October 14, 2024 • 42 mins
What would it be like to have a vastly better memory than you do now? What if you could remember what you were wearing on any day a dozen years ago? Or who you were with, what the conversation was, and whether it rained? Would it be a blessing or a curse? And if you’re forgetting a lot of your life, what might you do to better remember it? Join Eagleman with actress Marilu Henner, one of only dozens of people in the world diagnosed with highly superior autobiographical memory.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My fellow Inner Cosmonauts. With this episode, I am wrapping
up season two, and I am so excited for all
the new topics coming in season three, like longevity and
the self and dementia and so many more things about
the brain that will come to understand In the new season.
I can have monologues, and I can have guests, and
(00:20):
I'm introducing some new formats. Until then, I'm going to
be taking a short break until mid November, and in
the meantime playing some of our favorite episodes. What do
we find beautiful? What is intelligence? Why do brains become depressed?
And one of my favorites, why do we see the
dress differently? Thank you so much for being part of
(00:42):
Inner Cosmos, where we get to take a deep dive
together to better understand our lives, our choices, and our experiences.
I'll see you next month. What would it be like
to have a vastly better memory than you do now?
(01:03):
What if you could remember what you were wearing on
any day back twelve years ago, or who you were with,
or what that conversation was, or whether it rained, or
what you heard on the radio. Would this be a
blessing or a curse? Or could it be a balance
of the two. And if you're forgetting a lot of
(01:23):
your life, what might you do to better remember it?
Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a
neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we
dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some
of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode
(01:44):
is about memory, and specifically the most extraordinary capacities for
memory that we have witnessed on the planet. Now. It
happens that one of my favorite authors is Jorge Luis Borges,
and he wrote a short story in nineteen forty two
called Funes the Memorius. This is about a young man
(02:06):
who falls off his horse and hits his head, and
as a consequence of this accident, he develops an extraordinary
ability to remember everything. He can no longer forget anything.
Fus's memory becomes so vast that he can recall every
moment of his life and every nuance of what he perceives,
(02:27):
down to the exact positions of the clouds on any
given day. Now, obviously, keep in mind this is a
story of fiction. Borjes was a great writer of fantasy
and the genre that came to be known as magical realism.
So back to the story, this ability becomes, for Fuse
more of a burden than a gift. He finds himself
(02:49):
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and he becomes
incapable of thinking abstractly because he can remember all the
fine details of everything. He drowns in a world of
infinite detail. In story foodates can no longer even sleep,
as he recalls quote every crevice and every molding of
(03:12):
the various houses which surround him end quote. It's a
great fictional short story, and very creative. But there's a
debate in the literature about whether Borhaes made up the
story whole cloth, or whether instead he knew about a
Soviet neuropsychologist named Alexander Luria, because Lauria had for a
couple of decades at this point been studying a man
(03:36):
named Solomon Shrishevski. Now Sharyshevski came from a modest background
and you wouldn't think he'd become internationally known and immortalized.
But everything started in the mid nineteen twenties when Sharyshevski
was working as a journalist and attended a meeting and
afterwards his editor reprimanded him for not taking any notes,
(03:56):
and the editor was then astonished to find out that
shar Arshevski was able to recall every detail of the
meeting word for word, just from memory. So that led
Sharyshevski to get referred to Lauria, who is one of
the most prominent neuropsychologists of the time, and Lauria studied
Sheryshevski and his remarkable memory over the course of several decades.
(04:20):
Lauria eventually wrote a book called The Mind of Aneminist.
Now a neminist is a term for a person who
just has an untaxable memory. Because the key was that
Sharyshevski could memorize essentially anything. He could memorize whole strings
of random numbers, or long lists of nonsense words, or
(04:41):
really any kind of data presented in any kind of
random order. He had nearly perfect recall. So Lauria tested
him over time, and Sharyshevski could even recall these random
sequences years later, and this led Lauria to conclude that
Sharyshevski's memory was virtual, limitless, and this was of course
(05:02):
a very rare phenomenon. Now you may know that my
laboratory has studied synesthesia for many years. Synesthesia is a
harmless condition where people have a blending of the senses.
You can check out my books and episodes on that.
So it turns out that Sherishevski had a very rich
combination of synesthesias and this is what gave him his
(05:24):
memory abilities. For him, numbers would appear in colors and
shapes and with personalities, Sounds triggered textures, words evoked images
where they might feel heavy or light. Here's an example
of Sharyshevski's internal experience as he described it. Quote, take
(05:47):
the number one. This is a proud, well built man.
Two is a high spirited woman. Three is a gloomy person.
Six is a man with a swollen foot. Seven is
a man with a mustache. Eight is a very stout woman,
and so on and all. This sensory overlap allowed him
(06:08):
to store information in a rich multisensory format, which in
turn enhanced his recollection. So if you're not synesthetic, just
think about your own examples of how a second sense
helps you with recall. So, for example, you might have
a hard time memorizing a poem. But if it's put
(06:28):
to music, then we call that lyrics, and you memorize
all the words perfectly because now you have some other
data stream the music that you can tie it to.
So what Schershevski had was one example of an extraordinary
memory where he could memorize these random lists. But more
recently in history, there's been the discovery of another type
(06:50):
of off the charts memory. And this began in two
thousand and six when my colleagues at U SEE Irvine
came in contact with a very special woman named Jill.
Jill can recite details of every day of her life
from the time she was about fourteen years old that
she does this in great detail. Her specialty is in
(07:11):
autobiographical memory. That means memory about your own life, like
what you did and who you were with, and what
you were and what happened to you. This is called
autobiographical memory. It's not about random chess positions or the
details of the history of Cambodia. It's about you and
what has happened in your life. Now, if you are
(07:34):
like most human beings, your autobiographical memory is reasonably good,
but it's not that good. You can't really remember what
you were wearing on October fifth, twenty seventeen, or what
you heard on the radio on April twenty first of
two thousand and nine, and so on, because generally speaking,
the brain is tuned to drop as many details as
(07:56):
it can if they're not highly important. In other words,
forgetting is often as important as remembering. But for Jill Price,
her autobiographical memory was way, way, way above average, so
the researchers termed her condition hyperthymesia. But since people thought
that sounded something like a disease, they later termed it
(08:19):
highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM for highly superior autobiographical memory. Now,
most of us can remember significant events in our lives,
like the birth of a child, or a graduation or
a nice vacation, but those memories eventually fade where they blur,
(08:39):
where they become harder to pull up details as time passes.
But for a person with h SAM, they have the
ability to recall nearly every day of their lives with
extraordinary clarity. They can tell you what they were doing
on some random Tuesday fifteen years ago, down to the weather,
the clothes they were wearing, even the smallest details of
(09:01):
conversations they had. Their memories aren't just stored, they're accessible
on demand with incredible richness. Maybe you have a reasonably
good memory, but almost certainly you can't remember what the
weather was like on October fifth, twenty nineteen, or precisely
what you chose out of your closet on that day,
and whether it rained or not, what piece of news
(09:22):
you've heard on the radio that day. But some people can.
Now this highly superior autobiographical memory is very rare as
right now, there's only been about one hundred people who
have been diagnosed with h SAM, And so I wanted
to find someone one of these rare people with h
SAM who I could talk to about this for the show.
(09:43):
And it turns out that one person who has this
is also someone you might have heard of for a
different reason. She's a famous actor, and that is Mary
Lou Henner. You may know that Mary Lou became a
well known stage actor in nineteen seventy one, appearing in
the the original production of the musical Grease with John
Travolta on stage, and then in seventy seven she began
(10:06):
in the movies, and in nineteen seventy eight she had
her breakthrough role on the television sitcom Taxi, where she
played a single mother who was working as a cabby,
and she got several Golden Globe nominations for that. She
later had co starring roles in a number of films
through the eighties nineties, and she continues to appear on
screen through the present day. Now, most of you will
(10:26):
recognize her face. But the thing that not everyone knows
about Mary Lou is that she is one of these
one hundred people. She has an extraordinary autobiographical memory, remembering
every day of her life. So here's my interview with
Mary Lou Henner. So, Mary Lou, we all assume that
(10:50):
everyone is having the same experience on the inside that
we are, but you, at this point in your life,
know that most people have a different sort of memory
than you do. So, so can you tell us what
is it like to have a memory like yours? What
is your experience?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, from the time I was six years old, everybody
in my sphere, my family, friends who came over, everybody
knew I had something unusual. Now, I was one of
six children, and you know, when you're one of six,
you look for anything that makes you a little bit different.
