(playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] 15th of August, 1996. - Okay, the very first thing
I see is this furry banana which I bought on holiday with my family. - [Reporter] 20 year old Aurelien is remembering a specific day when he was just four years old. He claims to have a power that scientists didn't believe humans could possess. - I've never met anyone who's
been able to do what I do. - [Reporter] Put simply,
Aurelien is the first British man to say that he doesn't forget his past. - 'Cause I remember the 25th being the day where it snowed in the morning, and I think it was the
day that George Best died. - [Reporter] 7th of July, 2008. - It's a Monday. It's just seems like there's
just a new gaps at all. I can just see it all. - [Reporter] Around the world, other people have come forward. Some claim to remember
every day of their life. - Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. If you could stick a camera in my head, then I think everybody would freak out. - [Reporter] This summer we met the people who say they have this
unbelievable ability and the scientists
putting them to the test. - I always claimed that
actually, this was not possible because normal memory
does not work like that. - [Reporter] Could the amazing
power they claim to have possibly turn out to be real? - I can tell within a
30 seconds to a minute if someone's genuine or not. - [James] November 13, 1980.
- Was a Monday. - [James] How do you know it's a Monday? - 'Cause I just do! - Sorry, I don't want
to answer that question. Can you stop filming, sorry. - [Reporter] Sure. (playful orchestral music) (clock ticking) Aurelien is a university student. We first filmed with him on
Saturday the 19th of May, skeptical about his unbelievable talent and curious to see how he could prove it. How could you demonstrate for me what it is that your memory does that maybe mine doesn't? - I suppose if someone said
what happened, you know, tell me something that
happened in like June, 2008. And I could instantly think of things, whereas most people would
not be even able to remember, you know what they were
doing in that year. - [Reporter] What about
the 17th of June, 2008? - Yeah, I can tell you that was a Tuesday and it was the first day
after I finished my GCSE exams and my room was an absolute tip, so I had to just clear it all out and I spent the whole day doing that. I could tell you it was quite a nice day, we got Sonya and then we went
for a curry in the evening. And I remember watching
Lee swimming with my mum and Joan Rivers got thrown
off for swearing on live TV. Yeah. - I check the date of Joan River's daytime television outburst. He was right, it did occur on Tuesday the 17th of June, 2008. Aurelien said he couldn't
tell me how he did this, but he let me come back and
test him on more random dates. 19th of September, 2008. - It was a Friday. I remember my dad was
like selling his car. It was the last time that we saw his car before it got taken. - [Reporter] 30th of May, 2007. - It was a Wednesday, the
weather was quite good that day but, which was quite
unusual 'cause it rained pretty much for the whole of that May. - [Reporter] When you
tell me all this stuff, how am I supposed to know it's right? How am I supposed to know
that you remember this stuff? You claim it's true, but how do I know? - I suppose the thing is you don't. So I could be making out right now, but- - [Reporter] Are you making it up? - No. I don't see why I would
bother to be honest with you. What do you think about it? - [Reporter] I think
it's a little unusual. And I'm rather curious
about how you're doing it. (Aurelien laughing) (playful orchestral music)
(seagulls cawing) Aurelien told me he remembered days way back into his childhood, but he had absolutely no idea
how they stuck in his head. I wanted his parents to confirm
the truth of his memories and see what they thought of
their son's strange skill. - [Mother] We were talking
sometimes at the table when we were having a meal, and then we used, I used
to say for instance, oh do you remember when we
went to Bangkok three years ago or whatever and you used to say, no, it was not three years
ago, it was four years ago, and it was actually on
the blah, blah, blah, you know, and he gave me the
day, the month and so forth and used to say, really> And then I used to run to
look in my diary to see, you know, just to check. And I think that's why I started to think, gosh, you know, your memory is not bad. Do you remember what we did
on the 30th of August, 2004? 30th of August, 2004. - I think that it, I know it
was a Monday, bank holiday. I think it could be, I know that we went to the Cadbury Factory around that time. - Yeah, that's correct. - I don't know if, see
I don't know for certain that it was that day.
