The amazing memory marvels - Module 3

C2 Proficiency · Gapped Text · Expert Proficiency Resource Book, Pearson Education

You are going to read an extract from an article. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (1–7). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

The amazing memory marvels

There are people who can recall what happened on almost every day of their lives

'Some of them are really good,' says McGaugh. For instance, one subject claimed she could recall what she was thinking when brushing her teeth on a particular date. 'She said: "Oh yes, I was thinking about going to dinner." I can't confirm that, but from all the other testing that we've done, I do believe her.'

McGaugh invited his correspondent to his lab, making sure he had to hand a copy of Twentieth Century Day by Day, a book that lists important events by date. He opened the book to random pages and asked what had happened on those days. 'Whether it was some election or a movie star doing an outrageous thing, she was dead on,' he recalls. 'Time and again.'

Price considers her gift helps in her job as a religious education coordinator. 'My memory helps me remember anything I need to know about the students,' she says. 'And my co-workers know that if they need anything, I will be able to find it.'

Intrigued by these findings, I managed to visit McGaugh's lab at the University of California, to find out how these people live with such unusual abilities – and what it's like for the researchers working with them. 'It never ceases to amaze me,' says McGaugh's colleague, Aurora LaPort. 'Some of them can remember every day you give them.' She says studying people whose powers of recall seem to be enhanced, rather than impaired, offers us a new tool to explore memory.

So how much, exactly, can such people remember? McGaugh has begun a long-term tracking project to see how their memories might fade over time. Wondering how my own memory might stack up against their awesome abilities, I volunteer to be one of the control subjects.

Interviewing Price on the phone, I ask what it feels like to have this ability. 'My memory really has ruled my life,' she says. 'It's brought me great joy, but it has tormented me. Being able to hold on to all of the amazing moments is something that gives me comfort. But you remember the bad stuff too.'

Such memories can be subdivided into semantic ones to do with concepts, such as the fact that London is the UK capital, and autobiographical memories, about events that we experience. Price has no special abilities with regard to her short-term or semantic memory, but when it comes to autobiographical memory, her scores are off the chart.

Although still able to recall his early life, this individual was no longer able to lay down memories of things that happened after the surgery. Every day, the researchers studying the condition had to introduce themselves anew. Intriguingly, though, tasks that used short-term skills, like retaining a phone number for a few minutes, were not a problem.

It was an email that memory researcher James McGaugh found hard to believe. The sender, a thirty-four-year-old housewife named Jill Price, was claiming that she could recall events on any date back to when she was about twelve, as well as what she herself had done each day. 'Some people call me the human calendar,' she wrote, 'while others run out of the room in fear. But the one reaction I get from everyone who finds out about this "gift" is amazement. I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy.'

McGaugh's group has worked closely with Price ever since and has discovered she is one of a select few with similar abilities. These individuals are neither autistic savants nor masters of mnemonic-based tricks of recall, yet they can memorize key events from almost every day of their lives. Learning more about their abilities and how their brains are wired should lead to insights into the nature of human memory.

It's certainly fair to say that most of our knowledge of the subject derives from looking at memory loss. The classic case is that of a patient known as 'HM', who had surgery nearly sixty years ago to treat severe epilepsy. In a misguided attempt to remove the source of the seizures, several parts of the brain were cut out, including both hippocampi, curled up ridges on either side of the brain. For HM, the consequences were catastrophic.

Thanks to HM and many other people with neurological problems caused by head injuries and strokes, we now know that there are different kinds of remembering. Our short-term memories last up to about a minute, unless they are reinforced, or 'rehearsed' through further repetition. While much about the neuroscience of memory remains mysterious, our hippocampi seem to be involved in turning these fleeting impressions into long-term memories, which are thought to be stored in the temporal lobes on either side of the brain.

Naturally, however, McGaugh's team did not take these recollections at face value. In a routine they have since honed on other individuals, they check facts using subjects' diaries and photo albums, interviews with their families, and online research. For instance, they might check someone's description of their first home against images on Google Street View and the family photo album.

In 2007, McGaugh's team published their findings about Price in the journal Neurocase (vol 12, p 35), concluding that she was the first known case of someone with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM). They have since discovered thirty-three others with similar talents. As with Price, the detailed memories date back to around the age of ten.

The next one of McGaugh's HSAMers I speak to is more upbeat. Marlu Henner, an actor who is perhaps best known for her role in the 1980s US TV series Taxi, says her abilities have been invaluable professionally. 'In acting classes, people would ask, "How are you able to cry or to laugh so easily?" I'd be right back at that emotional moment, with all of my senses engaged, looking out through my eyes.'

McGaugh says most HSAMers do see their talent in a positive light. 'None of them has said they would wish away the ability if they could,' he says. 'When I ask what they do when they had a sad memory, they say they conjure up a happy one.'

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