hyperthymestic syndrome

hyperthymestic syndrome

known as the hyperthymestic syndrome, hyperthymesia is a condition in which people have a superior autobiographical memory. This means that these people can recall a majority of their personal experiences very easily. These individuals can remember almost all of their everyday experiences in detail and also public events that hold a particular significance to them. Researchers have distinguished people with hyperthymesia and those with other forms of exceptional memory. Memories remembered by hyperthymesia individuals are usually personal with autobiographical accounts of significance in their lives. These memories are not derived from the use of mnemonic strategies; they are stored involuntarily and automatically retrieved. Apart from remembering the day of the week and the specific dates, these people are not calculators like people with autism or savant syndrome. Instead, hyperthymesia condition allows the memories of the individuals to stick with them for a lifetime, and it’s believed to be an unconscious process of the brain.

According to Aurora K R Leport, Shauna M Stark, James L McGaugh, and Craig E L Stark, people with a highly superior autographic memory demonstrate the capability to remember a vast amount of autobiographic events without the use of mnemonics. This ability suggests that they are unable to forget; therefore, they can preserve a significant richness of the autobiographical events that occurred in their lives. The authors conducted a study to evaluate the amount and accuracy of information maintained over time. The study was meant to answer the following questions; do all individuals with HSAM preserve the same amount of information? Do they lose some of the autobiographical detail overtime? And Does the quality of the memories decline over time?

According to the study, Hyperthymesia individuals maintain a richly detailed recollection of their autobiographical experiences, and therefore forgetting of the memory curve is very shallow, which is due to the nature of their memories. They also can keep recalling the events the same way at different points, such as the respondents in the study were able to remember a rich detail of events at both the one year point and the ten-year point. The authors suggest that the autobiographic memories in HSAM, specifically for the mundane events they remain as episodic as time passes as it happens for the rest of us. These memories involve affective and perpetual details derived from a personal experience that occurred in the past. What makes the hyperthymesia individual memory unique is the richness in the aspect of their past events.  They also suggested that the HSAM is a result of efficient consolidation and retrieval of the details in their memory, which is likely to be rooted in the obsessively based. They suggest there is a possibility that the HSAM strengthen their minds. There are possibilities that Hyperthymesia is a form of OCD. The participants of the study had obsessive tendencies, and also the structure of their brain is similar to those with OCD. They both share an enlarged caudate and putamen. Despite the HSAM individuals’ ability to maintain and retrieve a significant quality of autobiographical information over a long time, they usually don’t excel in encoding either autobiographical or standardized cognitive

details.

The significant difference between hyperthymesia and super memory individuals is that in most cases, those with the super memory basically use mnemonic strategies or preparation methods and strategies to remember and memorize a vast of information. However, on the other hand, Hyperthymestic people recall their memories by the use of their personal experiences and autobiography events of both mundane and significant events of their lives. These unique and detailed memories are not based on the use of mnemonic techniques. They are encoded involuntarily and automatically retrieved, as mentioned above. Hyperthymesia not only involves recalling everything that happened to you but also recalling in detail on what happened exactly in a particular experience and event. Unlike the super memory individuals, these memories from the past feel emotionally intense in the present. Also, individuals with HSAM are not useful in recalling things like faces and numbers; people using mnemonic strategies can easily remember such things from prior observation.

Jill Price a school administrator in Los Angeles who has a memory of a vast of personal experiences of her everyday activities. In 2000, Jill’s Price contacted James McGaugh, a researcher from the University of California. James McGaugh began the research with his team of other researchers. In 2006, James McGaugh and his colleagues gave their first report in a journal, “Neurcase” they published a study about Jill Price it referred to her as AJ. According to the research, although Price was had a remarkable memory detail, she wasn’t skilled in rote memorization. The researchers referred to the condition as the hyperthymesia, which essentially meant a highly superior autobiographic memory. Since the study, more individuals have been identified, and the Centre for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory is still working to comprehend this mysterious ability.  Since then, the condition is now referred to as HSAM away from its initial name Hyperthymesia, which was used in the initial report.

I think the extraordinary autobiographical memory is both an asset and a liability to some extent. This is because as much as it’s a gift and helps people relive their best memories and they can remember most of their autobiographical memories, there are also shortcomings. One of the HSAM individuals stated that it makes people live their lives with more intention and joy rather than a living experience for the sake. Knowing that I will recall all my decisions and actions may help me make better and well-thought decisions. I think with this memory, I would always find ways to make the day worthwhile and have good memories of it. However, I think it would also be a liability in that I am forced to remember the hard and painful moments of my life. Owen, one of the subjects, describes that the gift also has its dark aspects. Having exceptional memory ability may make one lead an isolating experience because most people around you can’t relate to whatever you remember or what you are feeling. Owen describes the feeling as one is walking in a life where everyone else suffers from amnesia.

Given a choice, I would not like to remember every detail of life as I know that most of the suppressed memories in my brain are mostly not good. I think I am good with how other things have been edited in my memories as I can recall all my most important and happy moments in my life. The fact that people who have this memory can even feel the emotions of a mind is not appealing to me as there are memories better forgotten than remembered. If its heartbreak, one can never forget the pain they felt. However, it’s a mystery which I would like to experience even if it only for a day. I want to take a sneak peek of all the suppressed memories. I believe that all the memories that I am stuck with are relevant for some reason; therefore, I would not erase them for any reason. All my painful memories have taught me different lessons that I apply in my day to day life. The pain of losing someone, for example, has taught me to treasure essential people in my life more now that we are together. I think tragic memories are there to help us learn and avoid falling in the same trap once again—terrible experiences such as getting burnt to help us stay away from the fire, for example.

According to Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu, human memories can be artificially triggered, erased, and implanted. Usually, memory distortions and illusions occur often. These changes are often from the incorporation of misinformation into the memory from other external sources. According to cognitive studies, in human beings, there have been reported vigorous activities in the hippocampus when someone recalls both real and false memories. They use an animal as a model in which they illustrate the fake and real memories that can be examined at the memory engram level. They suggested that an optical reactivation of the cells activated during the formation of the first memory induced the retrieval of that memory. Also, retrieved memory was related to the event of high valence to create a new and false memory that did not have its element experiences naturally linked. Therefore, the animal study indicated that they froze in a context in which they were never shocked. The retrieval of the artificial memory was done through optogenetics (use of light), they propose that the formation of other false memories could occur naturally by internally driven retrieval of prior experiences and their relation with the external stimuli of high valence.

False memories have a significant impact on our behaviors. According to research, a majority of us have false memories for many different things in our lives, from our own preferences to the choices of memories of certain events. In some circumstances, false memories have led to an extreme and disturbing impact on people. There are cases where people have false memories that they have done something, yet they have not. There was an instance when a woman thought she had dropped her son at the daycare yet he was at the back seat, she leaves him in the car due to the false memory that she had dropped him off and he eventually dies to the high temperatures in the vehicle. When something is part of our routine, one might have a false memory of having done something which, in reality, you haven’t. There are also cases where therapists have used false memory to implant a memory on their clients, leaving them with disturbing thoughts about their past.