine seems to be retentive memory. It's a gift as a teacher.
I also remember a lot more than most people, although I’m way short of having SAM. I can remember all my schoolteachers’ names/subjects/grade they taught, which periods I had which class, about 3/4 of my classmates’ names, conversations I had with other students from 40 years ago, etc.
So cool
I remember watching this on TV shortly after it came out, but fortunately have a memory like the rest of use... Swiss cheese at certain spots. However, I do have a tendency to dwell on negative obstacles... and seeing these people with eidetic memory confess the extremity of their problems is reassuring. Stupid people do (in fact) have significant advantages and don't encounter the same spectrum of problems as these people. I am thankful for the degree of stupidity I do possess.
You should write a book entitled "The Power of Negative Thinking" I'm sure it would appeal to a lot ot Democrat NPCs. They would be flattered to read about how their stupidity is not wasted.
Congratulations - you found a way!
I can remember every since I was in diapers isn't that normal every song movie I have ever seen ect since 1974 I have anxiety bad wish I could talk to someone like me my mind never shuts off its like a movie playing over and over I'm a hypochondriac have OCD on medication for anxiety.
from what I am reading I would say you absolutely have h-sam have you reached out to any others?
@@KpopNiDontStop
No don't know how to my 2 year I think has the same thing he has a good memory also at 1 year old
I saw this on tv like regular people. it's because it's on there. and it's on what's called a website. BUT RUclips IS BETTER
I can remember dates pretty closely like those guys, but I'd have to think about some of those dates...I typically remember them by month and year. hmmm...
Do they remember being born too?
I know it’s a rhetorical question, but you’ve brought up an interesting point. Each of the HSAM subjects can remember every day of their lives... but only from about age 9, 10, or 11! What is significant about that period of our development?? Why as far back as roughly 10, but no further? Why can’t Louise remember every day when she was 8, for example?
@@markdaniels7174 That's what I find interesting. It's not uncommon for most people to start really having sharper memories around age 8+ but I know other HSAM's such as myself who do remember before the age of a year old.
I have a higher cognitive memory than average, but it's certainly nowhere near as what you see here with hyperthemesia. My memories and experiences are usually triggered by a scent, sound, thought, or visual, pretty much like most people, except I usually have more detail, and I'm able to go further back. My memories seem to revolve around an important lesson, or learning something significant, or coming up with a theory unlike any other I've seen, heard, or read. If it's something I consider to be of little value, or just mundane, it's tossed out. I do this consciously in hopes that the chemical strength of the memory is so weak that it can be overwritten by something more significant. Hence, making more efficient use of the finite real estate in my skull. Medical science isn't advanced enough to test this yet though. I could just be ensuring limited access to a permanent imprint.
Haplo Teromaximus same here my WMI (Working Memory Index) is equal to 125. In virtually any moment in time if I have a certain thought, I will remember it if something similar to that moment occurs, but this memory is insane.
I'm not certain that I can recall specific dates, but every other aspect of my memory is a flawless HD video, sound included.
Do these people see every little change if something is different ?
Meaning, as an example, if I am driving on the interstate, if I have been on that route even one time before, I notice ANY changes. Crusing along at 70 and a half mile away, a bird is on top of a tree motionless..I notice things like that instantly even though I'm not looking for changes.
I was diagnosed with OCD, mine manifests as unwanted thoughts.
I don't know, these people seem happy.
Remembering everything is nothing short of a living nightmare for me.
No One It sounds like their memories are a big part of their lives, but not what necessarily drives them. Meaning, they live “normal” lives but can recall every day of them when they think about. Is your situation a constant presence-something you are, for lack of a better word, obsessed about in the present, as it happens? The example you gave about the bird on your drive, do you anticipate it in the moment with a sense of dread? I find this fascinating, and I hope you don’t mind me asking. Do you find anything about your condition to be a positive?
Hey you might have it!! an easy test I say is just start following every month by date and day and by the end see if you are able too sandwich the dates and times at random correctly and keep doing it every month and go back and see if time has affected your memory.
i Kinda want this talent but I think beakups/deaths would be even harder to get through.
If this is genetic we need to get these people to breed more!
then it'd be harder for the education system to challenge kids. not complaining tho
Internally Screaming but aren't they few of them lives like that now? I guess he was just saying that if the time comes all of them died we hope there another generation of them.
Honestly that's the future... Admit it or not, the regular people now are just failures of evolution. We might be the last failures of the generation, as genetic breeding progresses the "regular" people will be no more. And that's for the better honestly.
I can see why you’d suggest this but I honestly wouldn’t be too sure. Massive benefits to this in small proportions but hard to say how it would be in larger ones.
PTSD comes to mind as a susceptibility of this part of the population, as well as obsessive interests which might not lend to team work as well.
In general, I think you want as much functional genetic diversity as possible in order not to have any genetic defects become suddenly prevalent.
Well Mary lou do you remember me ? Where and when ?
geno pal: This is exactly the question I want to ask her. I'm fairly certain I saw her walking through Union Square Park in NYC about 14 years ago, and while I thought to say "hi" as she passed, I didn't want to disrupt her as she smiled on past me and my friend hocking my product.
My friend had a distinct outfit on, and I figured while we were just two faces in a sea of people, that my friends outfit might have made an imprint.
I can't remember the dream I had last night. smh
Endless memory😃😢😆😂😠😷😣😀
I want to know if they do anything out of the ordinary during the day to "burn" these things into their memory. do they purposefully try to remember their meals or make a mental note to connect the date to the meal they ate, etc. At the end of the day are they thinking, ok today is the 12th, it's a wednesday, etc
Lady Luck I don’t think they do this, and here’s why: it’s just “memory.” You and I remember yesterday and maybe last Friday, but we made no special attempts to remember. I think it’s the same with these people, only they go back much much further than yesterday or last week... all the way back to 10 or 11. They just REMEMBER, in the same way we might remember yesterday.
@@markdaniels7174 thanks for that wtf lmao
I have an idea of how this happens
Ok so first people with hsam all seem to have either an average or low average IQ I've actually met someone with hsam
NEXT Their intelligence matters because the bigger a brain is the less efficient an example is Einsteins brain was actually smaller than average likely had to do with how efficient it was it didn't need more power.
SO THEIR BRAIN IS SO UN EFFICIENT that is stores everything because it didn't adapt to save as much energy as possible. This is the reason their temporal lobe is bigger that normal because of the lack of efficiency.. If we measure the amounts of calories their brain uses and oxygen we could confirm My theory