The Woman Who Can't Forget

Posted by Alex in Medicine on May 10, 2008 at 3:20 pm


We go from the boy who can’t sleep to the woman who can’t forget. Here’s the story of AJ, an extraordinary 40-year-old married woman who remembers everything (and not just all the bad things her husband did!):

McGaugh and fellow UCI researchers Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker have been studying the extraordinary case of a person who has "nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic" memory of her personal history and countless public events.

If you randomly pick a date from the past 25 years and ask her about it, she’ll usually provide elaborate, verifiable details about what happened to her that day and if there were any significant news events on topics that interested her. She usually also recalls what day of the week it was and what the weather was like.

The 40-year-old woman, who was given the code name AJ to protect her privacy, is so unusual that UCI coined a name for her condition in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase: hyperthymestic syndrome.

Gary Robbins of The OC Register has the interview with Dr. Jim McGaugh, who has been studying AJ for the past 6 years: Link

Illustration: Robert Zavala / The Orange County Register


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COMMENT

11 comments to "The Woman Who Can't Forget"

  1. Tempscire
    May 10th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    I'm supposed to be studying for a final right now, so that sounds pretty nice at the moment.

  2. SearcH? EngineS WEB
    May 10th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    http://digg.com/general_sciences/The_Woman_who_Remebers_EVERYTHING_PER FECTLY

    Read the Digg comments from two years ago - when this story was first broken by WSJ

  3. CheeseDuck
    May 10th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    I would think that that would be pretty good short term , but horrible long term.

  4. L
    May 10th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    She was on 20/20 last night. I can't remember her real name, though (I guess I don't have her condition!).

  5. The Memorious
    May 10th, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    " Ireneo Funes died in 1889, of a pulmonary congestion."

    Watch your back, AJ :P

  6. ZGao
    May 10th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Mentat alert.

  7. dodgyd55
    May 11th, 2008 at 7:25 am

    if i had this ability id put it to good use and study the hardest/ most paid job possable.

    would be easy to fly through college and uni with this O_O

  8. Viola
    May 11th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Now starts the countdown to brainsplode.

  9. Gorf
    May 11th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Yes, it's the one mentioned by "The memorious" a few comments above :P

  10. Gorf
    May 11th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Dammit,I'm having trouble posting comments... I was talking about the short story "Funes the memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges.

  11. Tanner
    May 11th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    I immediately got your reference the first time, Gorf. Borges is one of my favorite authors, although in the book I own, the story is called "Funes, His Memory".


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