Two women have revealed what it is like to live with an incredible condition that allows them to remember what it was like to be a baby.
Emily Nash, 18, from Ottawa, Canada, is the youngest known person with a condition that gives her an incredible, photograph-like memory.
Her brain is “organized like a calendar,” as she puts it, and has the ability to replay, rewind, and fast-forward any significant experience or event.
She claims to vividly remember learning to walk and her parents chasing her around the house while she did so.
Becky Sharrock, 34, the only known case of HSAM in Australia, says she remembers the day she was born and the “intense curiosity” she felt as a newborn baby.
Emily Nash, 18, from Canada, is the youngest person identified with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or HSAM, the ability to accurately remember an exceptional number of experiences and their associated dates of events that occur over much of one’s life. .
The family had no idea why she could remember things so well and assumed she had simply been blessed with an “excellent memory,” her mother said.
Nash’s first memory is of her mother feeding her in her high chair when she was a baby.
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or HSAM, only affects about 100 people in the world.
The condition was not discovered until 2000 and is still not well understood.
For most people, the brain stores only 50 percent of new information an hour after learning it, and it constantly clears storage to create more room for new memories.
One theory is that in people with HSAM, their The brain may be unable to determine and filter out what information is not important, meaning that they remember almost everything, whether it is noteworthy or not.
Mrs. Nash said 60 minutes Australia: ‘My brain is almost organized like a calendar. Each date specifically feels like a movie that I can play, rewind, and fast forward. And the deeper I go into a specific day, the more vivid and detailed I can extract from that day.’
“It’s almost like reliving, like I was there a few seconds ago,” he added.
The condition applies not only to experiences, but also to facts. Nash’s parents, Julie and Jason, nicknamed her daughter Wikipedia because of the large amount of trivial knowledge she can remember.
The family had no idea why she could remember things so well and assumed she had simply been blessed with an “excellent memory,” her mother said.
Nash’s first memory is of her mother feeding her in her high chair when she was a baby. She claims that she remembers learning to walk.
‘I remember my parents started chasing me around the house, because I was so excited to learn to walk and it became a career.
“I think I even learned those two things on the same day,” he recalled.
It wasn’t until Dr. Carmen Westerberg, a psychology professor, formally examined her at age 17. in Texas state Universitythat they realized the full extent of their abilities.
Her mother Julie said the family is now focusing on creating happy memories as Mrs Nash will remember everything.
“From the moment I found out, I had to change my mothering in terms of this being a lasting memory,” her mother said. “This way we worry a little less about the small things.”
Nash said being able to remember every promise his parents and friends made to him can make relationships difficult, but he has learned to forgive them and tries not to hold grudges.
Rebecca Sharrock, 34, is the only known person in Australia with HSAM, which allows her to remember all her memories.
Nash has volunteered for science and researchers are studying her brain to hopefully find a cure for debilitating memory loss conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
They will try to understand exactly what is happening and what is going right in Ms. Nash’s brain, so they can find out what is going wrong in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
“Knowing that I can help with my memory is a very rewarding experience,” Mrs. Nash said..
She is motivated in part by having seen two of her grandparents suffer from dementia.
Later this year, he will go to university to study science and memory.
Sleep studies in which he has already participated have suggested that it is not that Nash absorbs or learns more information than anyone else, but that he simply does not forget it.
“While you sleep, your brain stores them more efficiently than other people,” said Dr. Westerberg, who worked on the studies.
“Why remains a great mystery,” he added.
Like Nash, Sharrock said he “pretty much remembers every second of every day.”
“I remember it at least 95 percent of the time.”
When she was younger, she said she was “so smart it would embarrass me a little as a kid.”
Sharrock even claims to remember the exact day he was born.
‘There is a memory I have and I suppose it was my birth. I found myself wrapped in a blanket and then they cut my ankle with a tag.
“Of course, this cannot be proven 100 percent to skeptics,” he said.
‘I had an intense curiosity. When he was a baby he didn’t know the word curiosity, but he wanted to know everything about everything. He was probably 5,000 percent more curious than he is now.’
Sharrock also has autism, which intensifies the sense of chaos that comes with being able to remember everything.
“I get very distracted by random flashbacks that come to my mind, they just come involuntarily,” he said.
When Sharrock was younger, she said she was “so smart it would embarrass me a little as a kid.”
‘There is a memory I have and I suppose it was my birth. I found myself wrapped in a blanket and then they cut my ankle with a tag. “Of course, that can’t be proven 100 percent to skeptics,” Ms. Sharrock said.
There are days I wish I could forget, he said.
‘I have moments of self-pity where I think, why do I have to have this memory condition? Why can’t I forget certain things? It’s a curse to have it.
Research showed that, compared to normal people, people with this condition have a disruption in connectivity between the hippocampus (part of the brain that plays a key role in learning and memory) and multiple networks used in detecting salience (which decides what information is important), while participants were in a resting state.
This means that people with HSAM They may not be able to determine what information does not need to be stored, which means they remember almost everything.
Some researchers have suggested that HSAM may be a special form of OCD, as there are similarities between its brain structure and that of OCD patients.
Both have an enlarged caudate, which is involved in processes such as procedural learning.
There is a link between autobiographical memory and autism, as the sensory experience of some people with autism helps to ingrain events deeply in their memory.
Some people with autism also have a photographic or near-photographic memory.
