There are lots of statistics regarding the
average human memory, but as you’ll know just by talking to friends not all memories
are alike. There are people who seem to be able to remember
numerous facts, dates, quotes of famous people; those folks that you can’t do without on
a quiz night at the pub Then there are those people who might be able to recall in detail
moments from childhood, but are simply useless when it comes to memorizing things. The science is hardly exact, but it’s thought
we have around 70,000 thoughts a day, and in a lifetime, we might process 1 quadrillion
pieces of information. Scientists in the UK in 2018 told us the average
person can recognize around 5,000 faces. But there are outliers, people with a memory
superpower. That’s who we’ll talk about in this episode
of the Infographics Show, the people who remember everything. A UK documentary called, “The boy who can’t
forget” featured a boy, called Aurelien Hayman, who was a student. He said in the film, “I've never met anyone
who's been able to do what I do. It just seems there are no gaps at all, I
can just see it all.” That’s not surprising because his kind are
few and far between, but others do exist. Let’s first explain what his powers consisted
of. Firstly, it doesn’t mean the young man can
tell you everything he saw on a given day, say, when he was 12. He’s not a machine. But what he can do is still spectacular. Remember that the average person will only
remember the details of about 11 events in any given year of life that has passed. And no, that doesn’t include cheating and
reeling off events of yesterday and saying it’s a new year. So, you could ask this kid, tell us about
March 31st, 2004. He thinks for a while, tells you what day
it was, what he was wearing, where he went, perhaps something he saw on TV, a conversation
he had with his mom, what he ate. He won’t remember every detail, but he remembers
a lot of details. And this he can do for every day of the year,
for all his life after early childhood. It’s a thing to behold, and rightly there
are many skeptics. He is tested many times during the documentary. “We were pleasantly surprised to see that
he could remember so much information about his life, with little objective details everywhere,”
said a psychologist to the British media, who tested Aurelien. “When we checked the factual information
relating to the day of the week, the weather or a television series he said he’d watched,
the information was accurate.” It’s thought that around 20-30 people in
the world have this gift, although some people are not exactly happy about having such a
superpower. They have the ability to remember, perhaps
win a lot of pub quizzes, but then they remember all the bad stuff, too. The rest of us thankfully can just let stuff
go. Aurelien said he had no method, no trick up
his sleeve, he just thought back and the details emerged naturally. Some scientists tell us this is because he,
and others in the world, have the ability to form memories and retrieve memories from
both the right and left frontal lobes of the brain. Imagine we ask you, do you remember that party
you went to two years when you kissed that girl and threw-up in the hot tub? You might see glimpses of that night, but
the details won’t be there. But imagine you can retrieve both pictures
and details. You hear November 11, 2016, and immediately
you see pictures of that date. “It’s like being able to access something
in a filing cabinet very quickly,” said the boy. “It’s like the dates have pictures. It’s a very visual process – there’s
a sequence of images.” Scientists tell us that this power is called
“hyperthymesia.” Also known as “hyperthymesitic syndrome”,
it can mean some people can’t stop thinking about past events and so have an exceptional
memory, or like our young student, they have what is called a “mental calendar” from
which they can pull details about almost any date. These people, who some scientists say have
a neurological impairment rather than enhancement, should not be compared to savants that might
have extraordinary memories. Savants can usually memorize things that are
very specific, whereas these people can pull data from any events. The first person to be diagnosed with hyperthymesia
was a woman in the USA called Jill Price. She seemed less enamored with her skills than
the boy in the UK, not always fond of the fact she could recall memories from the past
that she just wanted to forget. While there are still skeptics regarding this
condition, if you see Price in action it’s hard to discount that she has this tremendous
ability. In fact, she was even better than Aurelien,
being able to recount more details for some days. And that was every day of her life since she
was 14 years old. She is now 53 years old. “Starting on February 5th, 1980, I remember
everything. That was a Tuesday,” she once said. Scientists in the USA jumped at the chance
to research what was going on in this woman’s brain. Under brain scans it seems everything was
