
Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget - kqr2
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory?currentPage=1
======
patio11
I was a kind of quirky kid when I was younger... I sort of memorized the
Hobbit without really intending to, along with every other book I ever read.
Being something of a quirky kid it took me until about middle school before
realizing a) this sort of thing is not normal and b) sometimes its better to
keep it under your cap. (I can't do it word-for-word anymore, although I still
have fairly good retention. I just stopped doing it and it stopped happening.
Happy/sad about that, mostly happy. Being "scary" makes for an uncomfortable
middle school experience, and being unable to forget the uncomfortable bits
sucks royally. Trust me -- been there, done that.)

One of my friends from high school, also diagnosed as being LD, still
remembers my drivers license number. He saw it when I showed him my photo
after passing the exam, more than a decade ago. Oddly enough, I have never had
a particularly good memory for numbers, even back in my freakish days. (It
also took me until about age 10 to figure out the difference between left and
right. My little brother, who was exasperated at that and thought I was
playing, mentioned that left is always the same side as the mole I have on my
left wrist. I still check my wrist to this day, out of semi-conscious habit.)

Ahh, the human brain -- it is pretty freaking weird.

~~~
nikron
I was like this for east and west when given north for the longest time. I
would always ask my little brother which way east or west was.

~~~
Dobbs
Never Eat Soggy Waffles. Point in the four directions clockwise. It took many
years of saying this alloud before I had it anywhere near down. I still
ocasionally have issues. I also had problems with left/right and the months of
the year.

~~~
nikron
Well the other problem was with clockwise... Couldn't do that either.

------
wallflower
A long time ago (before Internet gambling), I remember reading in Reader's
Digest about a professional card player with a photographic memory who got
caught in a tragic casino fire. In the article, it said that since the fire,
he'd been unable to enter any casino because his _photographic_ memory brought
back the scenes of the fire vividly into the present.

I also remember the hypnotist at my college orientation who hypnotized a bunch
of our class. He had a couple revert to kindergarten memories, telling him who
sat where in the classroom, who their friends were. In the most memorable
sequence, however, he asked a guy in childhood mode the question 'did you ever
make a special sound'. The guy/kid was shy and said 'yes but I'm not sure I
want to do it.' Eventually, the hypnotist coaxed and encouraged the guy/kid
enough ... and the guy/kid did the most spot-on, uncanny, loud Chewbaca roar.
He got the nickname Chewy around campus after that.

~~~
websevenpointoh
That's a pretty awesome story -- I've always wondered whether it was our
memories or our ability to recall them that faded! Does anyone know of good
reading on the subject?

------
knightinblue
_I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories
like television and airplane crashes, Price's memory isn't much better than
anyone else's. She struggled in school, is no good at history before 1965, and
seems genuinely miffed that she was once asked when the Magna Carta was signed
("Do I look like I'm 500 years old?")._

That was the most interesting part to me out of the entire article. It raises
the question of whether she consciously makes a decision to remember facts
that she's interested in (herself, disasters) and exclude others or whether
she just never spent any mental energy remembering these 'outside' events.

------
areaMan
I had this unusual ability to memorize entire chapters of Biology and History.
And unusually I could do it only with these two subjects, as for me they were
the most difficult to understand and relate to. Let me just give you an
example. The tests papers would question things like: a) give any two symptoms
of malaria (2 marks) b) list all symptoms of malaria (7 marks)

And I hated to lose marks and overall class rank because of this one stupid
Biology, and let's say I covered malaria but this time they chose to ask about
treatment for cholera.I reasoned to myself, they could ask anything. So I
might memorize all symptoms/treatments of malaria AND cholera. During one such
exam preparations (must've been grade 7/8) by the end of it I had an epiphany
that I'd just memorized the entire chapter. I even parroted it back to my mom
making her happy that here I was ready to take on the diseases of this world.
The notable point is that only after that realisation, I became very good at
memorizing entire chapters. I remember by 9th grade I could almost memorize
the 4-5 chapters of Biology. Surprisingly it happened mostly with Biology, a
subject I hated the most, Chemistry equations which our teachers never
explained because even they didn't know what the fuck was going on in there
with those molecules(S8+8O2=8SO2?), dates in History and exact word-for-word
quotes in languages -- all things that needed memorization. I could never
remember say for example the 4-digit number plate of the cars which just
passed by at 60kmph even after I had summed up its digits and they came out
less than 30, and done so for all the 15 cars that passed by within 30 seconds
or so (try this game, its fun and it'll improve your number skills).

And quite unsurprisingly, after my schooling, when this ability was no more
required, I slowly started losing it. I always wondered if I could get that
'magic' back so to speak. Is there a name for this condition - the ability to
channel immense memory powers when needed?

btw, if you guys are wondering this was an Indian school system. I also had
other freakish abilities, but for now I'd leave it at that.

------
gojomo
Previously on Ms. Price:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373529>

And similarly:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192454>

And necessarily:

"Funes, The Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges

<http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~morton/bigidea/funes.txt>

~~~
mahmud
I see you don't forget URLs.

~~~
silentOpen
The Internet never forgets. Where we once had oral retellings of epic sagas,
we now have synthesis of radical new ideas. Humans are extraordinarily
adaptable machines. We've now built a ubiquitous information retrieval system
and it will only get better.

If you could trade memory for creativity, would you?

------
rjprins
I hardly ever think back.. I'm always thinking about what I am going to do or
what I want to achieve.

My memory scarcely goes back further then a week. It tends to make my live a
bit empty, I don't remember doing anything.

~~~
SapphireSun
I have the strangest memory. I can remember facts, theorems, and all sorts of
things that are easy to reason about, but my experiential memory is crap. I
find my friends talking about things we did together and I can't participate
because I don't remember very well.

However, I'm beginning to suspect it's because I spend too much time thinking
to myself and not enough time paying attention to the outside world. Does
anyone else have a similar experience?

~~~
strider24
I've got a pretty similar memory. Can't remember events. To remedy this I try
to keep a log of event(call it a diary if you will) so that I remember some
important things I don't want to forget.

~~~
SapphireSun
Have you noticed your experiential memory improving as you keep the log? I
once kept a dream diary, and I started remembering my dreams really really
well.

------
parenthesis
It is interesting to note that having a very good memory used to be a
tremendous advantage. I mean before ubiquitous books (never mind the web).

~~~
eru
There is a lament by an ancient philosopher (Platon?) about the advent of
writing destroying memory.

~~~
gjm11
Yes, him. Generally rendered as "Plato" in English.

It is, of course, only because of writing that anyone now has even heard of
Plato, never mind having available the substantial fraction of his work that
we have.

------
sanand
In the `Small Book about a Large Memory,' Aleksandr Luria described the case
of `S.' a man with an even more astounding capability of recall. The Russian
version of the monograph is even available online:
<http://www.psy.msu.ru/science/public/luria/small.html>

------
blizkreeg
The untapped, unexplored universe that are our brains and our genes astound me
every time I read a story like this! Nothing is more fascinating to me. Except
for the process of human/animal evolution.

------
jerryji
I don't forget either -- I just never really remembered in the first place.

------
rufius
Women never forget. It is unfathomable.