From your brothers and sisters, and so I was just
always called the memory kid, memory girl. I was called Univac,
(11:28):
which was an old computer. People would say, well tell
it to Mary Lucas, Sho'll remember it. So I was
clan of the family historian. And at six years old,
I started falling asleep at night plan of doing what
I call time travel. You know, I would think what
did I do when I was exactly all week ago,
two weeks ago, when I was this day in kindergarten,
(11:48):
when I was my little brother's aid, And it was
something that I became very good at doing. Now there
is no doubt in my mind that I was born
with something unusual. You know, They've wired me, put me
through an MRI. They took three hundred measurements of my brain.
They found nine areas ten times larger than the normal rain.
But it was definitely something that was that was nurture
(12:10):
as well. So there was nature and nurture because I
just loved having this. It was so it was so
unusual and it was kind of fun. And you know,
people would say you're such a little lo at all
and they'd say, no, I'm a remember it all, you know.
So It was kind of my claim to fain give.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Us an example of the kind of thing that you
would remember as a kid.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I remember like every day in school where I could remember,
you know, things People would come over and I would
tell them the last time they were at my house
with my parents, or what they were wearing or things
like that, you know. So it was it was just
memory work. It was just I would never forget anything.
And so I knew it was within my family. I
(12:50):
knew it was unusual, and everybody in my family has
a great memory. But I had this date thing I had,
you know, just the specificity of what I remembered was
so intense. And so what happened was my sphere got bigger,
and I realized, well, my friends don't have this either,
you know. And finally, when I was around eighteen years old,
a friend of mine said to me, when are you
going to realize that nobody else has this crazy memory.
(13:13):
So people in college knew that I had something unusual.
And in fact, I'm on my third and final husband.
But we knew each other in college, went to University
of Chicago. He was my roommate's boyfriend, but he knew
that I had this unusual memory, and so we make
jokes about it. Now. We always says, well, when you're
eighteen and you remember, you know, if you remember your life,
(13:36):
that doesn't seem down unusual. So he didn't like, let
onto the whole idea of it as much as he
has now that we spent twenty one years together.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So let me drill down on this. So you you
remember things that are autobiographical part of your life stories.
And this person came over. I had this conversation. I
heard this on the radio. I was wearing this, But
what about other things? Like if I gave you a
long list of nonsense words.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Let me go back to the story and then that'll
answer some of your questions. So I had this unusual
autobiographical memory. And I was a great student. I went
to the University of Chicago. I was named Outstanding Teenager
of Illinois. I were scholarships, so I was really quite
the student, and people who knew me knew that I
(14:24):
had this unusual memory. So when a story came up
for Leslie Stall, who was a friend of mine because
I worked with her husband, Aaron Latham, I'm a movie
perfect she called me and she said, I want you
to have lunch with me. So we had lunch together
September twenty in two thousand and six. It was a Wednesday.
We went to the slune and she's naming, Oh, when
(14:44):
did we meet? When did we do this? Blah blah blah,
and then her her producer said oh. She mentioned that
she had gotten married on June the fifteenth of nineteen,
nineteen ninety eight, and I said, oh, my god, that's
so unusual. Why did you get married out on Monday?
And she was like, oh, she is it. I said,
what's going on with you guys? She said, well, we've
been offered a story at sixty minutes about a woman
(15:06):
by the name of Jill Price who came to doctor
Legau and she had a very unusual memory and she
never forgot anything. So they did all this testing on
her and they offered the story to sixteen minutes and
I told him, forget it. My friend, it's not that unusual.
My friend married a vender has the exact same memory.
So that was in two thousand and six, and then
(15:29):
in two thousand and nine, Leslie callin. She said, oh,
because they gave the story to Primetime Live in Diamond Sawyer.
So in two thousand and nine, Leslie called and she said,
she said, I want you to be tested. It's very unusual.
They have found very few other people, so we're going
to have you tested on camera. And on camera they
tested me. They didn't use it all, but they tested
(15:51):
me for everything, sequencing, everything that you're talking about. The
list of items. They had me look at something for
fifteen second and then identify what corner was it. They
had me look at a face with all any hair
or you couldn't even tell what gender it was, and
they told me names associated with it. I scored high
on everything pretty much, but I really of course the
(16:14):
autobiographical stuff. I answered over five hundred questions within the day,
and then they did their wiring and asking questions and
so how it's fired up and stuff. So yeah, so
it's like it's a different part of the brain than
is the sequencing or anything like that. But I did still,
especially as an actress, I trained myself to be sort
(16:36):
of like a script supervisor. I mean, I'm sort of
a frustrated script supervisor where I can notice something's off
or where something is. In fact, they showed us a
fifteen minute movie and then asked us specific questions that
you might not notice an issue or a script supervisor
or somebody with HSAM. So yeah, there were a lot
of different types of testing that went on that day.
(16:57):
Most people, if you ask them, remember or eight to
eleven events within any given year, and people with h
SAM we remember two hundred to three hundred and sixty five.
The criteria cut off was two hundred all though I
scored in ninety nine percent off for three sixty five
because I can do a whole year. But you know,
it's like, it's like if people try to remember what
(17:19):
their year was like, they can probably come up with
eight to eleven and that's all, which is insane to me,
you know, because there's somebody who never loses anything. It's like,
I mean, except my assins or something key. So I
mean that I, as an actress, have trained enough to
be able to look at a script a couple times
and have it down. But I'll also remember where I
was when I read the script, what the character's life
(17:41):
reminds me of in my own life, you know, what
the weather was like, things like that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So give us an example. Let's say it shows October fifth,
two thousand and nine. Are you able to.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, Yeah, that was in one day.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And do you remember what you were doing that day?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah? Of course, I was at a rehearsal for one
of my son's shows. We were putting on a little
play at there and he was doing he was doing
Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory. So there was a
rehearsal that day and I did all the hair and
makeup from my chid's school. Don't score warning.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, do you remember what you were wearing that day?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yes, I was wearing like a navy blue shirt with jeans. Now,
to me, everyone has something they remember, especially well, it's
what I call their primary track. It's like in the
jigsaw puzzle of your life, what are your hard edged
pieces by which you can interlock all your other memories too?
(18:50):
And for some people it's places they live, places they worked.
It's sports is a huge one. For guys, they might
forget their anniversary, but remember how many chicken wings they
had that day and what the score was. And also
you know places that people's children. I've heard everything from
food to clothes to baths. There was a guy who
(19:12):
was obsessed with baths and new light fag information. So
that's called your primary trap and the jigsaw puzzle of
your life. What are the hardage pieces by which you
can inter other memories. Then everyone I believe has a
dominant sense. Everyone is a site cell, touch taste or
smell person. And if you can figure out what you
(19:33):
are site cell, touch taste or smell, you can figure
out how you receive and you cross connected with your
primary trap. You can figure out how you receive, retain,
and then retrieve memories. Because we just happen to have
an extraordinary retrieval system. Everything you have been through in
your life is on your emotional hard drive, and it
(19:56):
makes you behave in certain ways. So you might walk
into a room go like, oh my god, this smells
like my grandmother's or wow, that song on the radio
that reminds me this. Do you know what I mean?
So you people do this all day long. But people
with ASAM we remember everything in first person, in our
bodies looking out. You know, if I asked you, if
I said to you when you woke up this morning,
(20:18):
describe your warning, you'd probably be in first person and
talking about it, and you could say, oh, I got
to a bathroom or make coffee, or I walk my
dog or whatever but if I asked you, like three
weeks ago, you probably would be a third person. Most
people when they go back three weeks or beyond, they're
in third person. I gave a whole speech to all
(20:40):
these three hundred doctors in a cedar siginer, and nobody
had ever described the things that I'm describing from the
inside out. Now, I also believe that memory comes to
us in four different ways, what I call horizontally, vertically, mushrewingly,
or sporadically. So if I said to you, hey, how
(21:01):
is that wedding you went to a couple of weeks ago,
and you said, oh, man, it was brave. Friday night,
we went to the bar, we all had a drink,
there was a rehearsal dinner, we had a drink. The
next morning, I got up in jog and you start
telling me the whole weekend, sort of a linear horizontal,
you know, kind of a narrative way. If I said
to you, that would be a horizontal him. But I
said how is the wedding? And you said, oh, my
(21:22):
cousin and I got into a whole discussion at the wedding,
and you could probably just a pinpoint, a specific on
a line and go deep into a memory. So that's
kind of like a vertical memory. And if I said,
how is that wedding? And you said, oh, my gosh,
there was somebody I met. We decided to have lunch.
