A brand new case of autobiographical hypermnesia

Remembering previous occasions in minute element, revisiting them methodically, and reliving previous feelings—that is the peculiarity of individuals with an distinctive reminiscence of their very own lives, often called autobiographical hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia. This fascinating situation stays poorly understood, and every new case contributes to our understanding.

In an article in Neurocase, researchers from Paris Brain Institute and the Memory, Brain, and Cognition Laboratory describe the extraordinary psychological lifetime of a 17-year-old lady.

Autobiographical reminiscence refers to our capability to recollect experiences which have formed our lives since childhood. It consists of emotional and sensory reminiscences of locations, moments, and folks, in addition to a set of factual info—resembling names and dates—that permits us to orient ourselves after we attempt to recall an episode from the previous.

For most of us, these reminiscences are roughly vivid relying on how previous they’re or how a lot significance we connect to them. Thanks to the dynamic nature of reminiscence, they lose sharpness over time, fade away fully, or are partially rewritten. But a small variety of individuals—solely a handful of instances have been described in scientific literature—have entry to such a wealth of autobiographical particulars that they’ll hyperlink particular occasions to any given date on the calendar.

“In these individuals, known as hyperthymesics, memories are carefully indexed by date. Some will be able to describe in detail what they did on July 6, 2002, and experience again the emotions and sensations of that day,” explains Valentina La Corte, a analysis professor on the Memory, Brain, and Cognition Laboratory at Paris Cité University.

Having reminiscences of our lives permits us to assemble a story of ourselves and stabilize our sense of identification. Autobiographical reminiscence is due to this fact related to a kind of consciousness referred to as “autonoetic,” which permits us to take a psychological journey by means of time to relive previous occasions, venture ourselves into the longer term, or into imaginary conditions.

Hyperthymestic individuals can journey by means of time of their minds with extraordinary ease and depth. “Studying this atypical cognitive functioning could help us better understand how autobiographical memory works, as well as the neurological disorders that affect it,” says Laurent Cohen, neurologist and co-head of the PICNIC Lab at Paris Brain Institute.

A reminiscence palace for organizing reminiscences

According to case studies within the scientific literature and accounts within the media, hyperthymesia is commonly described as a distressing capability: painful, even traumatic reminiscences can accumulate uncontrollably. Some people additionally really feel overwhelmed by ineffective anecdotal info.

Nevertheless, La Corte and Cohen examined the case of TL, a 17-year-old lady who seems to have important management over how she accesses her reminiscences.

TL distinguishes between two sorts. On the one hand, her “black memory” corresponds to encyclopedic data primarily acquired at college and carries no specific emotional that means. On the opposite hand, the reminiscences of her life are organized inside a complicated psychological house—a sort of reminiscence palace—that she will be able to visualize on demand.

These are filed by theme and chronological order in binders, that are saved in a room with a really low ceiling that she calls “the white room.” TL mentally scans by means of them to retrieve episodes associated to her household life, holidays, buddies, or childhood objects. Some reminiscences are even saved within the type of textual content messages or pictures.

The lady makes use of psychological illustration instruments to isolate reminiscences linked to detrimental feelings resembling unhappiness, grief, or misery. For occasion, her grandfather’s dying is saved in a chest contained in the white room. She additionally makes use of two adjoining rooms: a “pack ice” room she makes use of to assuage her anger, a “problems” room to replicate on difficulties, and a “military room” populated by troopers, which appeared in her thoughts when her father left dwelling to affix the military.

Assessing autobiographical reminiscence

Researchers lack strong instruments to confirm whether or not hyperthymestic reminiscences are dependable, particularly once they concern distant durations. Like the remainder of the inhabitants, hyperthymestics are susceptible to false reminiscences and reminiscence distortions.

However, La Corte and Cohen used the Episodic Test of Autobiographical Memory (TEMPau) and the Temporal Extended Autobiographical Memory Task (TEEAM), which assess how simply individuals can mentally journey by means of time, the richness of the reminiscences they report, and the way they relate to their very own narrative.

Their findings point out that TL relives moments of her life with distinctive depth and vividness. Sometimes, as an exterior observer, generally as a protagonist, she will be able to re-examine particulars from totally different factors of view. When researchers requested her to think about future occasions, she offered an unusually wealthy quantity of temporal, spatial, and perceptual info, far past what an peculiar particular person can produce.

These observations reinforce the concept psychological journey into the longer term depends on mechanisms just like these utilized in acutely aware exploration of the previous. In each instances, sensory info appears to play a vital function.

New avenues for analysis

“Autobiographical hypermnesia also seems closely linked to synesthesia, a neurological condition in which processing one sensory modality involves at least two senses. For example, synesthetes may hear colors, see sounds, or taste music. Even though TL is not a synesthete, several members of her family are. It would be interesting to explore this association,” provides Cohen.

Some research recommend that hyperthymesia is related to overactivation of mind networks concerned in autobiographical reminiscence and sure visible areas. However, no neuroanatomical variations have but been discovered between hyperthymesics and people with typical reminiscence.

“It is difficult to generalize findings about hyperthymesia, since they rely on only a few cases. Does aging affect the memories of these individuals? Do their mental time-travel abilities depend on age? Can they learn to control the accumulation of memories? We have many questions, and everything remains to be discovered. An exciting avenue of research lies ahead,” concludes La Corte.