People With Super Memory

Here's a guy who lost his cell phone. I'd be panicking because I would never be able to remember all the numbers. This guy didn't because he'd already memorized all of them. He also remembers the scores of every Pittsburgh Steelers game he ever saw. And the final scores. Since he was 7. Researchers can show freeze frame pictures to him from the games, and he can name the game, date, and score of that game.

According to researchers, he has a rare condition that gives him a super powerful memory, known to researchers as super-autobiographical memory. And there are only four people known to have the condition. Their minds, likened to video cameras that never stop running or a computer hard drive that downloads every web page visited, can recall trivia and minutiae from everyday life that some of them find unbearably stifling.

According to the article, the condition is closely linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, and researchers suspect it may be more common and undiagnosed.

Either way, I personally think it would be wonderful to have a super powerful memory that could be accessed like a Google server. Imagine an enormous memory with no limits to what you can recall? I'd be able to learn every Korean word after hearing it only once? How cool would that be? Heck, I could learn every Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and French as well!

4 People with Super Memory, by David K. Israel

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