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Susie McKinnon has very few memories of his life, but he has no amnesia.
The inability to "travel mentally in time" is the most recent memory disorder that intrigues researchers. Although most sufferers do not realize it, it may be more common than we think. 19659007] Susie McKinnon does not remember her childhood or any other stage of her previous life in which she now lives at the age of 60. Nor remember special events. He knows that he went to his nephew's wedding. She knows that her husband accompanied her. But he does not remember being there.
In fact, has very few memories of his life, although he has no amnesia. to badume that our minds work like those of others. In general, we do not discuss the feeling of memory. And McKinnon badumed that when people told stories of their past, they invented the details to entertain others.
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It was not until a practicing medical friend asked her if she could do a memory test in the as part of his studies that they realized that McKinnon lacked autobiographical memory.
After that McKinnon investigated amnesia, but the stories of people who lost their memory as a result of brain disease or brain damage do not reflect their experience. She remembered that events had taken place and that did not know how should live them.
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People with severe disabilities in autobiographical memory may recall that an event occurred, but they can not evoke what it was to live them.
A new syndrome
A little over a decade ago, after fracturing one foot, he sought activities to pbad the time and began reading research on mental journeys over time and made the decision to contact a research scientist.
The day she wrote an email to Brian Levine, a scientist in memory at Rotman Research Institute in Baycrest, Toronto, she was nervous. For Levine, it was one of the most interesting days of his career. And the result of their communication was the identification of a new syndrome: Severe deficit of autobiographical memory .
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Humans Have Extraordinary Capacity Traveling mentally in at the time comes and goes in our minds at will. Do not forget that when you were in elementary school, or imagine that next week you will be sitting on a towel on the beach watching the dolphins swim to the horizon. Probably, not only do you imagine the facts of these scenarios, but also the experience of your presence, and that is precisely what McKinnon can not do.
As Brian Levine told me on the BBC radio show, All in the spirit "for her, past events are lived almost ] as if they had gone to the third person ] as if they were past experiences of another person. "
And to some extent, we do it all, forgetting most things that happen to us, but for McKinnon, it's a lot more extreme.
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The cause of severe autobiographical memory deficiency syndrome is unknown until now.
How is it different from amnesia?
This syndrome is very different from amnesia, which usually occurs after a particular event or brain injury and makes retention difficult. new information to create new memories.
People with severe autobiographical memory deficit syndrome (SDAM) can learn and keep new information, but this information lacks the wealth of lived experience.
If McKinnon can remember the details of an event, it's because she saw an image or deliberately learned a story about what happened. You can not visualize having been there neither with what you were wearing nor with who you were.
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For McKinnon, past events memorize them as if they had arrived at someone else.
"It could have been another person who was attending a family wedding and not I. In my mind, I have no evidence that I was there, I did not get it. "That's something I did," said McKinnon in All in the Spirit .
This means that McKinnon can not feel nostalgia for reliving the best moments of life . The advantage is that can not remember the pain badociated with bad experiences either. Hard times, such as the death of a parent, are equally intense at the time, but over time, the feeling fades.
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This can make it a better nobody, because she does not hold grudge because she can not evoke the emotion That made her feel bad in the first place.
With respect to the cause, up to now, researchers have found no disease or injury related to this problem and concluded that people had just been born that way. Although Levine and his team continue to study the possible links with other disorders.
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Afantasy is the inability to view images.
Inability to visualize mentally
McKinnon also a fantasy, it means that he can not visualize images. It is difficult to know for sure if this prevents you from keeping intense memories from other people. Decades of memory research have shown that we are rebuilding an event in the mind every time we remember it, but we do not know if we all do it the same way.
Some may see an image or video in their mind, others may think more in terms of abstract ideas or facts.
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Catherine Loveday, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster, asks if there are any similarities in our early memories. We can remember events that happened to us before the age of three, because we could have heard about it or see pictures. But we have trouble remembering how the experience was felt.
It is currently unknown what is the prevalence of SDAM, although Levine and his team are trying to find out by means of an online survey. 5,000 people have already participated and many say they believe they have this problem. Although it's a self-selected sample, the figures suggest that might be more common than we think.
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An advantage of not remembering the emotions of past events for McKinnon, c & rsquo; Is also remembering the pain.
The team of Levine studies the idea that autobiographical memory could be part of a spectrum in which SDAM would be at the extreme, while people possessing a very good autobiographical memory, which they forget something, even bbad, they would find themselves in the other.
So, does it matter if you have this problem?
If SDAM does not affect your way of life, probably not.
In McKinnon's case, she has always lived this way. Knowing that this is a disorder that probably has her whole life is only an interesting fact that gives meaning to the differences I sometimes noticed between her and me. Other People Now, he understands, for example, that others do not invent stories.
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McKinnon does not think of the past or waking dreams.
"My experience has never been different, so is not for me a loss ," he said.
"Since I have never had this opportunity (to recall something in the past or to visualize events), I can not feel the lack of it".
And McKinnon sees another benefit: not thinking about the past or dreaming about the future.
"I know that many people have trouble keeping this notion of the moment, but for me it's very simple because is the only way my brain works . I still live the moment all the time ".
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