Today in 2011, Rebecca Sharrock of Brisbane, Australia got a very memorable medical diagnosis: Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, also known as hyperthymesia.
Of course, any diagnosis she received would be memorable, because when you have HSAM you can remember virtually anything and everything you’ve ever experienced.
This is a very rare condition; fewer than 100 people have the formal diagnosis.
In Rebecca Sharrock’s case, if she hears a calendar date, she can recall all kinds of details about what she did that day, what was happening in the news, what day of the week it was, and on and on and on.
It doesn’t have to be a calendar date either; something as simple as a gust of wind can take her memory back to another similarly windy day.
She told the BBC she had vivid memories going back to the days just after she was born!
It’s not that people with HSAM remember every single thing that’s ever happened; nor are they necessarily better at memorizing information than the rest of us.
But they do have high levels of what’s called episodic memory, meaning lived experiences.
Think of this as very detailed diary entries rather than huge sets of data on a server somewhere.
It can be frustrating for those of us with standard-issue memories to forget a task or have trouble coming up with a word that’s on the tip of their tongue.
We might think of HSAM as a blessing, but people who have it can also be a curse.
One man with HSAM described it this way: “I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!”
Researchers have been trying to figure out what causes it all: there’s some evidence that parts of the brain that process memory are larger in people with HSAM.
Other studies have found links to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Maybe as researchers learn more, they can come up with treatments to help people cope with the downsides of the condition.
In the meantime some of them have their own pro tips.
Rebecca Sharrock says she keeps a store of positive memories close by.
That way, when something brings on a flood of negative memories from a bad time or a bad day, complete with the same emotions she felt at the time, she’s ready to fend them off.
This Saturday in Florida, the Dade City Kumquat Festival.
People can celebrate the tangy citrus fruit by trying in a range of different foods, from kumquat pies and kumquat cookies to kumquat smoothies and kumquat salsas.
Plus you get to say “kumquat” a bunch of times!
The woman who can’t forget (BBC)