

Why Can Some People Recall Every Day Of Their Lives? Brain Scans Offer Clues - tokenadult
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/20/158779474/why-can-some-people-recall-every-day-of-their-lives-brain-scans-offer-clues

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jhuckestein
Of course now we're all saying: Wow, wouldn't it be great if we had this skill
in addition to all that we can already do.

What I find interesting though is that most notable people in the world's
history didn't have any pathological brain conditions. For example, you could
reasonably expect the worlds best artists to have a photographic memory.

It seems like you don't need a superpower be successful in what you do.

Edit: typo

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fragsworth
There's an argument to be made that it's generally a disadvantage to remember
every day of your life. Brains are finite in resources (memory and processing
abilities), and if you remember too many unimportant details, you might be
wasting lots of those resources.

I would think an efficient brain compresses and abstracts the important
information out, and ignores the minutiae.

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chc
That would only be true if can max out our memory over a century. Has anybody
ever actually "reached capacity"?

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fragsworth
I'm not an expert, but here's what makes the most sense to me: at any given
time, we are probably "at capacity" and our brains are constantly dumping out
and/or compressing old information to make room for new information.

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stephengillie
These people are OCD about their memories, cleaning and pruning the recorded
data so it can be reassembled correctly at a later time.

