The general consensus of a powerful memory is that it's a true blessing from nature and something that all people desire in their own lives. Those that suffer with various memory related problems will tell of the frustration of an inability to recall specific events, whether these be recent, or from many years ago. Even if fortunate enough to go through life without experiencing such a problem, you will be aware that the ability of your memory will naturally diminish as you mature, leading to many of the same symptoms. If there is to be an occurrence of such an affliction in this area of brain function, it is always in regards to forgetting events and never the reverse, which would be remembering too much. On the surface, this supposed example may seem positive and beneficial, but upon deeper inspection, if every minute detail of your life could be remembered, even inconsequential events such as reading a newspaper or turning on a mechanical device, your mind would be so preoccupied with such things that it would be difficult to pick out important memories which should obviously take precedence over these.
This is the very affliction that haunts the mind of a woman from California. Exhibiting an ability which would not be out of place in a gifted savant, she can recall nearly every event in her life and in chronological order. This ability of hers has been evident since childhood and as alluded to before, has been a hindrance rather than an advantage in life. After deciding to seek help in relation to her affliction, she contacted specialists at the university of California in the hope that they could provide a solution to this rare problem. For obvious reason, they were dubious of her claims initially, but after routinely testing her on the details of events from the distant past, with the aid of a historical almanac, came to the conclusion that she was genuine. Every question posed was answered correctly, with her memory so accurate and with such fine attention to detail that she even corrected certain mistakes printed in the book itself.
She describes the ability of her memory as being akin to a movie, with every event recorded in staggering detail, giving her the power to recall them from years ago. In a televised interview, she gave insight into this phenomena stating that while talking at that particular time, she could also be reminiscing on obscure events which occurred way back in 1982. One painful effect pertaining to this is her ability to recall emotional responses in conjunction with the events surrounding them, whereas in a normal person, a portion of these emotions, such as the hurtful, negative variety would be easily forgotten. The human mind has a fantastic ability to bury hurtful emotions deep in the recesses of our mind and for good reason as nobody wants to recall such things. If this is absent, it's easy to imagine the negative impact that these constantly recurring, negative emotions could induce on a person.
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