- No it is that day. - But I know that it was around that time. - Yeah, that's correct,
that's exactly what we did, we went to Cadbury World,
we stopped in Ross-on-Wye on the day and we had a
great day eating chocolate. - And over the years we've
learned to sort of accept that if Aurelien does say that
there's a date that's correct that after a couple of years of saying, oh no, you got that wrong and realizing that he wasn't wrong, we tend to accept it now
without challenging it. (Aurelien laughing) - [Reporter] What's your explanation for why Aurelien can do that? - 'Cause he's just like me, right? (Aurelien laughing) I don't know, because
as I said to you before it's not something I, you know,
I knew he had a good memory, but that was the extent of it, really. I never knew it was, you know, something really special and
different from most people. - [Reporter] It seemed
Australian's memories were surprisingly accurate, but it was hard to know
how much of his life he'd got stored in his head. So, I'll pick a month at random. - Okay. - [Reporter] July, 2009. The month I chose was three years ago. 1080 days have passed since
these events took place. - [Aurelien] I can remember
20 of the days like that. I can remember all of those days. I suppose there are three
things that pop out instantly when I think of July. I went to France one
weekend, Tours in France, Duke of Edinburgh, and a driving lesson, in fact, I can put that there. And I think around that time I started reading Tess
of the d'Urbervilles. You know, it's like I
could get a diary for 2009 and write it if I wanted
to, retrospectively. (playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] Aurelien said that his brain stored all this information automatically. But I wondered if he was
hiding some secret technique. We went to meet a man who
has trained his memory. Eight times world memory
champion Dominic O'Brien. - I would be suspicious if someone said that they automatically
know what they were doing on a specific day in their life, the day of the week for any date, without involving some sort of technique. I can tell within 30 seconds to a minute if someone's genuine or not, and most of the time they're
not able to do what they claim. Hello, you must be Aurelien. - Yes, Dominic? - Welcome.
- Nice to meet you. - How are you?
- Good, you? - Come inside, we'll share some memories. (Aurelien laughing) Come in.
- Thank you. - Go.
- Okay, go. - [Reporter] Aurelien
says he has no technique to help his extraordinary memory. Dominic O'Brien does, and
he can memorize information at a world record breaking speed. - [Aurelien] Okay. - [Dominic] Two of
hearts, four of diamonds, the jack of hearts, jack of clubs, seven of clubs, two of clubs. - Completely right.
- All right. - I'd be interested to know
what you do, obviously, to just, I honestly don't
know where I'd begin. - I mean the jacket diamonds
could be Johnny Depp, J, D, jack of diamonds. The queen of clubs, wherever
that is, there we are, the queen of clubs, that
could be Paris Hilton, who likes to go clubbing,
she's the queen of night clubs. So now when I see the cards,
I automatically see people. - [Reporter] Mental images are the key to Dominic's remarkable memory. And he has a similar
method to calculate dates. - The 1st of June, 2004. - Tuesday, I think, is that right? The 3rd of October, 2003, can you do that? - 3rd of October, I
think that was a Friday. - [Dominic] Yes it was, yeah. I remember my sister had a friend over. - How about the 15th of April, 2007? - [Aurelien] Ooh, that was a
Sunday, and I went canoeing. I was in Zambia, me, my dad,
and my sister went canoeing. Just remember that day straight away. - 10th of August, 2007. What's your nearest point of reference? - [Aurelien] My nearest point of reference is the 8th, which was a Wednesday. I'd rather, actually the
7th, I remember that night I'd eaten way too much and I'd threw up. So, for instance that, I know instantly what the 8th of August was. - So you're using a reference point, so that, the 8th was a
Wednesday, yeah, that's right. - So then I think Friday
must have been the 10th. - You're not making a point of I must remember this day because it's two days before my birthday and
I'll remember in the future, so you don't review this. That is fascinating, that is interesting. Don't think I've ever met
somebody quite like you. 'Cause that's extraordinary,
'cause for me to do that, I mean, I could do what you do if I made a conscious effort to do it. But I would have to review
every day at the end of the day and then think about it the following day, next week, next month, et
cetera, until I've got it. - I think of it as, it's
almost like there's this imaginary pen writing in events in a sort of mental calendar. - [Reporter] So you're convinced are you? - I'm 99% sure that Aurelien
is the genuine article. (Aurelien laughing)
99% (chuckles). - I don't think that people would meet me and think like he's got
something funny about him- - Yeah but we had no idea, like at all, as soon as you suddenly said,
oh, I've got this thing, I was like, what?
