Joey DeGrandis was about 10 years previous when his mother and father first realized there was one thing special about his memory. DeGrandis confirmed off his ability that 12 months at a magic show at college, wowing his viewers by correctly identifying the day of the week for any given date in recent history. And for the following 15 years or so, DeGrandis thought of his talent largely as a neat celebration trick: not something everybody could do, however not one thing with a lot significance, both. He would later discover that there are upsides-and surprising downsides-to having an virtually perfect memory. In 2010, when DeGrandis was 26, he saw a segment on 60 Minutes that includes a handful of people with the same ability: a situation now know as extremely superior autobiographical memory, Memory Wave Protocol or HSAM. "I was on a highway trip with a friend and ended up in California, and that i determined to go go to this physician who was studying these individuals who gave the impression to be like me," he says.

That physician was James McGaugh, a analysis professor in neurobiology and habits on the College of California, Irvine. Value, who would later turn out to be the first individual to be diagnosed with HSAM, had complained that her extraordinary memory was a burden. "Whenever I see a date flash on the television (or anyplace else for that matter) I mechanically go back to that day and remember the place I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on and on and on and on and on," she had written in an e-mail to McGaugh. By 2010, McGaugh and his colleagues had identified a few others with an uncanny ability to link calendar dates with occasions, both major information (just like the Challenger explosion or Princess Diana’s death) and mundane private details (like what they ate or what tune they heard on the radio). After showing on 60 Minutes, McGaugh acquired greater than 600 emails and phone calls from individuals-like DeGrandis-who thought they could also have this ability.

Ultimately, solely about 60 of these folks had been recognized by McGaugh and his workforce as truly having HSAM. Even within the years since, and even with loads of additional media protection, less than one hundred people have been diagnosed with the situation. DeGrandis, being one of those folks, now participates in ongoing studies by McGaugh and other memory researchers. He has loved meeting others with HSAM and has been struck by the issues they have in common. DeGrandis says he’s struggled from depression and anxiety, which he believes could also be linked to his inability to let certain things go. In attending to know different HSAM examine contributors, he’s discovered this is a standard theme. "I consider myself lucky in that I’ve had a fairly good life, so I have a number of comfortable, warm and fuzzy recollections I can assume back on," he says. Analysis additionally suggests that people with HSAM are likely to have obsessive traits.

"Some topics, like Price, focused on orderliness," McGaugh wrote in Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, which was updated this year to include a chapter on HSAM. "Some were germ-avoidant, and a few had hobbies that concerned intense, centered and sustained efforts," he added. It’s not recognized yet whether these traits are the results of their superior memory, or if both are brought on by another underlying issue. And while people with superior reminiscences have an uncanny talent for linking dates and events, they do occasionally make mistakes. "Their reminiscences are rather more detailed than ours, and final for an extended time frame, but they’re nonetheless not video recordings," says McGaugh. Folks with HSAM are additionally no better than normal in terms of remembering things like faces or telephone numbers. The power isn't the same as a so-known as photographic Memory Wave Protocol, which allows people to vividly recall details from a scene they’ve solely noticed for a short time

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Pub: 09 Dec 2025 19:01 UTC

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