Two weeks later we're going to do a project together.
(21:43):
That's like a mushrooming memory. That means it came out
of the event I asked you about. But if mushrooms
somewhere else. And then if I said to you, oh,
how is that wedding and you said, oh my god,
there was a guy there who looked like when my
old boss, and I was instantly back and when I
off is thinking about what a jerk this guy was
because he took credit for my work. So that's a
(22:04):
sporadic memory. So all day long, we do memory like that,
especially people of age Sam, And you can ask about
some specific day and it can be told in a
linear horizontal way, or a vertical way, or a mushrooming way,
or a sporadic way, do you know what I mean. Yeah,
So we go all over, so you have to not
think the way it happens differently for us. It just
(22:27):
is And it's not even like we're all consistent but
this is how it happens for me.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
How far back does it go for you? What's your
earliest memory being baptized?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So I was like three weeks old, yeah, and you
know and say, oh, it was a day. I just
remember the feeling. I remember, you know, just the whiteness.
I remember things like that. I didn't have words yet,
but I can go way back.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And is that generally true that you can remember things
from when you were one or two?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Oh? Yeah, oh wow, yeah. I mean it's much more
visual and it has a language to it for later on.
You know, what made you interest in neuroscience?
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Oh, I've been you know, my father was a psychiatrist
and my mother was a biology teacher, and so it
was natural enough. I ended up becoming a writer first,
and then I went to neuroscience. So I'm very interested
in the human condition and all the different ways of
getting there. So let me ask you this. We can
never step outside of our own experience of the world.
(23:26):
But do you feel like your highly superior autobiographical memory
is something that's good or bad or you feel mixed
feelings about it?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
People always say is it a blessing or a curse?
And my stock answer is it's always a blessing for me,
which is absolutely one hundred percent. Tu Now, for one
second did I think this was a curse. Not the
one second in my life. But I always say, but
it's a curse for my husband, which is probably why
I'm on my third and final because you know, like
(23:56):
we just had to fight two days ago, and he
said something and you know, in March of twenty twenty two,
and I went, no, it didn't it had been on No, Michael,
it had been on September the twenty third of twenty
twenty two. You know that I was wearing this you
were talking about. He was like, well, you know, and
then it became this. I said. It's not like I
(24:16):
have to be right. I just believe in accuracy. And
if you're talking about something that happened in this season,
you're in the wrong season, you know. But it's funny
because yeah, so he but he always says, what man
ever loses an argument against his wife anyway, at least
he has excuse because I sech an individual memory, you know.
But no, it's always been it's always been a blessing
(24:38):
for me. Here here's the thing, as you know, and
doctor Rabaut proved this. Doctor James mcgobre does the whole study.
He memories tied to adrenaline. So people are going to
remember the highs like getting married, having a baby, you know,
a promotion at work, a fabulous something or other, buying
(24:59):
a house, whatever, and they're also going to remember the lows,
whether it's you know, whether they've been embarrassed or a
breakup or a death of someone. You know. So those
highs and lows are being recorded constantly by us people
with h SAM. We're lucky enough to have all those
middle of the road kind of our tone moments recorded
(25:20):
and kept and talked about, you know, I mean that,
and they're available to us. So I'm always trying to
help people. You know, I don't have to show off
my memory anymore. It's just it's the way it is.
People stop me at the airport and until throw dates
at me and stuff I means hilarious. And the thing
is that's it's really you know, I'm what I'm trying
(25:42):
to do is I'm trying to help people bring back
those little summers nights, you know, the little fabric of
their lives kind of thing, things that they may have
forgotten because they didn't get recorded on those high tone
or low tone scales.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, we write down everything that's emotionally sales. That's really
what what memory is for, is to write things down
so that we can better plan for the future. That's
why we have memory.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Well, I don't say if all you do is you
wake up, you live your life, you turn off the light,
you go to sleep, you wake up, you live your life,
you turn off the light, you go to sleep, and
nothing has moved forward, well then what does it all mean?
So by developing a better autobiographical memory, you are able.
(26:30):
It's actually your strongest line of defense against meaninglessness that
you have because you are able to bring information from
your past to your present and let it inform a
better future. I work with people all the time on memory.
I work with people who have like a roadblock somehow
and trying to get them past a roadblock, or women
(26:52):
who pick the same kind of guy all the time
because they're not noticing the red flags they're wind to them,
you know. So I mean I do one tree with people.
One of the things I love to do the most
is for like school auctions or any kind of you know,
any kind of option. I will option my self off
as a memory person who will take people back and
(27:14):
do memory sessions with them. And it's really farm, it's
really amazing what happens in a couple hour hours.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Are you able to help other people improve their memories?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Oh yeah all the time. I might might not be
able to give them h sam, but you have. But
people have gotten so lazy, especially because everything is on
the you know, on their phones, and so we just
throw it there. I mean yeah. I always say, if
let's say you're a visual person, you know, you know
that your dominant sentenced visual well, during the day, during
(27:44):
your day, at some point, take the picture of the day. Okay,
just take a picture of the day and put it away.
And then at the end of the month, if you've
taken thirty pictures, you think like, oh, what were some
of those pictures? And see how many you can bring
forward again, because it's really a muscle, you know. And
the thing is, if you're only remembering eight to eleven
events within any given year, which is just so sad
(28:05):
and pathetic to me, I feel like, if you can
bring three forward and carry them with you, you'll have
at least thirty six in the first year that you
do it and maybe the following year you'll have even more,
you know, seventy two or something. You know. So, yeah,
I'm always helping people with their memories.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Some of my research has to do with how long
we think something has lasted, what the duration of let's say,
your past year has been. And what my research has
pointed to is that the more memory you have, the
longer things seem to have lasted. And so if you
can only draw on eight to eleven things, then it
seems like, wow, the year disappeared. What do you feel
(28:46):
like you have a different experience than other people in
terms of how long your life has been going on
or the past year was or the past month.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, well sure, I mean because I you know, I
mean sometimes I'll put on you know, I'll listen on
my soul and I'll do like a you know, a
mile two or three walk, a three mile walk or something,
and I'll just pick an alibum or you know, usually
like that, and I'll go through every date of the
year that that album came out, things like that. You know.
(29:14):
It's just it's I love the exercise of it, and
I love well, I love being able to do it,
and it's like fun and refreshing. There's always something when
I go through it where I go like, oh, yeah,
you know what I'm gonna call that person? Or damn,
where is that blouse? You know? Or oh there's you know,
things like that, and it's just there's always something that's
(29:35):
revealed to me like oh, yes, that's why I had
this reaction later, you know, things like that.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's probably a difficult question to answer, but what fraction
of your time do you suppose you spend in uh,
in reminiscence.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Probably not that much, not as much as people think.
It's happens so quickly for me. And it's not like
it's not like oh I can't wait too you know,
it's not like that at all. I mean I could
be driving in the car talking mysel and I'll hevor
a song and I'll think about, you know, like oh,
I remember the last summer the first time I for
what this remaints. But it's it happens so quickly. It's
(30:08):
not like I probably spend laice of time because it's faster.
I just have a better computer system, do you know
what I mean? Yeah, I probably well last time because
I know where things are and I can always access them.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Do you know what synesthesia is?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, I don't have that.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Oh okay, interesting, there's no So for example, thinking about
things spatially, if you think about the months or things
like that or years, do you have any spatial location
to that.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, I mean, you know, i'd see things or I
feel things. Let's say, on like a timeline, so it
is like from my timeline, you know, let's say this
is all from your perspective. This would be January and
this would be December, let's say. But it scrolls quickly,
you know, it doesn't urger page flip. It's almost like
(30:56):
on a live and I can stop it and the
videos for the video from each day can show up
or not. You know. Sometimes things it's like developing a picture.