(Aurelien laughing) Really? - [Reporter] It seemed
Aurelien had only just started to let others see his hidden talent. - I just, I'd love to know what, I just want to know what
you think, I don't know. - [Friend 1] It's weird
that I, I think it's weird that I can say a date and you
would know what day it was. - [Aurelien] Yeah. - [Friend 1] Rel, do you remember when you lost your virginity? What day was that? - There are some things which are... - [Friend 2] What about you? - [Friend 1] No, I do. It was the 19th of January, 2006. - [Aurelien] So you lost it on a Thursday? - [Friend 1] What? - [Aurelien] Is it really
cool or really weird? - [Friend 2] Strange.
- Weird. - [Reporter] I wasn't the only person trying to make sense of
Aurelien's extraordinary ability. - [Henry] Yeah, masters
of memory, here it is. People who can recall
exactly what happened on every day of their lives. - [Reporter] His boyfriend
Henry had come across a story of people with a
suspiciously similar skill. - So like, do you struggle to remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, as to what you did last weekend? Yeah, so this is basically what I read. - [Aurelien] And then you
watched the documentary. (triumphant news music) - [Reporter] Jill Price was
the first person in the world to come forward with this ability. She's been living with it
for almost four decades. - I actually believe I should
be like in a mental hospital, 'cause this is, makes me crazy. Like I still feel bad about stuff that happened 30 years ago. - [Diane] But we all do,
I mean we can all remember one or two things- - It's not one or two things, everything. - I mean hers is very extreme, she can remember every single day. - As you get older and
you live more of a life I think you'll definitely
be able to remember more. - Possibly. - [Henry] Time will
tell, like how far back you'll be able to go. - I mean, short of a
lobotomy, I don't really think that there's anything
that could be done for me. - [Reporter] Jill Price
seemed to be struggling with a memory even more
powerful than Aurelien's. Maybe she had some explanation for why he remembered so much. In the last year, Jill hadn't
granted a single interview, but she had agreed to meet me. (plane jet whirring) We arranged to meet in
a hotel in Los Angeles on the morning of
Saturday the 24th of June. Could the troubled mind
of this 46 year old school administrator hold the key to understanding this mysterious skill? Is there a way you can show me what it is you can do? - No. If you could stick a camera in my head then I think everybody would freak out. Like I can see my memories, you know, starting in February of 1980 until now, it's like every day, every day. - [Reporter] You can
literally remember every day? - It's made life extremely
emotionally difficult at times. Well, there's a lot of complex emotions that go along with not being
able to, you know, forget. Because everything in someone's
life, there's like a huge, there's a line, but
everything is connected because you wouldn't be
here if this didn't happen. And I always am thinking about, God if I had just not done this then this wouldn't have happened. It's harder as life, as years have gone by 'cause there's so much stuff. You know everyone has baggage, I've got a freaking steamer trunk that's just like, and
I'm just dragging along. I've suffered few bouts of
depression over the years and no psychologist and no doctors were able to give me any answers. I mean I've asked therapist,
I've asked doctors, believe me it's not like
I didn't talk about this and want to know like, you know, well why? Nobody had an answer for me. So I thought, well,
I'll go to a scientist. The first thing that
popped up was Dr. McGaugh. - [Reporter] Dr. James L. McGaugh, distinguished professor of neurobiology, has spent his career trying to understand how strong memories are made. He's been carefully testing
Jill's memory for several years. (calendar ticking) - I found him on June 5th,
2000, which was a Monday. And then on June 12th, he called me and we set up a time to meet on June 24th. - [Reporter] It's more than a decade since Jill's first
visit to the university. But her recollection of
events can easily be checked. - Let me see, what year did
we want the calendar for? - Was it 2000?
- [James] 2000? - [Reporter] For 37 years,
Dr. McGaugh's assistant has kept a faithful record of what he's done day by day. - And you're looking for June? - [James] Yeah, the 24th,
she was right about that. June 24th. - [Reporter] Do you know
when you first met Jill? - No, I don't, but it was sometime later because you met with
her maybe another time on a Saturday I think? - [James] I think it
was Saturday, July 8th. You know how I know that? 'Cause it's written right here. (assistant laughing) These are my memories. These are my memories,
they're all written down here and then I recall, yes,
I remember it well. Oh, my son, and my son got married. - I'm the keeper of the book,
not of the memories (laughs). - And then I went to Stockholm. I didn't know that. - [Reporter] When they met, Dr. McGaugh needed to verify Jill's memory. So he asked about things she
may have seen in the news. - So I knew how old she was,
so I had to find some time, so I just randomly said, well, let's see. What were the dates of the
two OJ Simpson verdicts? - October 3rd, 1995,
and February 4th, 1997. - [James] We had a Concord plane crash. - July 25th. - And she was just remarkably accurate. - The first question he asked me was when the Iranian hostage situation started and I told him and then
he told me I was wrong and I told him I was right
and that went back and forth and then we found out that
of course I was right. - [Reporter] How certain
were you that you were right? - 100%.
