People who don’t forget can still be tricked with false memories

No one has a perfect memory.

alinassiri

“Time is the thief of memory,” wrote Stephen King in one of his many books. For some people, however, that's not true. These people are gifted with what scientists call "highly superior autobiographical memory" (HSAM), which means that they can remember in vivid detail nearly every day of their life going back to childhood. But new research shows that even these special people are susceptible to forming false memories, sometimes even more so than normal people.

The first study of a person with this special ability, later identified to be Jill Price, was published as recently as 2006. Since then, the list of HSAM individuals in the US has grown to about 30. It includes people like Bob Petrella, who can recall the date he met every one of his friends and acquaintances. Or Brad Williams, who can remember both what he did on any day and what significant world events occurred.

James McGaugh at the University of California Irvine was the author of the 2006 study, and for the past seven years he has been working to understand what makes HSAM individuals so special. A 2012 study showed, for instance, that HSAM individuals have different brain structures. They posses more white matter (neural wiring) in areas linked to autobiographical memory. But because there are so few of them, “[w]e still don’t know enough to be able to draw robust conclusions,” says Martin Conway, a cognitive psychologist at City University London.