[HN Gopher] 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain ...
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'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
Author : voisin
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-03-24 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctvnews.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctvnews.ca)
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I wonder if she can index on specific details, or if a linear
| scan is required to answer more complex queries.
|
| If she sits down to read through the periodic table, can she look
| up all of the properties of any element on demand?
| prng2021 wrote:
| Isn't that what she did? They randomly picked calendar dates
| and asked her to explain things that happened on each day.
| neilv wrote:
| Is that O(n), O(1), or something else?
|
| And is any _n_ the total amount of information stored,
| distance from now, distance from start, or something else?
| datameta wrote:
| From what I understand, if they are asked about let's say
| April 17th 2009 they linearly scan through all the April
| 17ths. So there is a filtering step that ignores all other
| 364 days. But they also don't start from their earliest
| memories so how does that filtering work?
| datameta wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, the question here is whether they will
| be using episodic or semantic memory in the recall of the
| periodic table. Meaning - can they recall learned facts as
| well as lived experiences? Will they linearly remember the
| moments of learning about each element? What is the
| granularity of their recall?
| lolinder wrote:
| That's technically different than what OP is asking about.
| She could have a perfect memory for dates and experiences in
| her life but not have indefinite perfect recall for something
| more fact-oriented like the periodic table.
|
| It sounds like her fact-recalling abilities are deeply tied
| to memories of experiences and conversations, so she could
| probably intentionally structure a study session to take
| advantage of that, but it doesn't mean she automatically can
| recall everything she reads.
|
| Edit--looks like in general people with HSAM do _not_ have
| better than average memory as measured by other kinds of
| tests:
|
| > So far, the studied conducted at UC Irvine suggest that
| individuals with HSAM have superior abilities in
| autobiographical memories but are no different from age- and
| sex-matched control participants on standard laboratory
| memory tests.
|
| https://cnlm.uci.edu/hsam/
| maxutility wrote:
| Act III of episode 585 of This American Life (a WBEZ radio show
| broadcast on NPR and distributed via podcast) discussed this
| phenomenon and spoke with a few individuals with HSAM:
|
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/585/in-defense-of-ignorance...
|
| One of the individuals was a script supervisor in Hollywood
| responsible for ensuring continuity between scenes during
| filming. But it also ventures into powerful emotionally resonant
| territory, touching on the bittersweet implications of
| experiencing loss when memories never fade.
| brandall10 wrote:
| There was a great 60 Minutes on this nearly 15 years back, where
| they picked random facts from historical record and got pretty
| shocking immediate recall:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTkBgHNsWM
| unshavedyak wrote:
| I found it interesting that she didn't remember everything.
| Notably in one example, she couldn't recall what she had for
| lunch, but did for dinner.
|
| I find it almost more weird that she can recall so many
| meaningless (in the grand scheme) details yet there is still a
| limit. Perhaps too meaningless?
| datameta wrote:
| I think where their attention is and therefore what gets
| encoded is similar to the rest of us. In one instance they
| were unable to recall what the interviewers were wearing
| after spending two hours with them. They remember their
| experiences visually, essentially. So if information was not
| actually recorded, it can't be searched for.
|
| On a different note, I'm curious how long people with
| photographic memory store the info at the same fidelity. Does
| their perfect recollection of a landscape they looked at for
| a few minutes fade somewhat after a year or so?
| thecoppinger wrote:
| I read somewhere years ago that each subsequent recall of a
| memory is remembering the last time you recalled it--in a
| sense, an entropy-like phenomenon called memory
| reconsolidation.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/memory-
| rec...
| moffkalast wrote:
| > For Emily, it was validation that she wasn't, as she puts, it
| "weird."
|
| Being one of only like 100 people with the same superpower? Yes,
| not weird at all :P
|
| Wasn't there some theory that we forget things slowly in order to
| keep us sane or something like that? Given that these people have
| perfect recall and remain completely normal and functional far
| more likely makes it an unintentional fault that needs fixing
| than an evolutionarily selected-for attribute.
|
| > Those with superior memory remember the good, but they will
| also never forget the bad. They feel the pain as if it were
| today. Some with HSAM struggle with anxiety and depression as a
| result.
|
| Yeah and so do lots of the rest of us, doesn't seem like that
| much of a correlation.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Even if you could remember everything, I am curious how you
| keep it straight. I may be extra boring, but a lot of my life
| is rote. Day 452 of Job is really similar to day 451 and 453.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Why not? It's not constant super awareness of your memory,
| just having all of it available if you need it. Instead of
| trying to remember something and drawing a blank you just
| remember it. At least that's my understanding of it.
|
| I honestly really envy people who can maintain long term
| memory without constantly refreshing it. All the classes I've
| ever taken soon got rm -rfed after the final exam, except for
| the handful of things that I needed to keep knowing on a
| regular basis.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I suppose if she is ever on hard times, she can study for a month
| and cleanup on Jeopardy or a similar quiz show.