- [Reporter] Why? - 'Cause I just was (chuckles). Same thing happened when Diane Sawyer was interviewing me on 20/20. And she asked me when princess Grace died. September 14th, 1982. Went into a whole long thing, it was the first day of 12th grade, it was Tuesday, September 14th. That was the first day
I started 12th grade. So I went into this whole long story and she looks at me, she goes, no. - Wait, September 10th, 1982. And I'm like, yeah. And she said, no. And I said, yeah. - [Diane] So September 10th. - Well, that night might not be right. I don't know, but in the room, you know, with all the producers and everybody, they're all scrambling back there, Blackberries, Googling,
and then the door opens up and the producer sticks his head out and he screams, the book is wrong. - [Producer] The book is wrong. - What? - That has always irked my crap. Maybe you should check your
facts first before you do that because you look like a dumb idiot. Sorry. - I want you to draw for me, your representation of
the years, the months, and the days of the week. - [Reporter] Dr. McGaugh
was facing something no scientist had ever seen before. - We know almost nothing about
the causes of forgetting. That's a big black hole
in scientific research. We know an awful lot about the conditions which create memories. We know very little about what
happens when people forget. What was that for? Is there some significance to the length of the line that you draw across? - [Jill] It's just how
I see it in my head. It's just how I see it. - [James] Why did you
draw those lines there? - [Jill] Just to show that it
didn't go all the way there and kind of came down here. - [James] What does that mean? I don't understand what that means. So here, the first individual
who is poor at forgetting. October 13th, 1980.
- Was a Monday. So I would just think of
like that and on a Monday. - [James] How do you know it's a Monday? - 'Cause I just do! - Which is really unusual, really unusual. So that has to be
motivating for a scientist. We said, let's see what we
can find out about that. - That's all I care about. As long as, you know,
somebody in the science world took me seriously, I
was thrilled with that. You have no idea. - [Reporter] Today. Dr. McGaugh is still trying to make
sense of Jill's ability. And now his research program
has grown much larger than he could ever have imagined because after Jill appeared
on worldwide television, incredibly, 10 other people
with this ability appeared. I met 62 year old television
producer, Bob Petrella, who is letting the scientists test him. - [Researcher] And the
last date is March 5th. - March 5th was a Monday, I got some spaghetti and I got some rice and I got some vegetables, but I didn't get any grated cheese. A lot, most people don't understand it. They think it's photographic, they think it's autistic savant,
they think it's absolute, they think you remember everything. Well, we don't. We don't remember every single thing, we make mistakes, we
forget where our keys are, where we parked our
car, like anybody else. But I think it's fairly complete, and what I was doing on
most days of my life. - [Researcher] All right,
and that's all I have. - [Reporter] How do you do it? - I don't know how I
do it, it's just there, and it's been there, you
know, since I was young. I knew it was a little unusual for years and for them to, but I didn't know why I remembered like I did. I wasn't even sure how. - [Reporter] They said they
didn't know how they did it, Dr. McGaugh hadn't worked
out how they did it, but there was another
scientist who thought that he could explain. He met Jill and wrote an
article in Wired Magazine. He said the truth was she
was obsessed with her past. - I don't know think that her memory is fundamentally different
from other people's. I think that in the same way that a child can be very interested in baseball cards, she's interested in the
facts of her own life and she thinks about them,
she reflects on them. - Crap. I don't give a that
it's in Wired Magazine. That means nothing, okay? It's crap. - [James] We never claimed
that she had a perfect memory. Jill Price, who seems
to remember everything. She does not remember everything. What she remembers she doesn't forget, that's the difference. - [Reporter] Many people have
been trying to make sense of Jill Price's memory,
but the first person to offer an explanation found