Some things take longer than others, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
By the way, that is a form of synesthesia called
spatial sequence synesthesia.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, but it sounds like I and I definitely think
like certain days or certain numbers in general have a
masculine or feminine stuff like that. But I don't have
the smell thing. I don't haven't, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
It's like, yeah, there are many different forms of synesesia,
but it sounds it sounds like you definitely have special
sequence synesthesia.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I have a question. Do you ever find that some
of your memories are inaccurate? Do you have ways of.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Testing literally self correct? It's like unbelievable, Like I'll say
something happened out a blubb of them. It's like Rura,
you will oh like no, be like something self correct immediately.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And does your remembory feel like a constant stream of
information or do you turn it off and not think
about it?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
No? I mean, first of all, I've done seventy eight
movies in my lifetime, two huge television series, seven Broadway shows.
I've bringing ten books, So I don't think I you know,
I'm not sitting talking holy about memory or only you
know and it brings two fabulous sons and so you know,
(32:31):
it's not like this is such a preoccupation of marine.
I love talking about it. I love helping other people.
I love describing it and trying to get people to
sort of see what I see in their own lives. Possibly,
you know, when people come to me go, oh my
granddaughter has this or oh my son has this, I'll
go get them into acting class. If you're really troubled
(32:52):
by it, because as an actor, you will celebrate being
able to access your emotional your emotional drive. You know.
It's like we used to do a sense memory exercise
in class, talk about to sits on touch, taste, smell.
You'd have to bring in an object or a scent
(33:14):
or a piece of music or or you know, we
just one for each sense and people would say, okay.
The teacher would say, okay, go back in the memory.
And instantly I could cry, if you go, how'd you
get there so fast? And I'd say, how could you
not if that's what you're thinking of some painful memory?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I teach classes and memory live on it all over
the country. And one of the things that I do
is I have people bring in a turning point memory
or object and talk about it, you know, and it's like,
where was the fork in the road where you went
this way instead of going that way? Or what's that impact?
And you can't imagine the things people bring in and
(33:54):
talk how they talk about the fork in the road,
you know, how they talk about that turning point. And
people tell the most unbelievable stories, and you see the
life changing things happen over the course of the class
because people have gone back and processed it. Because you know,
I'm always saying, if you let memories become emotional boogeymen,
(34:19):
then they control you. But if you process them, it's
like how many times can you see a scary movie
without going Okay, Now I can see the camera was
at that angle when there's probably a craft service table
and on the corn. You know where you start processing
it different and you don't. It doesn't have quite the
same impact. I mean, I'm making a joke about being
on a set, but it's like it doesn't have the
same impact on your life when you process it. Otherwise
(34:41):
it's far away.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
So do you feel like you process memories more, you've
gone through them, you've reviewed them more.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well, Yeah, And I also went into therapy at a
very young age because my father had just passed away
and I was going through a lot of life changes.
So but I mean, I know I could help my
family that way. But yeah, I mean, I've never been
somebody who backed away from self reflection because it's like
verre and available to play with anytime. I'm well. One
(35:10):
of the things I'm always telling people to do because
we have gotten lazy, you know, with our smirkles and stuff.
Is at night, when you're brushing your teeth, it's just
supposed to do it for true med Just scroll through
your day, just see what was maybe worth remembering from
your day, because that second time through might steer it
in a little more indelibly, you know, because we just
(35:31):
we walk around with such a fog. People are in
a fond these dayscase they paying no attention to anything
that's not on their own, and it's kind of scary.
We're not living our lives.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Oh I love that. Great. I'm going to do that
tonight and every night from now on.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Do it tonight.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Terrific.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Well, we must be an auditory person. That's why you've
got a podcast and all that. Right, very auditory, I
guess I am. I listen to most of my books
now in audible.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
So if you're very auditory, then you should, you know,
do a sound check at some point during the day
and write it down somewhere and then later on at
the end of the lefth go like, how many of
my little cell checks? Can I actually remember where was
I on this day or that day? Because we've just
gotten so lazy.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, that's right. And we all carry around our exo
brains now in our cell phones, and so we uh
we put stuff off to our devices.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
People don't even remember their own phone numbers, you know,
or their best friends phone member. And as kids, we
can you know, we always an were our phone numbers.
I did our seminar once with three hundred people, and
I said to them, how there's no memories? And I said,
how many of you remember your freshman in high school schedule?
And the little girl raised her hand and I said,
hold you. She said, fifteen? Were you battering omber? That
(36:41):
was last year? I said, what about the rest of you?
Nobody remembered. I said, okay, I'm going to give you
some prompting questions, because it's about prompting sometimes, And so
within within fifteen minutes, every single person except for to me,
just didn't want to play. Every single person had their
freshman in high school schedule.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
What's an example of a prompting question?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
What rugby question would be? How did you get to school?
Do you remember what your first period was, what was
your lunchroom situation? Who'd you sit with? Did you have sports? After?
You know? You just go through like a list of questions,
and it just starts to build in and it's like
what class were you most hired or somebody said mac
I said, I bet that was your lunch. That was
(37:21):
right after lunch. Yeah, but you know, and you just
start prompting and then things be one another.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That was the actor Mary Lou Henner, who has highly
superior autobiographical memory. So in answer to the question that
we started with, which is whether everyone has the same
level of memory, the answers clearly know. I want to
wrap up by returning to two points. The first is
this question of whether a memory like this is a
(37:52):
good thing or a bad thing. I asked Mary Lou
what she thought of this, and she said it was
unambiguously good. But I just want to note that we
each live in our own heads, and you can never
really run a control experiment. Would you be happier or
less happy if you had a different memory, better or
worse than what you have now? We can each speculate,
(38:13):
but we can't really know. I will say that other
people with h sam, like Jill Price what I mentioned before,
she feels pretty clearly the opposite of Mary Lou. She
feels like it is a burden and let's return to
the Jorge Luis Borges story. Funes the memorious Borhes uses
the character to suggest that while perfect memory might seem desirable,
(38:36):
it comes at a cost. The character is cast down
in a flood of memory and loses an ability to
generalize or abstract or find appropriate meaning in the world
that has too many details. Now, again, that was a
fiction author's interpretation, But maybe fictional stories are as close
as we ever come to running a control experiment on
(38:59):
our own line. It is the case that Jill Price,
the real woman who can Never Forget, has stated that
she liked the character of Fuones is cursed by her
inability to forget. Whatever the case, all this points to
the possibility that forgetting is actually a useful thing. It
points to the possibility that natural selection has tuned the
(39:22):
amount we remember and don't remember to be roughly optimal,
at least in the environments in which humans evolved over
the past several million years. It at least encourages us
to consider that forgetting is an essential feature of memory,
rather than a flaw. Our brains are constantly bombarded with
(39:42):
information every site and sound and experience we have, and
most of it if it's not emotionally salient, really doesn't matter,
like where I parked my car at the airport in
twenty nineteen. As the writer Honora de Balzac said, memories
beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable. However,
(40:06):
on the flip side, I was moved and inspired by
what Mary Luce said about the importance of putting some
effort into remembering our lives. After all this, I've published
and argued in other episodes the apparent duration of your life,
In other words, how long you think it's been since
last summer, or last year or last decade. This depends
on how much memory you can draw upon, And what
(40:30):
tends to happen to us as we get older is
that we lay down less and less new memory, and
so we end up thinking, gosh, where did this year go?
We're already pulling up to the end of a new year,
and it feels like this one went by in the
blink of an eye. But if we have rich memories
that we can draw on from the year, then we think, oh, well,
(40:51):
let's see, there was this event, and oh and then
there was that, and there was that, and the whole
thing doesn't seem like it disappeared in a blink anymore.
One of the most important things from the point of
view of brain plasticity is to keep your brain well
exercised and not falling into routine. And one of the
things that I recommended in a different episode is that
when you brush your teeth, you should try it with
(41:13):
your other hand, because that gets your brain out of
its routine and forces it to confront a little novelty.
So I loved Mary Lou's suggestion about thinking through your
day while you brush your teeth and really writing down
mentally what you did so tonight and hereafter, I would
like to suggest that you brush your teeth with your
other hand while recounting your day from beginning to end.
(41:38):
This will not only kick your brain off its natural
path of least resistance, but it will also lock down
a little more memory in your life. I'm not telling
you here how to live longer. Instead, I'm suggesting how
to make it seem as though you have lived longer
by internally writing down more of your health human journey
(42:01):
so that you have more of its richness to draw from.
Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information
and to find further reading, Send me an email at
podcasts at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and
check out on Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for
videos of each episode and to leave comments until next time.
(42:24):
I'm David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos
My fellow Inner Cosmonauts. With this episode, I am wrapping
up season two, and I am so excited for all
the new topics coming in season three, like longevity and
the self and dementia and so many more things about
the brain that will come to understand In the new season.
I can have monologues, and I can have guests, and
(00:20):
I'm introducing some new formats. Until then, I'm going to
be taking a short break until mid November, and in
the meantime playing some of our favorite episodes. What do
we find beautiful? What is intelligence? Why do brains become depressed?
And one of my favorites, why do we see the
dress differently? Thank you so much for being part of
(00:42):
Inner Cosmos, where we get to take a deep dive
together to better understand our lives, our choices, and our experiences.
I'll see you next month. What would it be like
to have a vastly better memory than you do now?
(01:03):
What if you could remember what you were wearing on
any day back twelve years ago, or who you were with,
or what that conversation was, or whether it rained, or
what you heard on the radio. Would this be a
blessing or a curse? Or could it be a balance
of the two. And if you're forgetting a lot of
(01:23):
your life, what might you do to better remember it?
Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a
neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we
dive deeply into our three pound universe to uncover some
of the most surprising aspects of our lives. Today's episode
(01:44):
is about memory, and specifically the most extraordinary capacities for
memory that we have witnessed on the planet. Now. It
happens that one of my favorite authors is Jorge Luis Borges,
and he wrote a short story in nineteen forty two
called Funes the Memorius. This is about a young man
(02:06):
who falls off his horse and hits his head, and
as a consequence of this accident, he develops an extraordinary
ability to remember everything. He can no longer forget anything.
Fus's memory becomes so vast that he can recall every
moment of his life and every nuance of what he perceives,
(02:27):
down to the exact positions of the clouds on any
given day. Now, obviously, keep in mind this is a
story of fiction. Borjes was a great writer of fantasy
and the genre that came to be known as magical realism.
So back to the story, this ability becomes, for Fuse
more of a burden than a gift. He finds himself
(02:49):
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and he becomes
incapable of thinking abstractly because he can remember all the
fine details of everything. He drowns in a world of
infinite detail. In story foodates can no longer even sleep,
as he recalls quote every crevice and every molding of
(03:12):
the various houses which surround him end quote. It's a
great fictional short story, and very creative. But there's a
debate in the literature about whether Borhaes made up the
story whole cloth, or whether instead he knew about a
Soviet neuropsychologist named Alexander Luria, because Lauria had for a
couple of decades at this point been studying a man
(03:36):
named Solomon Shrishevski. Now Sharyshevski came from a modest background
and you wouldn't think he'd become internationally known and immortalized.
But everything started in the mid nineteen twenties when Sharyshevski
was working as a journalist and attended a meeting and
afterwards his editor reprimanded him for not taking any notes,
(03:56):
and the editor was then astonished to find out that
shar Arshevski was able to recall every detail of the
meeting word for word, just from memory. So that led
Sharyshevski to get referred to Lauria, who is one of
the most prominent neuropsychologists of the time, and Lauria studied
Sheryshevski and his remarkable memory over the course of several decades.
(04:20):
Lauria eventually wrote a book called The Mind of Aneminist.
Now a neminist is a term for a person who
just has an untaxable memory. Because the key was that
Sharyshevski could memorize essentially anything. He could memorize whole strings
of random numbers, or long lists of nonsense words, or
(04:41):
really any kind of data presented in any kind of
random order. He had nearly perfect recall. So Lauria tested
him over time, and Sharyshevski could even recall these random
sequences years later, and this led Lauria to conclude that
Sharyshevski's memory was virtual, limitless, and this was of course
(05:02):
a very rare phenomenon. Now you may know that my
laboratory has studied synesthesia for many years. Synesthesia is a
harmless condition where people have a blending of the senses.
You can check out my books and episodes on that.
So it turns out that Sherishevski had a very rich
combination of synesthesias and this is what gave him his
(05:24):
memory abilities. For him, numbers would appear in colors and
shapes and with personalities, Sounds triggered textures, words evoked images
where they might feel heavy or light. Here's an example
of Sharyshevski's internal experience as he described it. Quote, take
(05:47):
the number one. This is a proud, well built man.
Two is a high spirited woman. Three is a gloomy person.
Six is a man with a swollen foot. Seven is
a man with a mustache. Eight is a very stout woman,
and so on and all. This sensory overlap allowed him
(06:08):
to store information in a rich multisensory format, which in
turn enhanced his recollection. So if you're not synesthetic, just
think about your own examples of how a second sense
helps you with recall. So, for example, you might have
a hard time memorizing a poem. But if it's put
(06:28):
to music, then we call that lyrics, and you memorize
all the words perfectly because now you have some other
data stream the music that you can tie it to.
So what Schershevski had was one example of an extraordinary
memory where he could memorize these random lists. But more
recently in history, there's been the discovery of another type
(06:50):
of off the charts memory. And this began in two
thousand and six when my colleagues at U SEE Irvine
came in contact with a very special woman named Jill.
Jill can recite details of every day of her life
from the time she was about fourteen years old that
she does this in great detail. Her specialty is in
(07:11):
autobiographical memory. That means memory about your own life, like
what you did and who you were with, and what
you were and what happened to you. This is called
autobiographical memory. It's not about random chess positions or the
details of the history of Cambodia. It's about you and
what has happened in your life. Now, if you are
(07:34):
like most human beings, your autobiographical memory is reasonably good,
but it's not that good. You can't really remember what
you were wearing on October fifth, twenty seventeen, or what
you heard on the radio on April twenty first of
two thousand and nine, and so on, because generally speaking,
the brain is tuned to drop as many details as
(07:56):
it can if they're not highly important. In other words,
forgetting is often as important as remembering. But for Jill Price,
her autobiographical memory was way, way, way above average, so
the researchers termed her condition hyperthymesia. But since people thought
that sounded something like a disease, they later termed it
(08:19):
highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM for highly superior autobiographical memory. Now,
most of us can remember significant events in our lives,
like the birth of a child, or a graduation or
a nice vacation, but those memories eventually fade where they blur,
(08:39):
where they become harder to pull up details as time passes.
But for a person with h SAM, they have the
ability to recall nearly every day of their lives with
extraordinary clarity. They can tell you what they were doing
on some random Tuesday fifteen years ago, down to the weather,
the clothes they were wearing, even the smallest details of
(09:01):
conversations they had. Their memories aren't just stored, they're accessible
on demand with incredible richness. Maybe you have a reasonably
good memory, but almost certainly you can't remember what the
weather was like on October fifth, twenty nineteen, or precisely
what you chose out of your closet on that day,
and whether it rained or not, what piece of news
(09:22):
you've heard on the radio that day. But some people can.
Now this highly superior autobiographical memory is very rare as
right now, there's only been about one hundred people who
have been diagnosed with h SAM, And so I wanted
to find someone one of these rare people with h
SAM who I could talk to about this for the show.
(09:43):
And it turns out that one person who has this
is also someone you might have heard of for a
different reason. She's a famous actor, and that is Mary
Lou Henner. You may know that Mary Lou became a
well known stage actor in nineteen seventy one, appearing in
the the original production of the musical Grease with John
Travolta on stage, and then in seventy seven she began
(10:06):
in the movies, and in nineteen seventy eight she had
her breakthrough role on the television sitcom Taxi, where she
played a single mother who was working as a cabby,
and she got several Golden Globe nominations for that. She
later had co starring roles in a number of films
through the eighties nineties, and she continues to appear on
screen through the present day. Now, most of you will
(10:26):
recognize her face. But the thing that not everyone knows
about Mary Lou is that she is one of these
one hundred people. She has an extraordinary autobiographical memory, remembering
every day of her life. So here's my interview with
Mary Lou Henner. So, Mary Lou, we all assume that
(10:50):
everyone is having the same experience on the inside that
we are, but you, at this point in your life,
know that most people have a different sort of memory
than you do. So, so can you tell us what
is it like to have a memory like yours? What
is your experience?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, from the time I was six years old, everybody
in my sphere, my family, friends who came over, everybody
knew I had something unusual. Now, I was one of
six children, and you know, when you're one of six,
you look for anything that makes you a little bit different.
