Total Recall

This article was found in Psychology Today, August 2008, page 42-43. There was a 43 year old woman from New York that has a condition called hyperthymestic syndrome. She can recall every second of her entire life. She stated that her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly replaying. She talked about some memories being happy and very pleasant while others are haunting. She has had all sorts of tests performed and has been sent to several specialists. The doctors found that some areas in her brain were larger than normal. She hopes that some day doctors willbe able to treat or prevent memory loss by studying cases such as hers. In Chapter 6, recall is a memory process. To recall information, it must be retrieved from memory without much help. This woman does not use recognition, in which clues are used to retrieve information from memory. She has experienced episodic memory, which is memory for events in her past, and implicit memory, which she unintentionally recalls experiences of her past. These memories could cause her to have posttraumatic stress disorder in which she recalls traumatizing events from her past.