it wasn't well received. - I was, I will just say that I was greatly offended by his article. And a lot of people read that article, so a lot of people are like, you know, this is who they think,
this is what this is. It was just some stupid,
simplistic, OCD of the brain. - [Reporter] I had come
across this article before I traveled to America. I went to meet the author to learn how he thought Jill remembered so much. - Well, I think what drives Jill to have such a good memory is not so much this memory circuits of her brain, but the circuits that drive
her to want to remember things. And it's not a conscious wanting it's like a drug addict's wanting. They don't may not even
want the heroin per se, but they just, they can't help it. She's got a kind of
compulsion about memory and I think it's that
aspect of her personality, if you will, that drives her to remember things, to reflect on them. - [Reporter] Dr. Marcus drew attention to Jill's 50,000 pages of diaries. He believed she was just obsessively thinking about her past. - How much of this kind
of subtle rehearsing you would have to do in
order to have a strong memory of something that happened 20 years ago. Strong and readily, readily available. Quickly available. Well, that's the nature of
science, you're skeptical. If I wasn't doing this, I'd be skeptical. - I mean, what he did was
totally minimized my life. - [Reporter] I guess that's
the hard thing about it. - Well that's what I'm saying, I've had- - [Reporter] It's your life. - It's my life and I'm
not like just a brain. I have a heart and I have a soul and there's a lot of complexities
that go along with it so to make it so simplistic
like that, totally offended me. - [Reporter] I did actually speak to him. - Well, he has, you don't
need to speak to him because he doesn't know me,
and I find it interesting that anybody would call him to ask about me when he doesn't know me. (playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] I suspected
it was Dr. Marcus' article that had made Jill reluctant
to talk to the media, but could there be some truth
in what he'd had to say? Was there a link with obsessive behavior? It was something Bob Petrella
had talked about too. - You know I think it's
okay to have an obsession as long as it's not a negative thing. You know, if you're stalking a woman then that's an obsession
obviously, that's bad. - [Reporter] Bob invited me to his home to see something he created
from memory in 1999. - So because I was
turning 50 the next year and it was the end of the millennium, I thought I should
choose, just for myself, I should choose my most memorable days of each date of the year. You know, I didn't really hold back so there's stuff about drugs, sex, and rock and roll in here, and I just called it because
it's an acronym for my name and I called it the Book of Bob, B-O-B. Although it's not really a
book, it's more of a journal. Like I said, today is June 29th, so it's June 29th, 1999, I'm driving home, and then I would just go
through all of the June 29ths that I remember in my life and then I would go,
oh, '65, '68, '71, '73. '73 I remember because I was constipated and so I, we were sitting at a restaurant, I hadn't, I was visiting and I hadn't gone for about four or five days and we were sitting in a restaurant and Richard Nixon was
president at the time and I could do his voice
and I suddenly felt like I was able to go after being constipated and I did it as Nixon and I said, it's time, I think it's time, you know, so, that was June 29th, '73, it was early in the morning. I put my, I did my rankings of the years, you know, best year to worse year. '85 and 2004 are tied,
and then 2008, 2009, the 2000s were pretty good. - [Reporter] Do you think
this cataloging of your life like this is kind of a
little bit unusual, Bob? - Oh yeah, definitely unusual. But I think that this is
what people like me do that have a good memory, 'cause that's one of the
common things they say they catalog stuff. - [Reporter] Bob's behavior
did seem a little obsessive, but remembering his history was clearly something he enjoyed. - I like having my memories, you know? I mean, nobody else is
gonna remember my life so why shouldn't I, you know? For Jill, I never met
Jill, but I know for her that she is haunted by her
memories and, you know, they're, so I think it varies
with it, with all of us. - [Reporter] It was certainly true that Jill was troubled by her memories and there was a limit
to how much of her life she was prepared to share. (phone ringing) - [Jill] Hello.
