The woman who is poor at forgetting
Jill Price, a 40 years old school administrator, never forgets everything that happened in her life for more than three decades in the past. She still feels bad about things that happened 30 years ago and it is not just one or two things but a lot of them that happened on many different days in the past.
This, she says, makes her life emotionally difficult at times. She suffered depression over the years as she recalls and regrets the fact that if something had not happened first something else would not have happened later in her life. She consulted doctors, psychologists and therapists and nobody could help her.
Dr. James Almendorf, a distinguished professor of neurobiology at the University of California, studies how strong memories are made. He closely examined Jill Price's case for several years.
Jill still remembers the date when she first met Dr. Almendorf on June 5, 2000 which was Monday and when he called her on June 12 and set an appointment to meet on June 24. For 37 years Dr. Almendorf’s assistant has kept records of his daily activities which confirmed the accuracy of Jill's recollections.
In his first encounter with her, he asked her among other things when the Iranian hostage crisis situation started and she answered confidently. At first he thought she was wrong and later he found out she was indeed right.
A similar situation also happened on another occasion when the journalist Diane Sawyer asked her in an interview the date on which Princes Grace died. Jill assuredly answered that it was September 14, 1982. And she still remembers that it was Tuesday, her first day in grade 12. Diane checked the records and found that her answer was wrong. The record showed that it was on September 10 of the same year. Upon Jill's insistence, the producers looked for the information in online sources and announced that the book was actually wrong and of course Jill got it right.
Jill is hundred percent certain about her recollections because she just is as she declares it. But she doesn’t know or say how she has been able to recall with such degree of accuracy.
When she was asked how she could know whether it was a Monday or some other day her answer is "because I just do".
Dr. Almendorf said, "We know almost nothing about the causes of forgetting. That is a big blackhole in scientific research. We know an awful lot about the conditions which create memories. We know very little about what happens when people forget."
He described Jill's situation as she is poor at forgetting.
Jill said, "When somebody in the science world took me seriously, I am thrilled with that and you have no idea."
And the reason is how another scientist called Gary Marcus, professor of psychology from New York University, explained Jill's case in an article in Wired magazine as obsession with recalling past events, which actually upset her a great deal.
Professor Marcus thought her memory is not fundamentally different from any other person. The only difference appears to him that she obsessively recalls the facts of her life and reflects about them.
According to him, what drive Jill to have such a good memory are not so much the memory circuits of her brain but the drive that pushes her to remember something. He compares her “unconscious compulsion about memory” with drug addiction referring to the 50 thousand pages diaries she wrote.
For Jill, this is just crap. She merely wrote her diaries to deal with her insatiable memory of past events, and not because she wants to keep the memories alive. She said she never read them once she wrote the diaries. Therefore, she was greatly offended by Professor Marcus’ explanation. She is worried that people who read the article may think of her case as simplistic OCD of the brain.
She responds, "I am not just a brain. I have a heart and I have soul. There are a lot of complexities that go along with it." To make her situation so simplistic like that was what really offended Jill the most.
Dr Almendorf disagreed with Marcus' explanation and asked how much of these subtle rehearsing one has to do in order to have a strong memory of something that happened 20 years ago, which is still so strong and readily and quickly available.
"She does not have perfect memory,” Dr. Almendorf said. “She doesn't remember everything. But what she remembers, she does not forget."
After Jill was presented on the worlwide television, ten other people with the same ability appeared. One of them is the 20 year old British named Aurelien Hayman who claimed to have such power of memory since he was just four years old.
To find out more, follow the link below:
Source: The boy who can't forget (Medical documentary) - Real Stories
https://youtu.be/9Bnu0UrgxBg
Jill Price, a 40 years old school administrator, never forgets everything that happened in her life for more than three decades in the past. She still feels bad about things that happened 30 years ago and it is not just one or two things but a lot of them that happened on many different days in the past.
This, she says, makes her life emotionally difficult at times. She suffered depression over the years as she recalls and regrets the fact that if something had not happened first something else would not have happened later in her life. She consulted doctors, psychologists and therapists and nobody could help her.
Dr. James Almendorf, a distinguished professor of neurobiology at the University of California, studies how strong memories are made. He closely examined Jill Price's case for several years.
Jill still remembers the date when she first met Dr. Almendorf on June 5, 2000 which was Monday and when he called her on June 12 and set an appointment to meet on June 24. For 37 years Dr. Almendorf’s assistant has kept records of his daily activities which confirmed the accuracy of Jill's recollections.
In his first encounter with her, he asked her among other things when the Iranian hostage crisis situation started and she answered confidently. At first he thought she was wrong and later he found out she was indeed right.
A similar situation also happened on another occasion when the journalist Diane Sawyer asked her in an interview the date on which Princes Grace died. Jill assuredly answered that it was September 14, 1982. And she still remembers that it was Tuesday, her first day in grade 12. Diane checked the records and found that her answer was wrong. The record showed that it was on September 10 of the same year. Upon Jill's insistence, the producers looked for the information in online sources and announced that the book was actually wrong and of course Jill got it right.
Jill is hundred percent certain about her recollections because she just is as she declares it. But she doesn’t know or say how she has been able to recall with such degree of accuracy.
When she was asked how she could know whether it was a Monday or some other day her answer is "because I just do".
Dr. Almendorf said, "We know almost nothing about the causes of forgetting. That is a big blackhole in scientific research. We know an awful lot about the conditions which create memories. We know very little about what happens when people forget."
He described Jill's situation as she is poor at forgetting.
Jill said, "When somebody in the science world took me seriously, I am thrilled with that and you have no idea."
And the reason is how another scientist called Gary Marcus, professor of psychology from New York University, explained Jill's case in an article in Wired magazine as obsession with recalling past events, which actually upset her a great deal.
Professor Marcus thought her memory is not fundamentally different from any other person. The only difference appears to him that she obsessively recalls the facts of her life and reflects about them.
According to him, what drive Jill to have such a good memory are not so much the memory circuits of her brain but the drive that pushes her to remember something. He compares her “unconscious compulsion about memory” with drug addiction referring to the 50 thousand pages diaries she wrote.
For Jill, this is just crap. She merely wrote her diaries to deal with her insatiable memory of past events, and not because she wants to keep the memories alive. She said she never read them once she wrote the diaries. Therefore, she was greatly offended by Professor Marcus’ explanation. She is worried that people who read the article may think of her case as simplistic OCD of the brain.
She responds, "I am not just a brain. I have a heart and I have soul. There are a lot of complexities that go along with it." To make her situation so simplistic like that was what really offended Jill the most.
Dr Almendorf disagreed with Marcus' explanation and asked how much of these subtle rehearsing one has to do in order to have a strong memory of something that happened 20 years ago, which is still so strong and readily and quickly available.
"She does not have perfect memory,” Dr. Almendorf said. “She doesn't remember everything. But what she remembers, she does not forget."
After Jill was presented on the worlwide television, ten other people with the same ability appeared. One of them is the 20 year old British named Aurelien Hayman who claimed to have such power of memory since he was just four years old.
To find out more, follow the link below:
Source: The boy who can't forget (Medical documentary) - Real Stories
https://youtu.be/9Bnu0UrgxBg
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