| vunderba wrote:
| Humor aside, you'll find most Jeopardy contestants actually
| know the majority of the answers to any given question on
| Jeopardy (single and double), and the determining factors are
| more about buzzer technique, ability to perform on-stage, and
| shrewd wagering on daily doubles.
|
| Sony can't really afford to "ratchet" up the difficulty either
| since that would result in an arms-race of trivia questions
| that would drastically reduce the appeal to the mainstream
| viewer if they saw categories like "Descendants of the Zulu
| Royal Family", "Musculoskeletal Radiology", "Polymer
| engineering", and "Civil Servants".
| fbdab103 wrote:
| That makes sense. The vast majority of trivia I have seen on
| such shows feels attainable by anyone with dedicated study.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| This is fascinating, but I'm left confused at the banality. Maybe
| it's just the way the article was written, but truly, who cares
| that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three years
| ago? It does cause me to wonder if brains are attuned to certain
| things - like in this woman's case, is she particularly
| interested in celebrities and that's why all the examples given
| are out of the tabloid headlines? The article left me with a lot
| of questions.
| PKop wrote:
| Yea the choice of questions to ask her was ridiculous. I mean
| start there maybe, and escalate to something more interesting,
| or go further back in time etc. Such a lack of imagination.
|
| It's almost like everyone wanted to believe and didn't want to
| push the limits to break their impression of it being some
| super power.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > truly, who cares that she can remember what was playing on
| Netflix three years ago?
|
| That's kind of the point, though -- she retains trivial
| information that 99.9999% of brains will discard.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Sure, and that's kinda interesting in a savant way, but what
| was less clear to me from the article is whether she's
| actually strong at memories where there is consciousness.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This is fascinating, but I'm left confused at the banality.
| Maybe it's just the way the article was written, but truly, who
| cares that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three
| years ago?_
|
| Anybody who can understand the implications this has for
| understanding how memory works, creating memory enhancing drugs
| or gene alterations, and enhancing human cognition? I mean,
| DUH!
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I mean - is that really the case? It almost sounds like she's
| just passively absorbing banal shit rather than there being
| any kind of consciousness. Kinda like a camera with an
| endless hard drive. Interesting, but what do you do with it?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _It almost sounds like she's just passively absorbing
| banal shit rather than there being any kind of
| consciousness._
|
| So? They don't want to use _her_ as a trove of historically
| important information, but to study her as a person which
| "super memory".
|
| For that, it doesn't matter if it's about human anatomy,
| quantum physics, or what was said in every episode of
| Melrose Place.
|
| The mechanism by which those are absorbed and retained, and
| in such quality and recall is what's interesting, the
| content is not important.
|
| > _Kinda like a camera with an endless hard drive.
| Interesting, but what do you do with it?_
|
| If I was an engineer for a storage company I'd very much
| like to know how an "endless hard drive" works. It would
| solve tons of storage and archiving problems, and could
| make trillions.
|
| For human memory, a 2x or 3x or 10x increase in
| storage/recall efficiency would be a huge thing.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| The article mentions that given she is 18 years old and still
| in school, she mostly is aware of pop culture events and
| entertainment, but is less aware of current events or the
| broader world.
|
| This is pretty normal. Most kids aren't keeping up on politics
| or business news, especially if they're hyper focused on school
| (as she seems to be).
| zackmorris wrote:
| I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic
| learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and
| mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations.
|
| For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but
| if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining
| electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly
| language, C, functional programming and where AI is heading from
| first principles.
|
| Unfortunately instead of being some kind of superpower, it's
| mainly been debilitating for me, because I've spent my career
| writing CRUD apps in an endless series of failed startups.
| Because most people don't think this way, and instead see only
| the use-case before them as a stepping stone to another goal,
| usually financial. It would be easier for me to design spaceships
| than manage my bills, but I seem to be relegated to doing chores
| for the rest of my life and dying penniless.
| interstice wrote:
| I associate strongly with this, my memory is almost entirely
| compartmentalised. Even to the point of what happened earlier
| today being a fog unless I can find a leap off point.
|
| The answer is start a business, it's a strength to be able to
| deep dive into all areas and leap between them at will, I've
| found.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Wow what a whirlwind that comment was.
|
| Circling back to the main point, it seems like her recall has
| some manner of fractal association to it, by how she describes
| remembering things.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| But you're living in US. In US you got paid crazy salaries for
| programming. Why do you work at failed startups? Just get some
| job with crazy salary, work there for 5 years and then retire.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| As GP refers to >> neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic
|
| >> paid crazy salaries for programming
|
| may be it's difficult to go through the typical interview
| loops for such jobs as they are not designed to be inclusive
| for ND etc despite all the diversity and inclusion BS (more
| often than not) at such workplaces.
| wvh wrote:
| This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view
| of oneself caused by - depending on the situation - not knowing
| if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not
| capable of living life. Finding the right environment and well,
| just age help a lot.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I
| listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I
| was as the podcast goes on.