From your brothers and sisters, and so I was just
always called the memory kid, memory girl. I was called Univac,
(11:28):
which was an old computer. People would say, well tell
it to Mary Lucas, Sho'll remember it. So I was
clan of the family historian. And at six years old,
I started falling asleep at night plan of doing what
I call time travel. You know, I would think what
did I do when I was exactly all week ago,
two weeks ago, when I was this day in kindergarten,
(11:48):
when I was my little brother's aid, And it was
something that I became very good at doing. Now there
is no doubt in my mind that I was born
with something unusual. You know, They've wired me, put me
through an MRI. They took three hundred measurements of my brain.
They found nine areas ten times larger than the normal rain.
But it was definitely something that was that was nurture
(12:10):
as well. So there was nature and nurture because I
just loved having this. It was so it was so
unusual and it was kind of fun. And you know,
people would say you're such a little lo at all
and they'd say, no, I'm a remember it all, you know.
So It was kind of my claim to fain give.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Us an example of the kind of thing that you
would remember as a kid.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I remember like every day in school where I could remember,
you know, things People would come over and I would
tell them the last time they were at my house
with my parents, or what they were wearing or things
like that, you know. So it was it was just
memory work. It was just I would never forget anything.
And so I knew it was within my family. I
(12:50):
knew it was unusual, and everybody in my family has
a great memory. But I had this date thing I had,
you know, just the specificity of what I remembered was
so intense. And so what happened was my sphere got bigger,
and I realized, well, my friends don't have this either,
you know. And finally, when I was around eighteen years old,
a friend of mine said to me, when are you
going to realize that nobody else has this crazy memory.
(13:13):
So people in college knew that I had something unusual.
And in fact, I'm on my third and final husband.
But we knew each other in college, went to University
of Chicago. He was my roommate's boyfriend, but he knew
that I had this unusual memory, and so we make
jokes about it. Now. We always says, well, when you're
eighteen and you remember, you know, if you remember your life,
(13:36):
that doesn't seem down unusual. So he didn't like, let
onto the whole idea of it as much as he
has now that we spent twenty one years together.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So let me drill down on this. So you you
remember things that are autobiographical part of your life stories.
And this person came over. I had this conversation. I
heard this on the radio. I was wearing this, But
what about other things? Like if I gave you a
long list of nonsense words.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Let me go back to the story and then that'll
answer some of your questions. So I had this unusual
autobiographical memory. And I was a great student. I went
to the University of Chicago. I was named Outstanding Teenager
of Illinois. I were scholarships, so I was really quite
the student, and people who knew me knew that I
(14:24):
had this unusual memory. So when a story came up
for Leslie Stall, who was a friend of mine because
I worked with her husband, Aaron Latham, I'm a movie
perfect she called me and she said, I want you
to have lunch with me. So we had lunch together
September twenty in two thousand and six. It was a Wednesday.
We went to the slune and she's naming, Oh, when
(14:44):
did we meet? When did we do this? Blah blah blah,
and then her her producer said oh. She mentioned that
she had gotten married on June the fifteenth of nineteen,
nineteen ninety eight, and I said, oh, my god, that's
so unusual. Why did you get married out on Monday?
And she was like, oh, she is it. I said,
what's going on with you guys? She said, well, we've
been offered a story at sixty minutes about a woman
(15:06):
by the name of Jill Price who came to doctor
Legau and she had a very unusual memory and she
never forgot anything. So they did all this testing on
her and they offered the story to sixteen minutes and
I told him, forget it. My friend, it's not that unusual.
My friend married a vender has the exact same memory.
So that was in two thousand and six, and then
(15:29):
in two thousand and nine, Leslie callin. She said, oh,
because they gave the story to Primetime Live in Diamond Sawyer.
So in two thousand and nine, Leslie called and she said,
she said, I want you to be tested. It's very unusual.
They have found very few other people, so we're going
to have you tested on camera. And on camera they
tested me. They didn't use it all, but they tested
(15:51):
me for everything, sequencing, everything that you're talking about. The
list of items. They had me look at something for
fifteen second and then identify what corner was it. They
had me look at a face with all any hair
or you couldn't even tell what gender it was, and
they told me names associated with it. I scored high
on everything pretty much, but I really of course the
(16:14):
autobiographical stuff. I answered over five hundred questions within the day,
and then they did their wiring and asking questions and
so how it's fired up and stuff. So yeah, so
it's like it's a different part of the brain than
is the sequencing or anything like that. But I did still,
especially as an actress, I trained myself to be sort
(16:36):
of like a script supervisor. I mean, I'm sort of
a frustrated script supervisor where I can notice something's off
or where something is. In fact, they showed us a
fifteen minute movie and then asked us specific questions that
you might not notice an issue or a script supervisor
or somebody with HSAM. So yeah, there were a lot
of different types of testing that went on that day.
(16:57):
Most people, if you ask them, remember or eight to
eleven events within any given year, and people with h
SAM we remember two hundred to three hundred and sixty five.
The criteria cut off was two hundred all though I
scored in ninety nine percent off for three sixty five
because I can do a whole year. But you know,
it's like, it's like if people try to remember what
(17:19):
their year was like, they can probably come up with
eight to eleven and that's all, which is insane to me,
you know, because there's somebody who never loses anything. It's like,
I mean, except my assins or something key. So I
mean that I, as an actress, have trained enough to
be able to look at a script a couple times
and have it down. But I'll also remember where I
was when I read the script, what the character's life
(17:41):
reminds me of in my own life, you know, what
the weather was like, things like that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So give us an example. Let's say it shows October fifth,
two thousand and nine. Are you able to.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, Yeah, that was in one day.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And do you remember what you were doing that day?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah? Of course, I was at a rehearsal for one
of my son's shows. We were putting on a little
play at there and he was doing he was doing
Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory. So there was a
rehearsal that day and I did all the hair and
makeup from my chid's school. Don't score warning.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, do you remember what you were wearing that day?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yes, I was wearing like a navy blue shirt with jeans. Now,
to me, everyone has something they remember, especially well, it's
what I call their primary track. It's like in the
jigsaw puzzle of your life, what are your hard edged
pieces by which you can interlock all your other memories too?
(18:50):
And for some people it's places they live, places they worked.
It's sports is a huge one. For guys, they might
forget their anniversary, but remember how many chicken wings they
had that day and what the score was. And also
you know places that people's children. I've heard everything from
food to clothes to baths. There was a guy who
(19:12):
was obsessed with baths and new light fag information. So
that's called your primary trap and the jigsaw puzzle of
your life. What are the hardage pieces by which you
can inter other memories. Then everyone I believe has a
dominant sense. Everyone is a site cell, touch taste or
smell person. And if you can figure out what you
(19:33):
are site cell, touch taste or smell, you can figure
out how you receive and you cross connected with your
primary trap. You can figure out how you receive, retain,
and then retrieve memories. Because we just happen to have
an extraordinary retrieval system. Everything you have been through in
your life is on your emotional hard drive, and it
(19:56):
makes you behave in certain ways. So you might walk
into a room go like, oh my god, this smells
like my grandmother's or wow, that song on the radio
that reminds me this. Do you know what I mean?
So you people do this all day long. But people
with ASAM we remember everything in first person, in our
bodies looking out. You know, if I asked you, if
I said to you when you woke up this morning,
(20:18):
describe your warning, you'd probably be in first person and
talking about it, and you could say, oh, I got
to a bathroom or make coffee, or I walk my
dog or whatever but if I asked you, like three
weeks ago, you probably would be a third person. Most
people when they go back three weeks or beyond, they're
in third person. I gave a whole speech to all
(20:40):
these three hundred doctors in a cedar siginer, and nobody
had ever described the things that I'm describing from the
inside out. Now, I also believe that memory comes to
us in four different ways, what I call horizontally, vertically, mushrewingly,
or sporadically. So if I said to you, hey, how
(21:01):
is that wedding you went to a couple of weeks ago,
and you said, oh, man, it was brave. Friday night,
we went to the bar, we all had a drink,
there was a rehearsal dinner, we had a drink. The
next morning, I got up in jog and you start
telling me the whole weekend, sort of a linear horizontal,
you know, kind of a narrative way. If I said
to you, that would be a horizontal him. But I
said how is the wedding? And you said, oh, my
(21:22):
cousin and I got into a whole discussion at the wedding,
and you could probably just a pinpoint, a specific on
a line and go deep into a memory. So that's
kind of like a vertical memory. And if I said,
how is that wedding? And you said, oh, my gosh,
there was somebody I met. We decided to have lunch.
