Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists

[Celebration]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1738881&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

McGaugh's journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago.

Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.


Soon after AJ took over his life, McGaugh teamed with two fellow researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Elizabeth Parker, a clinical professor of psychiatry and neurology (and lead author of a report on the research in the current issue of the journal Neurocase), and Larry Cahill, an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, have joined McGaugh in putting AJ through an exhaustive series of interviews and psychological tests. But they aren't a lot closer today to understanding her amazing ability than they were when they started.

.............."the woman who can't forget" remembers trivial details as clearly as major events. Asked what happened on Aug 16, 1977, she knew that Elvis Presley had died, but she also knew that a California tax initiative passed on June 6 of the following year, and a plane crashed in Chicago on May 25 of the next year, and so forth. Some may have had a personal meaning for her, but some did not.

[trotsky]

1. Sounds far more like a curse than a blessing.

Yikes.

[uppityperson]

14. sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

[madame defarge]

2. I can't remember what I had for breakfast... n/t

[quiet.american]

3. Fascinating. n/t

[BlackHeart]

4. My wife says I have

a pornographic memory.

[Libby2]

9. LOL !!

[tanyev]

5. Now she can never get a job in the Bush administration.

[Orrex]

6. A short-story suggesion

Everyone should read Borges' Funes the Memorious for a clever examination of a fictional character with a similar problem.

For that matter, everyone should read Borges anyway.

[Orrex]

7. Oops--dupe

[Strong Atheist]

8. Sounds cool... nt.

[Betsy Ross]

10. I knew a man with an even better memory.

His memory was so good, he could remember events that never happened.

[Warpy]

11. I was like that when I was a kid

able to recall whole conversations verbatim months or years after they'd occurred. It wasn't an ability that made me appreciated by my parents or loved by the world at large.

I did learn to keep my mouth shut, eventually, and the ability did partially fade with time, something I am very grateful for.

A short memory makes it easier to deal with other folks.

[Orrex]

13. A question

How do you know that you recalled those conversations verbatim correctly? I really don't doubt your claim, but I wonder how it might be verified...

[RedOnce]

12. Sometimes I'm pretty absent minded...

and often can't remember what I had for lunch!

But, other times, it is just so vivid, and it seems to come out of nowhere.

I suppose Warpy's right, (since she seems to be right about most things) "A short memory makes it easier to deal with other folks."