Do you remember what you had for dinner two years ago today? Most of us won't have a clue, but a small number of people, including a California woman named Jill Price, can remember such events in great detail. That's because they all have a condition called highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM).
The type of memory associated with HSAM may be called autobiographical memory or eidetic memory. People with this type of memory recall events, images, dates, even conversations, in extremely clear detail. And they're able to access these memories easily. When researchers studied Jill Price, for instance, they asked her about events on specific days, and she almost always answered correctly. After several years of research, they asked if she remembered dates of her appointments with them. Without pausing, she listed all those dates correctly.
When you experience something, your brain stores it as a short-term memory. You probably remember what you wore yesterday, but that memory will fade quickly. If the experience was meaningful, it may be stored indefinitely as a long-term memory: many people, for example, will clearly remember where and when they married even if this happened years ago. In people with HSAM, short-term memories are processed in the normal way, but researchers have found that the accuracy and details of these actually improve over time instead of going away.
To date, only around 100 people worldwide have been diagnosed with HSAM, and research on it is growing as scientists hope to explore the ways our brain processes memory. This has the potential of helping people with damaged memory, such as people who have amnesia or have had a brain injury. (Adapted from healthline.com)