Two weeks later we're going to do a project together.
(21:43):
That's like a mushrooming memory. That means it came out
of the event I asked you about. But if mushrooms
somewhere else. And then if I said to you, oh,
how is that wedding and you said, oh my god,
there was a guy there who looked like when my
old boss, and I was instantly back and when I
off is thinking about what a jerk this guy was
because he took credit for my work. So that's a
(22:04):
sporadic memory. So all day long, we do memory like that,
especially people of age Sam, And you can ask about
some specific day and it can be told in a
linear horizontal way, or a vertical way, or a mushrooming way,
or a sporadic way, do you know what I mean. Yeah,
So we go all over, so you have to not
think the way it happens differently for us. It just
(22:27):
is And it's not even like we're all consistent but
this is how it happens for me.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
How far back does it go for you? What's your
earliest memory being baptized?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So I was like three weeks old, yeah, and you
know and say, oh, it was a day. I just
remember the feeling. I remember, you know, just the whiteness.
I remember things like that. I didn't have words yet,
but I can go way back.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And is that generally true that you can remember things
from when you were one or two?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Oh? Yeah, oh wow, yeah. I mean it's much more
visual and it has a language to it for later on.
You know, what made you interest in neuroscience?
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Oh, I've been you know, my father was a psychiatrist
and my mother was a biology teacher, and so it
was natural enough. I ended up becoming a writer first,
and then I went to neuroscience. So I'm very interested
in the human condition and all the different ways of
getting there. So let me ask you this. We can
never step outside of our own experience of the world.
(23:26):
But do you feel like your highly superior autobiographical memory
is something that's good or bad or you feel mixed
feelings about it?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
People always say is it a blessing or a curse?
And my stock answer is it's always a blessing for me,
which is absolutely one hundred percent. Tu Now, for one
second did I think this was a curse. Not the
one second in my life. But I always say, but
it's a curse for my husband, which is probably why
I'm on my third and final because you know, like
(23:56):
we just had to fight two days ago, and he
said something and you know, in March of twenty twenty two,
and I went, no, it didn't it had been on No, Michael,
it had been on September the twenty third of twenty
twenty two. You know that I was wearing this you
were talking about. He was like, well, you know, and
then it became this. I said. It's not like I
(24:16):
have to be right. I just believe in accuracy. And
if you're talking about something that happened in this season,
you're in the wrong season, you know. But it's funny
because yeah, so he but he always says, what man
ever loses an argument against his wife anyway, at least
he has excuse because I sech an individual memory, you know.
But no, it's always been it's always been a blessing
(24:38):
for me. Here here's the thing, as you know, and
doctor Rabaut proved this. Doctor James mcgobre does the whole study.
He memories tied to adrenaline. So people are going to
remember the highs like getting married, having a baby, you know,
a promotion at work, a fabulous something or other, buying
(24:59):
a house, whatever, and they're also going to remember the lows,
whether it's you know, whether they've been embarrassed or a
breakup or a death of someone. You know. So those
highs and lows are being recorded constantly by us people
with h SAM. We're lucky enough to have all those
middle of the road kind of our tone moments recorded
(25:20):
and kept and talked about, you know, I mean that,
and they're available to us. So I'm always trying to
help people. You know, I don't have to show off
my memory anymore. It's just it's the way it is.
People stop me at the airport and until throw dates
at me and stuff I means hilarious. And the thing
is that's it's really you know, I'm what I'm trying
(25:42):
to do is I'm trying to help people bring back
those little summers nights, you know, the little fabric of
their lives kind of thing, things that they may have
forgotten because they didn't get recorded on those high tone
or low tone scales.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, we write down everything that's emotionally sales. That's really
what what memory is for, is to write things down
so that we can better plan for the future. That's
why we have memory.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Well, I don't say if all you do is you
wake up, you live your life, you turn off the light,
you go to sleep, you wake up, you live your life,
you turn off the light, you go to sleep, and
nothing has moved forward, well then what does it all mean?
So by developing a better autobiographical memory, you are able.
(26:30):
It's actually your strongest line of defense against meaninglessness that
you have because you are able to bring information from
your past to your present and let it inform a
better future. I work with people all the time on memory.
I work with people who have like a roadblock somehow
and trying to get them past a roadblock, or women
(26:52):
who pick the same kind of guy all the time
because they're not noticing the red flags they're wind to them,
you know. So I mean I do one tree with people.
One of the things I love to do the most
is for like school auctions or any kind of you know,
any kind of option. I will option my self off
as a memory person who will take people back and
(27:14):
do memory sessions with them. And it's really farm, it's
really amazing what happens in a couple hour hours.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Are you able to help other people improve their memories?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Oh yeah all the time. I might might not be
able to give them h sam, but you have. But
people have gotten so lazy, especially because everything is on
the you know, on their phones, and so we just
throw it there. I mean yeah. I always say, if
let's say you're a visual person, you know, you know
that your dominant sentenced visual well, during the day, during
(27:44):
your day, at some point, take the picture of the day. Okay,
just take a picture of the day and put it away.
And then at the end of the month, if you've
taken thirty pictures, you think like, oh, what were some
of those pictures? And see how many you can bring
forward again, because it's really a muscle, you know. And
the thing is, if you're only remembering eight to eleven
events within any given year, which is just so sad
(28:05):
and pathetic to me, I feel like, if you can
bring three forward and carry them with you, you'll have
at least thirty six in the first year that you
do it and maybe the following year you'll have even more,
you know, seventy two or something. You know. So, yeah,
I'm always helping people with their memories.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Some of my research has to do with how long
we think something has lasted, what the duration of let's say,
your past year has been. And what my research has
pointed to is that the more memory you have, the
longer things seem to have lasted. And so if you
can only draw on eight to eleven things, then it
seems like, wow, the year disappeared. What do you feel
(28:46):
like you have a different experience than other people in
terms of how long your life has been going on
or the past year was or the past month.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, well sure, I mean because I you know, I
mean sometimes I'll put on you know, I'll listen on
my soul and I'll do like a you know, a
mile two or three walk, a three mile walk or something,
and I'll just pick an alibum or you know, usually
like that, and I'll go through every date of the
year that that album came out, things like that. You know.
(29:14):
It's just it's I love the exercise of it, and
I love well, I love being able to do it,
and it's like fun and refreshing. There's always something when
I go through it where I go like, oh, yeah,
you know what I'm gonna call that person? Or damn,
where is that blouse? You know? Or oh there's you know,
things like that, and it's just there's always something that's
(29:35):
revealed to me like oh, yes, that's why I had
this reaction later, you know, things like that.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's probably a difficult question to answer, but what fraction
of your time do you suppose you spend in uh,
in reminiscence.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Probably not that much, not as much as people think.
It's happens so quickly for me. And it's not like
it's not like oh I can't wait too you know,
it's not like that at all. I mean I could
be driving in the car talking mysel and I'll hevor
a song and I'll think about, you know, like oh,
I remember the last summer the first time I for
what this remaints. But it's it happens so quickly. It's
(30:08):
not like I probably spend laice of time because it's faster.
I just have a better computer system, do you know
what I mean? Yeah, I probably well last time because
I know where things are and I can always access them.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Do you know what synesthesia is?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, I don't have that.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Oh okay, interesting, there's no So for example, thinking about
things spatially, if you think about the months or things
like that or years, do you have any spatial location
to that.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, I mean, you know, i'd see things or I
feel things. Let's say, on like a timeline, so it
is like from my timeline, you know, let's say this
is all from your perspective. This would be January and
this would be December, let's say. But it scrolls quickly,
you know, it doesn't urger page flip. It's almost like
(30:56):
on a live and I can stop it and the
videos for the video from each day can show up
or not. You know. Sometimes things it's like developing a picture.
