Naomi Lin - Week 1 - Types of memory
How good is your memory?
What is photographic memory? The idea that someone can remember everything they see is crazy. Currently, there is an ongoing debate on whether photographic memory truly exists, but there are forms of photographic memory that are proven to exist: hyperthymesia and eidetic memory.
Hyperthymesia, or highly superior autobiographical memory, allows people to remember every moment of their life. There are only 61 registered cases in the world at this moment. This ability can be a gift or a curse. When someone mentions a date, they can easily recall everything from that date, including the day of the week, what they ate for breakfast, and everything that happened that day. This memory is similar to a regular person recalling important events from the day before, but with them, it is every detail in extreme detail. This type of memory can be helpful in some cases, such as remembering to do everything they need, never losing anything, and remembering everything they learned. However, they also remember everything they would not want to remember. Anything scary will remain in their memory forever.
Eidetic memory, on the other hand, is the ability to visualize something in a very detailed manner immediately after seeing it for a short period of time. Unlike hyperthymesia, eidetic memory is short term memory, so they can only remember the picture for a short while. In addition, while hyperthymesia lasts for a person’s entire life, eidetic memory is more prevalent in children and extremely rare in adults. It can be helpful to remember scenes in movies and studying.
While both types are helpful, which type of memory would you like to have: hyperthymesia, eidetic, or normal memory?
Comments
Memory is a fascinating topic! If it were up to me, I would have an eidetic memory. To clarify, I believe that the ability to forget is one that is underappreciated. There are so many embarrassing memories I would rather not be able to recall in accurate detail. I see hyperthymesia as more of a curse; being able to relive a day several years ago just like it happened yesterday seems exhausting and leaves more room to remember traumatic experiences. On the other hand, an eidetic memory seems like it could come in handy in numerous situations. Say, for remembering stuff written on a whiteboard and then writing them down without having to look back at it again. Imagine how efficient studying would become with an eidetic memory!
-Angel Susantin
I remember reading a book series about a detective with photographic memory as a kid. I forgot the name of the series, but essentially this girl would solve mysteries with the help of her photographic memory. Looking back on it, this concept is extremely controversial. As you said, those who would not want to remember horrific images such as those in a crime scenes would be greatly troubled by their photographic memory. Thank you for allowing me to gain more insight on this concept.
I’ve always wondered how it could be to memorize everything with a photographic memory. Honestly, maybe not everything, though my memory sucks to be honest. As a child, I always thought of hyperthymesia as something that was almost like a superpower, but reading your post brings out the difficulties of having a photographic memory. It would hurt to remember every traumatic thing frame for frame too.
Your blog post was really interesting as it presented new information that I have never heard of or even thought of. When you first mentioned eidetic memory, I thought it was the best thing ever. Just imagine acing any history test as you have all the dates in your head. But as you mentioned, I surely wouldn’t want to remember something embarrassing that happened 5 years ago. Yes this may have consequences, but I want to go in the medical field and this kind of memory would be awesome. (I already remember all my embarrassing moments so it can’t be worse that this).
Sincerely,
Mrinmayee
I really liked reading your blog and I never thought that there could be varying types of photographic memory. Photographic memory as I thought was just basic and being able to register what you just saw. I think with Hyperthymia, it would be really helpful to memorize for a specific time period of a history test or to recall something when being interrogated on something. I think that it is rare, and I have heard that artistic children are more likely to have this unique skill. I do think I have more eidetic memory rather than hyperthymia as I am able to map out a place in my brain after seeing it for a bit which comes useful in not getting lost at a large location.
I think I saw a video about special people with hyperthymesia in psychology class! It was very interesting, I was fascinated by the fact that they didn’t even need time to think about a specific time or event. It’s as if their memory was boosted, or superhuman. Like you said, there are definitely a lot of benefits to hyperthymesia, you can remember a lot of things while normal people like me need an agenda to remember every assignment I need to do. Hyperthymesia would also be accurate when it comes to being an eyewitness to a critical event, such as witnessing a robbery or crime. I would still want normal memory, because I wouldn’t want to remember traumatizing or sad events.
Sincerely,
Faith Tong