- [Reporter] Hi Jill. How are you doing? Oh okay. What about driving, could we do a little bit of driving with you? Do you mind talking a bit while we drive? - Sure. - [Reporter] Are there particular things that you're happy to talk about? I just don't want to, I'm just- - I have no problem talking
about any of this stuff. I just don't really feel
like opening up my life. You know, I, that's, I
don't need to do that, I don't want to do that. - [Reporter] But Jill had decided to bring something to show me, the very thing the Wired
Magazine article had said was evidence of obsession with her past. - [Jill] Yeah, no, I don't
really let people read these. This is my journal. I've gotten in arguments with people about wanting to read my journal. I'm like, yeah, that's not gonna happen. It's got everything. Everything, everything,
everybody, everything. - [Reporter] It looks
very densely written. - [Jill] It is. I don't like lined paper though, I feel constricted to the lined paper. - [Reporter] So how many things like this do you have, Jill? - I started writing in a
journal in December of 1976 and this is the day, and then
it goes to the other side. That's why I wrote really small. - [Reporter] How often do
you reread something, like- - I don't re-read any of it. I've only had to like go
back and get all these because of you guys. I don't re-read these, I don't
need to, I don't want to. Once it's down, it's
down and done and it's, you know, it's put away. It's not possible to sit and memorize, I mean, this is just
like a smidge of journal, what kind of, how many journals I have. And that would mean that
I would just be sitting and spending all my days
reading my journals. And that's the biggest bunch of bullshit that I've ever heard in my life. It's, I don't write this to remember. I write it so that I don't go crazy. (playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] I left without an explanation of how these people remembered, but with an understanding
of how their ability could complicate life. When I returned to see Aurelien, I wondered how similar he
was to the people I'd met. He'd always said that his
ability to remember so much didn't trouble him at all. - Oh God, that was, I knew
that was Mount Fuji day. That was on your birthday, 2008. - Being able to look at the photographs brings back memories of
the places we used to go, the things we used to do. - I placed a lot of
importance on photos as well. If there's someone not
taking photos of something, I instantly do it. And I think that a photo is
the closest thing you can get actually, to sort of making a memory into an object, actually. It's a concrete memory, I think. - [Father] Yeah, it never goes
away, and it's infallible. - [Reporter] Aurelien had surprised me by remembering the start dates of seven series of
television show Big Brother. - The fourth series started
on the 23rd of May, 2003, which was a Friday. The fifth series started
on the 28th of May, 2004, which was a Friday. The sixth series started
on the 27th of May, Friday. - [Reporter] He even
correctly recalled the date individual contestants were
evicted from the house. - On 7th Leah was evicted, on
the 14th Nikki was evicted, on the 21st Jayne was evicted. - [Reporter] Could this be evidence of some kind of obsession? He didn't seem happy to
be tested on it again. - The 27th of May, 2005. It's cool, man. - I don't really want to do
the Big Brother thing, sorry. - Why?
- I just don't want to do it. Sorry, I don't want to
answer that question. (birds chirping) It's odd to communicate
that I can just remember these sorts of things without even trying, without them having any
importance, I just remember them. I think that would be
alien to a lot of people. - I think it's also, it's
also kind of a bit like when you remember, I don't know, you remembered my great
aunt Margaret's birthday, and stuff like that,
and people might think, oh you're really weird for remembering like random people's birthdays, or you're really weird for
remembering like what I wore, like are you some kind
of stalker or something? When, like I said, it's just, you don't choose to remember
it, it just stays there. - Yeah. - [Henry] And I think
you, sometimes you kind of have a warped opinion of
what people think of it. I think it's, unlike with Big Brother, you're worried that
people think it's weird, like you have, you're
some avid fan of it but- - It's just, it's- - [Henry] Well, I know you're not, but- - It's complicated to get across how you can remember something like that even though it means nothing. I think that's, you
know, people always think you remember things which are important, but as, I think as an example of where I remember things which
are completely unimportant, and have absolutely no value at all, but I just happened to remember them. (playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] Aurelien
seemed to be interested in what was different about his memory. Before I met him, he had
contacted a memory research team at the University of Hull. Giuliana Mazzoni, a
professor of psychology, had been scouring Europe to find someone with Aurelien's skill. - Do you remember anything about
the 20th of December, 2009? - [Aurelien] Yes, it was a Sunday. The weather was quite
good, it was quite windy. - [Giuliana] It was for
me a sort of revelation that people can remember the
weather on a specific date. It is really, really
quite a remarkable thing to observe, you know,
especially for a person like me who has a very poor memory. Do you have an idea of which
day of the week was the 27th? - [Aurelien] 27th was a Saturday. - [Giuliana] I always
claimed that actually this was not possible, because normal memory
does not work like that. I think that I've solved one question, which is this real? And the answer is yes, it is real. The questions that remain are how and why. - [Reporter] Professor
Mazzoni had been preparing a pioneering experiment that might unlock the secrets of Aurelien's mind. - It is this exceptional
cases that actually give the first hint, you know, the first clue to something
that we don't know yet, something that really might change the way we look about memory retrieval. So it is really an exciting moment. (playful orchestral music) - [Reporter] We traveled together to the professor's homeland of Italy. Aurelien had an appointment at a hospital where the professor had
assembled a trusted team. They hoped a brain scan would reveal what happens when
Australian is remembering. And the test they were about to do was one that had never been done before. - And I think that we should
be almost ready to go now, which is lovely, which is
exciting, which is exciting. Aurelien, can you hear me? - [Reporter] Aurelien's brain
had never been examined. Professor Mazzoni wanted to see if he was different to everyone else. - Ooh, look at that! Sorry. It's very, very clear picture
of the corpus callosum which is this part that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. That's great. - [Reporter] The first scans revealed the brain's structure and how well different areas are connected. But it was the second
hour-long functional scan that the American team hadn't yet done. - We're close to end of this one. - [Reporter] Aurelien's
brain activity was recorded as he remembered what happened
on a huge list of dates. - [Giuliana] No second response and immediately the other blew. Okay, good, good control. Six, seven, eight, nine. Now, good.
