Ipermemoria: eight Italians studied with a great memory to remember everything

HYPERMEMORY: EIGHTH ITALIAN STUDIES WITH AN EXCEPTIONAL MEMORY, DO NOT FORGET WHAT GIVES IN 2011

Hypermemore: Italian scientists examine eight people with exceptional memory, they are better at & # 39; fishing in the mind

Comedy every day of its existence, and more remember the details? It's impossible for almost everyone. Although many are able to accurately remember events with high emotional connotations (marriage, birth of a child, first kiss, death of a loved one), so-called "normal" days are usually forgotten. or disappear completely. at most a vague memory.

Yet, a very small number of people can remember with seemingly exact days of seemingly normal days. These are the ones who are equipped with "autobiographical hypermemias" now at the center, for the first time in the world, of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to understand the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin this extraordinary memory. What emerges from the research, depends on the best ability to "seize" in the mind the episodes of life

HYPERMEMORY: THE STUDY ON THE SECRETS OF THE SUPER MEMORY OF EIGHTH ITALIAN CAPABLE OF SE REMINDER ALL

Lo Study on Hypermemias conducted in Italy at the Santa Lucia Irccs Foundation in Rome, coordinated by Valerio Santangelo, Simone Macrì and Patrizia Campolongo and published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America "(Pnas), has involved many research centers including the Higher Institute of Health, the University of Perugia, the University of California – Irvine and the University of California. Sapienza University of Rome

"We followed eight people with hypermemoire identified by the research group in the Italian population since 2015, and 21 control subjects with normo-typical memory – says the first author e study Valerio Santangelo, University of Perugia and Santa Lucia Foundation Irccs – The extraordinary is that in addition to remember the day of the week from a remote date in time (eg. remember that August 3, 2011 was a Wednesday), I am also able to tell how they were dressed that day, what they ate, what movie they saw. Even more amazing is the complete lack of hesitation or conscious effort when such topics need to remember events that have lived even dozens of years ago. "

EXCEPTIONAL MEMORY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING: EIGHT ITALIANS WITH THE HYPERMEMORY FOUNDED

During the sweeping of fMRI, subjects were asked to recall relatively recent autobiographical experiments (for example, the last time you took a train) or remotely (the first time you kissed someone) the subjects had to press a button to indicate that they had followed that specific memory into memory ( phase of "access" to memory) and then continue to reread it as much as possible in detail (phase "treatment")

– continues Patrizia Campolongo, Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation – subjects with autobiographical hypermemory recalled a greater number of details and with greater dezza life compared to control subjects.

Surprisingly, the functional differences between hypermemores and controls were found only in the phase of access to memory, but not in the development of the same thing. During the access phase, hypermoral subjects showed an increased activation of the medial prefrontal cortex and its functional connectivity with the hippocampus, especially in the case of distant memories. These results seem to show that the hypermemory consists mainly in the ability to access, through the prefrontal-hippocampal circuit, to mnemic traces not accessible to the control subjects, thus explaining the greater capacity of the patient. hypermemore to dig up infinitesimal details of his past. "

HYPERMÉMORIE, EIGHT PEOPLE RECALL ALL DETAILS OF LIFE

These results on hypermemory allow to open new frontiers to research on memory, traditionally studied in terms of hypo-functioning in "Understanding the neurobiological systems at the basis of the hyper-functioning memory – Simone Macrì concludes the ISS – provides in fact important indications on the way to intervene (in terms of brain stimulation) to restore the proper functioning of memory systems pathological conditions ".

The study group continues the search for hypermemore subjects in the Italian population by administering ad hoc tests conducted by telephone in which subjects must answer questions regarding the timing (day, month and year) public events that took place during their lifetime.