|
| For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) "search engine"
| podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking
| my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc...
|
| It's very odd
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Johnny von Neumann was another likely candidate for having HSAM,
| based on all those stories of him being able to repeat almost
| everything he ever read verbatim. I wonder if it had anything to
| do with his mathematical prowess, given that autobiographical
| memory is usually considered a separate thing from wherever math
| goes.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Can this lady(or other people with HSAM) actually recite what
| they've read in the past verbatim? It seems like she can just
| tell you what she was doing or what happened on a given day,
| but didn't delve into how far that goes - maybe she can tell
| you she was reading book X, but couldn't necessarily recite
| passages from book X?
| elijaht wrote:
| From the article:
|
| Her father, Jason, said he would show Emily a series of
| coloured bowling pins for about 10 seconds and then spin her
| around, asking her to name the order they were in.
|
| "She would knock them off right away in terms of identifying
| every pin, in terms of, you know, red, yellow, green, blue,"
| he said.
|
| Her mother, Julie, discovered Emily -- at age five -- could
| watch a Peanuts cartoon and then recall and repeat the
| dialogue from any point in the episode.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| What's great about Emily's life as opposed to Marilu Henner is
| Emily has access to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet. It'll
| be interesting to see the limits of her memory in the future.
| Will she be able to remember every time she gets into those
| Wikipedia deep dives where you end up spending hours reading
| about some random topic, following link after link? If so, she
| really will be a super hero.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Emily has access to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet
|
| True, but I think we've forgotten that there was actually a
| _lot_ of information available before the internet. Bookstores,
| libraries, lots of magazines, and even TV (with fewer options
| but still non-stop availability). Of course, back then it was
| harder to pick and choose what info you had access to. But
| still, I 'm always surprised at the amount of useless info and
| details that I know from --where??-- before ~1995.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I'm astonished they didn't ask her if she remembered being born
| acchow wrote:
| I imagine a huge leap in a single individual like this millions
| of years got us from primitive pointing to something like
| language.
| schoen wrote:
| The reverse of this is "severely deficient autobiographical
| memory", which has been in the news recently as well (and I think
| discussed on HN too).
|
| I think it's interesting that I consider myself to have a good
| memory but it is _by far_ best at verbal associations (e.g. facts
| about a specific topic, object, word, or concept). The
| autobiographical part feels quite weak for me: I often find it
| hard to remember experiences in my life "by theme" (e.g. "think
| of a time when you felt X", "think of a time when you did Y very
| well or poorly"), and I very often don't remember what year a
| particular thing happened, or who was present with me on a
| particular occasion, or what I have or haven't done before with a
| particular friend or family member. I certainly have many vivid
| memories from my life, but they don't seem to be indexed that
| well by date, topic, or person.
|
| I've been lucky enough to travel frequently, but I feel like I
| would be unable to answer questions like "how many times have you
| been to country X?" or "in what year did you first/last visit
| country Y?". (But I would probably be able to draw a decent map
| of specific places I've been, on various scales, and remember
| specific restaurants, train stations, landmarks, foreign language
| vocabulary, impressions of history and culture of various
| countries, etc. -- just not necessarily things like "when did you
| go there?". For example, my nephew recently asked me my
| impressions of Singapore, and I wrote him a six-page letter in
| reply with tons of particulars about all sorts of aspects of
| life/culture/politics/geography of Singapore, but I was unable to
| remember what years my trips there took place.)
|
| Anyway, all this reminds me that "having a good memory" is
| definitely not just one thing!
| progman32 wrote:
| My experience is similar. I feel like I experience past events
| more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of
| moments. I like it, to be honest. I don't need to know the
| exact details. The only time it gets me in trouble is people
| sometimes equate remembering an event as somehow "caring" about
| that event. I forget details fast. Sometimes people interpret
| that as not being interested in the people I met or the
| significance of the event. I'm always glad when folks of less
| common memory models share their experiences, I think it helps
| people understand that there's so many ways to experience life
| and consciousness.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Memory is weird. I was once on a street in maybe 2005 with my
| mother when a song from the 90s came on the radio. I was
| thinking that the last time I had heard the song we were at
| the same red light, but something like 10 years prior. My mom
| then said, "I think we were in the same spot like 10 years
| ago the last time I heard this song". It was a very bizarre
| moment as the song wasn't important to us or anything like
| that which should have made it memorable.
| stabbles wrote:
| Sounds similar to folks who can memorize many digits of pi in the
| sense that they can visualize a landscape of numbers and they
| just have to play that movie in their head, similar to how
| ordinary people can visualize commuting from home to work when
| closing their eyes
| LaserDiscMan wrote:
| This reminds me of Kim Peek
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) the inspiration for Rain
| Man. Peek supposedly memorised thousands of books, including
| phone directories, sports score publications etc...
| typon wrote:
| This girl uses her memory superpower to remember irrelevant
| celebrity facts and Netflix release dates..? Not sure if this is
| a reflection of the wider culture but this is pretty depressing.
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