(Giuliana clapping) What, Luca suggested that we need to open a bottle of Prosecco. Congratulations Aurelien,
you made it, I'm so glad. (playful orchestral music) So what came out from
your brain imaging data and in particular from
the functional data, from the type of activation that is, was occurring when you were
retrieving the memory initially, okay, is that you were
using a lot of visual areas. So it is as if both areas are
particularly strong in you and they really help your memory. - [Reporter] In the first
moment of retrieving a memory, it appears that Aurelien
uses areas of the brain that the rest of us don't. - There is something real
extraordinary in this data because we have been able to see that Aurelien really accesses memories very, very quickly compared
to the average person, as if the memories are
represented as a pre-packaged fact that's so become access, becomes accessible without much effort. I really think that
this might tell us about potentials in the brain
that might not be exploited in more, in quotes, average people. It is wonderful to be
able to be at that moment in which things might change, there might be this small
revolution in how we think. - My brain caused a revolution. (both laughing)
(playful orchestral music) - The ultimate question
is, can we all be trained in a way that allows us
to function like Aurelien? - [Reporter] Dr. McGaugh and his team have a group of these people to study. They've been comparing how the structure of their brains differ from ours. But the truth is that
neither of these scientists have yet made sense of
this extraordinary skill. - [Researcher] It's a very rare ability. - So we're doing the Sherlock
Holmes detective work and it's, the answer's
gonna be complicated. We know brains of these people differ in some ways from other people, we know that there's some
brain regions that are smaller, some are larger, and some
are different in shape. That's something, to beginning. Remember, it's Sherlock Holmes. The mystery is not solved on page one. - [Reporter] And we're still on page one. - 23. - [Reporter] After a summer spent with these remarkable people trying to find out the truth, there's one question that's
constantly played on my mind. Suppose it was possible to
have a memory like this. Is it something the rest of us would want? - I feel like my memory has ruled my life. I feel like no matter how, no matter what, my memory has ruled my life. It's like, I remember all the wars. To really think about remembering like 35 years ago right now and how you felt and how, or what someone said to you and how that's never changed, you know, it can be very, very tormenting. There's not one day that I'm not like stressed out about something, or thinking about
something from 20 years ago that means absolutely nothing today, but still bothers me, or still upsets me, or still pisses me off,
and it's ridiculous. But you know, it's like
yesterday, it really is, it was as if it was yesterday. (playful orchestral music) (people laughing distantly) - [Henry] I'm parched. - Cheers. - But I know you said
that you could remember every single time we've met since we've been together and stuff. Are you ever gonna get
annoyed at me for forgetting? - No, I really, it doesn't bother me- - You understand it's, us lesser mortals- - Yeah (laughs). - [Henry] It might be something that I could get quite jealous of because you know, your good
days that we have together like today for instance,
you'll remember forever kind of thing, whereas I'll kind of, it'll slowly just sort of
fade out of my memory and I- - [Aurelien] Charming (laughs). There's nothing negative about being able to remember anything. - [Henry] No, I don't think there is. - I think, the more I think about it the more I think it's a
really nice thing to have. And I think what's nice is that now I know it's something special, I think I'll sort of value it more. (distant indistinct shouting) (broom sweeping) (children shouting indistinctly) (child speaking in foreign language)