normal, although she showed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. Some have said her ability stems from making
notes of her life, a lot of notes, although she has strenuously denied this. In fact, those notes were used when scientists
tested her, and indeed, if they asked her what was happening on July 3, 1997, she could
give them an answer in an instant and when the notes were checked she was right. Others have said the ability is a kind of
synesthesia, which means the senses can get crossed. Maybe you can smell a sound, for instance. To be honest, science is still in the dark
about this, but then you can’t doubt what you can see with your own eyes. That is, these people are certainly remembering
days of their lives in detail. The BBC in 2016, talked about another case
of a person with this condition. His name is Nima Veiseh. He told the BBC, “My memory is like a library
of VHS tapes, walk-throughs of every day of my life from waking to sleeping.” This is similar to another person interviewed
by Vice, who said, “The best way I can describe it is that I view my life like a movie. It’s almost like when you go to a DVD and
you’re scrolling through the different chapter scenes.” Veiseh said he always had a good memory, but
the older he got the better it got. Scientists have also said this condition improves,
if we think of it as being positive, over time. Another term for the condition is ‘Highly
superior autobiographical memory’, and Veiseh is among the very few people who have been
diagnosed with it. During one test scientists thought they had
caught him out, asking him the date Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the 2008
Beijing Olympics. Ha, said the scientists, you’re wrong. He said, no, you’re wrong, go check again-
and he was right. Despite what some scientists say about being
able to use more areas of the brain, it’s still something of a mystery. As one expert said, “It’s not like they
had some extra lobe or a ‘third’ hemisphere of the brain.” But tests have revealed that these people
can be more prone to fantasy, and that they do seem to absorb the present more than others. They are constantly pulling in data, which
one would think would make them seem distant at times. “The absorption helps them to establish
strong foundations for a recollection,” a scientist told the BBC, “and the fantasy
proneness means that they revisit those memories again and again in the coming weeks and months. Each time this initial memory trace is ‘replayed’,
it becomes even stronger.” Maybe you are one of the people we described
at the start of the show, that struggles to remember information, say, for an exam, but
can pull details from days in life. Perhaps these people fantasize more, or that’s
what the BBC scientist seemed to say. Some of the people, as we said, see it as
a blessing, others a curse, or both. One man had travelled the world, visited wonders,
seen great art, colorful cultures, and he had fond and clear memories of it all. But life has its low points, too. Another person with the condition told the
BBC, “You feel the same emotions – it is just as raw, just as fresh… You can’t turn off that stream of memories,
no matter how hard you try.” In that Vice interview we mentioned the person
said his mind was his own worst enemy at times. He recalled being bullied in school. “I don’t remember what the bully was wearing
or what I was wearing, but I remember exactly what he said to me and I remember how I felt
as I was walking back to the water fountain,” he said. “I remember fighting back tears and I remember
the hallway and the tiles on the floor.” Hmm, that doesn’t sound like such a cool
thought to have rattling around your head. He even said it’s hard to form new intimate
relationships because he remembers only too well all the bad stuff that happened in his
last ones. It’s too raw for him, while the rest of
us just get over it. Time may well be a great healer for some people,
but not for these folks. He said he went as far as to go back to his
old lovers to make things better, just so he could have a happier memory and more confidence
to start a new relationship. Some scientists admit that it is “baffling”,
but are working on working it out. At the University of California, Irvine, they
examined 500 people who thought they might have this special kind of memory. After the tests, UCI researchers confirmed
that 33 of them did have it, and another 37 might have it but needed to be tested more. Science is certainly excited by these people. One researcher in the UK said, “It is these
exceptional cases that give the first clue to something that might change the way we
think about how personal memory works, so it is really an exciting moment.” Would you like to have this condition, why
or why not? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other video
The Luckiest Man That Ever Lived! Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
