Amazing memory!

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

Here is an article about some people who can remember almost every single day of their lives in minute detail.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160125-the-blessing-and-curse-of-the-people-who-never-forget

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For most of us, memory is a kind of scrapbook, a mess of blurred and faded snapshots of our lives. As much as we would like to cling on to our past, even the most poignant moments can be washed away with time.

Ask Nima Veiseh what he was doing for any day in the past 15 years, however, and he will give you the minutiae of the weather, what he was wearing, or even what side of the train he was sitting on his journey to work.

“My memory is like a library of VHS tapes, walk-throughs of every day of my life from waking to sleeping,” he explains.
Veiseh can even put a date on when those reels started recording: 20 December 2000, when he met his first girlfriend at his best friend’s 16th birthday party. He had always had a good memory, but the thrill of young love seems to have shifted a gear in his mind: from now on, he would start recording his whole life in detail. “I could tell you everything about every day after that.”

Intriguingly, their memories are highly self-centred: although they can remember “autobiographical” life events in extraordinary detail, they seem to be no better than average at recalling impersonal information, such as random lists of words. Nor are they necessarily better at remembering a round of drinks, say. “Sometimes I don’t remember what happened five minutes ago, but I can remember a detail from 22 January 2008,” explains “Bill”,

Disappointingly, brain scans have failed to reveal any huge anatomical differences that might explain how this occurs. “It’s not like they had some extra lobe or a ‘third’ hemisphere of the brain,” says Stark.

Viewing the past in high definition can also make it very difficult to get over pain and regret. “It can be very hard to forget embarrassing moments,” says Donohue. “You feel 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.” Veiseh agrees: “It is like having these open wounds – they are just a part of you,” he says.

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Must be pretty tough....remembering every detail for 15 years. Thank God for forgetfulness (normal one I mean)!

Cheers.

Sriram 

[Leonard James]

Just another of evolution's infinite tentative combinations of genes for the environment to favour or not.

It's a wonderful world!

[floo]

I can remember incidents from my early infancy, but can't always remember what I did yesterday! I have a memory of being in the maternity home just after my birth. I can still see the white canvas sided cot, the green and cream walls and the nurse looking down on me.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Sriram,

Memory, do we remember better from our mistakes?

Gonnagle.

[King Oberon]

You don't need an amazing memory Sriry, 15 years ago I went to work I came back, same again today!   

 

[floo]

Dear Sriram,

Memory, do we remember better from our mistakes?

Gonnagle.

Sometimes, sometimes not.

[Udayana]

Just another of evolution's infinite tentative combinations of genes for the environment to favour or not.

It's a wonderful world!

Probably not much to do with genes but the actual pathways exercised in the brain throughout childhood/adolescence. Most of us have brains of sufficient capacity, but little ability to manage it.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4671573.ece

http://www.salk.edu/news-release/memory-capacity-of-brain-is-10-times-more-than-previously-thought/

[Nearly Sane]

'The Thirty-Nine Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...'

[OH MY WORLD!]

Repressed memories, Amnesia?

[Sriram]

I can remember incidents from my early infancy, but can't always remember what I did yesterday! I have a memory of being in the maternity home just after my birth. I can still see the white canvas sided cot, the green and cream walls and the nurse looking down on me.

That's an amazing experience...to remember ones actual birthday!

You have had some extraordinary experiences Floo....but they don't seem to have pushed you to know more. You'll probably make a good spiritual person in your next birth.

By the way, some children remember events even from their previous births..... Muslim children in Lebanon at that! 

[SusanDoris]

I can remember incidents from my early infancy, but can't always remember what I did yesterday! I have a memory of being in the maternity home just after my birth. I can still see the white canvas sided cot, the green and cream walls and the nurse looking down on me.

Have you done any research as to whether this kind of memory is actually possible? I read a discussion about this quite some years ago and, if I remember correctly, that clarity of memory from that very earliest time, is not possible; the brain can easily create it later and by the time it can be articulated the child has an enormous amount of information on which to base this apparent memory.

[Rhiannon]

'The Thirty-Nine Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...'

Careful, NS. That kind of thing can get you shot at in theatres.

[Leonard James]

I can also remember things from a very young age, I remember my pram and one of those duck toy things strung across, I can remember crawling around the floor and trying to pull myself up on things, before I could walk and can remember wanting to stand up.

I can remember faces peering at me in my pram, and crying .... I remember my blankets and being wheeled around. ( lots of strange faces suddenly appearing can be scary)

I remember having nappies changed and being potty trained. ( even my pink potty)

I also remember the nurse coming to visit my mother ( I was very young then) and her talking to me, I can remember getting upset.

I have asked my mother about these things and she has often been surprised because she also remembers some of those things I describe.

The nurse had a high pitched voice for example and I used to get very upset when she used to come, I remember that. ( she tells me I always cried when the nurse came and it puzzled her )

I think the experts are wrong.

Some people can remember a long way back.

I suppose if others can't, it seems unbelievable.

Before I could walk I remember sitting on the lawn on a blanket and I had a toy ( dolls house) and a Blackbird flew down and started rearranging the furniture in it.

I was frightened of it and started crying. It had no fear of me at all.

I remember my mother shooing it away.

She remembers this incident.

Sometimes there is a picture in the family photos which she can dig out and it's usually a shock in the sense I always picture myself as older, and the photo shows me as a very small toddler or even as a baldish headed baby. 

It's not how I thought of myself in the memory.

There are lots of instances I can remember, random people snippets of conversation.

Once I remember a conversation that puzzled me while sat in my high chair when I was very small when my mother had visitors.

It was about some neighbours having a bath together.......... And I didn't understand at the time what the fuss was,

I asked my mother about it once ( when a lot older and discussing memories) and she was quite shocked because she remembered having the conversation and I was only about about 6 months old.

A couple of neighbours were having an affair and the gossip was, they shared a bath together and it was village gossip.

All discussed in front of me ( who thinks a child if 6 months picks up on gossip?)

I didn't get the context though.

There are enough instances like that for me to be sure they are real memories.


It's connecting the memory to something verifiable that's the issue.

The blackbird incident is a good one because it's very specific. ( and no my mother hadn't told me about it before)

Most are memories that are just visual flashes of little things, like being in my pram and my surroundings.

However sometimes there are connecting things which jog memories in others, to connect the dots.

Like the adulterous couple, sharing a bath.

I only found out what that was about many years later when I shared it with my mother.

Remembering my puzzlement at the conversation.


It's not whether such memories are possible, because they obviously are for some, but why some of us can remember, and others can't.

I have no doubt that my recollections are real, not only do I have lots of them, many are verifiable.

A lot arn't because they are random instances.

I have a whole lifetime ( it seems to me) of instances that I remember before I started school.

A photographic memory, or a very acute memory is Just another of the amazing things that mutation can produce in certain individuals.

[floo]

Interestingly this links autism and early memories

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/201312/early-memory-and-autism

Some people do, others don't.

The scientists have come up with all sorts of random conclusions to explain why those who do, are deluded.

I think they are ignoring the vast numbers who do.

I suppose it's disturbing to those who can't remember.

That is interesting. My grandson (14) has Aspergers I must ask him about his earliest memories.

[Bubbles]

That is interesting. My grandson (14) has Aspergers I must ask him about his earliest memories.

Yes let us know if he remembers very early on, would be interested 

🌹

[floo]

Yes let us know if he remembers very early on, would be interested 

🌹

I will try to remember when I next see him, which probably wont be for a month or two.