Some things take longer than others, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
By the way, that is a form of synesthesia called
spatial sequence synesthesia.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, but it sounds like I and I definitely think
like certain days or certain numbers in general have a
masculine or feminine stuff like that. But I don't have
the smell thing. I don't haven't, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
It's like, yeah, there are many different forms of synesesia,
but it sounds it sounds like you definitely have special
sequence synesthesia.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
I have a question. Do you ever find that some
of your memories are inaccurate? Do you have ways of.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Testing literally self correct? It's like unbelievable, Like I'll say
something happened out a blubb of them. It's like Rura,
you will oh like no, be like something self correct immediately.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And does your remembory feel like a constant stream of
information or do you turn it off and not think
about it?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
No? I mean, first of all, I've done seventy eight
movies in my lifetime, two huge television series, seven Broadway shows.
I've bringing ten books, So I don't think I you know,
I'm not sitting talking holy about memory or only you
know and it brings two fabulous sons and so you know,
(32:31):
it's not like this is such a preoccupation of marine.
I love talking about it. I love helping other people.
I love describing it and trying to get people to
sort of see what I see in their own lives. Possibly,
you know, when people come to me go, oh my
granddaughter has this or oh my son has this, I'll
go get them into acting class. If you're really troubled
(32:52):
by it, because as an actor, you will celebrate being
able to access your emotional your emotional drive. You know.
It's like we used to do a sense memory exercise
in class, talk about to sits on touch, taste, smell.
You'd have to bring in an object or a scent
(33:14):
or a piece of music or or you know, we
just one for each sense and people would say, okay.
The teacher would say, okay, go back in the memory.
And instantly I could cry, if you go, how'd you
get there so fast? And I'd say, how could you
not if that's what you're thinking of some painful memory?
Speaker 1 (33:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I teach classes and memory live on it all over
the country. And one of the things that I do
is I have people bring in a turning point memory
or object and talk about it, you know, and it's like,
where was the fork in the road where you went
this way instead of going that way? Or what's that impact?
And you can't imagine the things people bring in and
(33:54):
talk how they talk about the fork in the road,
you know, how they talk about that turning point. And
people tell the most unbelievable stories, and you see the
life changing things happen over the course of the class
because people have gone back and processed it. Because you know,
I'm always saying, if you let memories become emotional boogeymen,
(34:19):
then they control you. But if you process them, it's
like how many times can you see a scary movie
without going Okay, Now I can see the camera was
at that angle when there's probably a craft service table
and on the corn. You know where you start processing
it different and you don't. It doesn't have quite the
same impact. I mean, I'm making a joke about being
on a set, but it's like it doesn't have the
same impact on your life when you process it. Otherwise
(34:41):
it's far away.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
So do you feel like you process memories more, you've
gone through them, you've reviewed them more.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Well, Yeah, And I also went into therapy at a
very young age because my father had just passed away
and I was going through a lot of life changes.
So but I mean, I know I could help my
family that way. But yeah, I mean, I've never been
somebody who backed away from self reflection because it's like
verre and available to play with anytime. I'm well. One
(35:10):
of the things I'm always telling people to do because
we have gotten lazy, you know, with our smirkles and stuff.
Is at night, when you're brushing your teeth, it's just
supposed to do it for true med Just scroll through
your day, just see what was maybe worth remembering from
your day, because that second time through might steer it
in a little more indelibly, you know, because we just
(35:31):
we walk around with such a fog. People are in
a fond these dayscase they paying no attention to anything
that's not on their own, and it's kind of scary.
We're not living our lives.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Oh I love that. Great. I'm going to do that
tonight and every night from now on.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Do it tonight.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Terrific.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Well, we must be an auditory person. That's why you've
got a podcast and all that. Right, very auditory, I
guess I am. I listen to most of my books
now in audible.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
So if you're very auditory, then you should, you know,
do a sound check at some point during the day
and write it down somewhere and then later on at
the end of the lefth go like, how many of
my little cell checks? Can I actually remember where was
I on this day or that day? Because we've just
gotten so lazy.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, that's right. And we all carry around our exo
brains now in our cell phones, and so we uh
we put stuff off to our devices.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
People don't even remember their own phone numbers, you know,
or their best friends phone member. And as kids, we
can you know, we always an were our phone numbers.
I did our seminar once with three hundred people, and
I said to them, how there's no memories? And I said,
how many of you remember your freshman in high school schedule?
And the little girl raised her hand and I said,
hold you. She said, fifteen? Were you battering omber? That
(36:41):
was last year? I said, what about the rest of you?
Nobody remembered. I said, okay, I'm going to give you
some prompting questions, because it's about prompting sometimes, And so
within within fifteen minutes, every single person except for to me,
just didn't want to play. Every single person had their
freshman in high school schedule.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
What's an example of a prompting question?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
What rugby question would be? How did you get to school?
Do you remember what your first period was, what was
your lunchroom situation? Who'd you sit with? Did you have sports? After?
You know? You just go through like a list of questions,
and it just starts to build in and it's like
what class were you most hired or somebody said mac
I said, I bet that was your lunch. That was
(37:21):
right after lunch. Yeah, but you know, and you just
start prompting and then things be one another.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That was the actor Mary Lou Henner, who has highly
superior autobiographical memory. So in answer to the question that
we started with, which is whether everyone has the same
level of memory, the answers clearly know. I want to
wrap up by returning to two points. The first is
this question of whether a memory like this is a
(37:52):
good thing or a bad thing. I asked Mary Lou
what she thought of this, and she said it was
unambiguously good. But I just want to note that we
each live in our own heads, and you can never
really run a control experiment. Would you be happier or
less happy if you had a different memory, better or
worse than what you have now? We can each speculate,
(38:13):
but we can't really know. I will say that other
people with h sam, like Jill Price what I mentioned before,
she feels pretty clearly the opposite of Mary Lou. She
feels like it is a burden and let's return to
the Jorge Luis Borges story. Funes the memorious Borhes uses
the character to suggest that while perfect memory might seem desirable,
(38:36):
it comes at a cost. The character is cast down
in a flood of memory and loses an ability to
generalize or abstract or find appropriate meaning in the world
that has too many details. Now, again, that was a
fiction author's interpretation, But maybe fictional stories are as close
as we ever come to running a control experiment on
(38:59):
our own line. It is the case that Jill Price,
the real woman who can Never Forget, has stated that
she liked the character of Fuones is cursed by her
inability to forget. Whatever the case, all this points to
the possibility that forgetting is actually a useful thing. It
points to the possibility that natural selection has tuned the
(39:22):
amount we remember and don't remember to be roughly optimal,
at least in the environments in which humans evolved over
the past several million years. It at least encourages us
to consider that forgetting is an essential feature of memory,
rather than a flaw. Our brains are constantly bombarded with
(39:42):
information every site and sound and experience we have, and
most of it if it's not emotionally salient, really doesn't matter,
like where I parked my car at the airport in
twenty nineteen. As the writer Honora de Balzac said, memories
beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable. However,
(40:06):
on the flip side, I was moved and inspired by
what Mary Luce said about the importance of putting some
effort into remembering our lives. After all this, I've published
and argued in other episodes the apparent duration of your life,
In other words, how long you think it's been since
last summer, or last year or last decade. This depends
on how much memory you can draw upon, And what
(40:30):
tends to happen to us as we get older is
that we lay down less and less new memory, and
so we end up thinking, gosh, where did this year go?
We're already pulling up to the end of a new year,
and it feels like this one went by in the
blink of an eye. But if we have rich memories
that we can draw on from the year, then we think, oh, well,
(40:51):
let's see, there was this event, and oh and then
there was that, and there was that, and the whole
thing doesn't seem like it disappeared in a blink anymore.
One of the most important things from the point of
view of brain plasticity is to keep your brain well
exercised and not falling into routine. And one of the
things that I recommended in a different episode is that
when you brush your teeth, you should try it with
(41:13):
your other hand, because that gets your brain out of
its routine and forces it to confront a little novelty.
So I loved Mary Lou's suggestion about thinking through your
day while you brush your teeth and really writing down
mentally what you did so tonight and hereafter, I would
like to suggest that you brush your teeth with your
other hand while recounting your day from beginning to end.
(41:38):
This will not only kick your brain off its natural
path of least resistance, but it will also lock down
a little more memory in your life. I'm not telling
you here how to live longer. Instead, I'm suggesting how
to make it seem as though you have lived longer
by internally writing down more of your health human journey
(42:01):
so that you have more of its richness to draw from.
Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information
and to find further reading, Send me an email at
podcasts at eagleman dot com with questions or discussion, and
check out on Subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for
videos of each episode and to leave comments until next time.
(42:24):
I'm David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos
Host
David Eagleman
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.