Jill Price: The Woman Who Can't Forget

Posted by Alex in Medicine on March 25, 2009 at 5:13 pm


Quick: what did you have for lunch yesterday? How about two days ago? If you remember, then you have a pretty good memory – but how about remembering everything you have seen and experienced throughout your life in vivid detail as if it was happening right now?

Meet Jill Price, the woman who simply could not forget:

The three UC Irvine scientists who studied her decided that her case deserved its own name—hyperthymestic syndrome, academic Greek for "exceptional memory"—and it’s not hard to see why.

I come prepared with a stack of questionnaires, and when we return to her house, Price is kind enough to let me administer my tests, easily blowing through the first few. I ask, for example, if she can tell me some dates of famous accidents and airline crashes; she’s all but unstoppable. She instantly retrieves from memory the exact dates of the explosions of space shuttle Challenger and Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She remembers not just that September 25, 1978, was when a PSA flight crashed in San Diego but also that the jet collided with a Cessna. She can go in either direction, disaster to date or date to disaster. When I say "January 13, 1982," Price has no trouble recalling the Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac.

According to McGaugh’s Neurocase article, Price is even more astounding on the events of her own life. At the scientists’ behest, for example, she recalled—without warning and in just 10 minutes—what she’d done on every Easter since 1980. "April 6, 1980: 9th grade, Easter vacation ends. April 19, 1981: 10th grade, new boyfriend, H. April 11, 1982: 11th grade, grandparents visiting for Passover ..

And before you think it’s a wonderful thing to have such a prodigious memory, imagine this: Jill Price remembers all the sad and bad things in her life – the death of loved ones, for instance, like it’s happening right now. Time heals all wounds, but not for Jill Price.

Link (Photo: Bryce Duffy)

Here’s a clip of Jill Price as interviewed on 20/20 by Diane Sawyer:


[YouTube clip]

Jill recounts her experience in her new book: The Woman Who Can’t Forget

If you find this interesting, check out our previous post: 10 Most Fascinating Savants in the World


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COMMENT

19 comments to "Jill Price: The Woman Who Can't Forget"

  1. Carl
    March 25th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    Shoot, I can barely remember on which date the 4th of July falls.

  2. Edward
    March 25th, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    I have never had such empathetic sorrow.

  3. zav
    March 25th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Time does not heal all "wound", time heals all "wounds". All implies what it refers to is more than one and wounds is more than one wound.

  4. seefish3
    March 25th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    I stopped watching television when I got sick of manipulative garbage like this. It just made me angrier and angrier. Maybe I should stop reading blogs, too.

    You've been a wonderful audience...

  5. Christophe
    March 25th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    I wonder what her job is and what impact her skills had on it.
    She should do politics : she'd be a killer ;)

  6. Jenny
    March 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    i just dont know, sounds fake to me... eh

  7. l'elk!
    March 25th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    i'd advise her to go to vegas and play blackjack....

  8. violet
    March 26th, 2009 at 12:20 am

    Not fake, and not enviable. The brain, as I understand it, has lots of very good reasons for letting things go. Her mind is completely crowded, and I bet it's no picnic.

  9. rblunt
    March 26th, 2009 at 8:11 am

    if you read the Wired magazine article, she and as it turns out a few others have a offshoot of OCD. Pretty epic though.

  10. Fiestoforo
    March 26th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    In Chile, there is a joke that has the same theme:

    An old man, who was 100, with an extraordinary memory, is visited by a young journalist. He asked many questions about his life, like what he ate in his 4th birthday. "I ate eggs," he recalled.
    The journalist was happy and his interview was a success. 50 years passed and he became the Head Director of Life Magazine.

    After retiring, he remembered his first interview and decided to pay a visit to the town where this man lived and leave flowers at his tomb.

    When he arrived, people told him that the old men was still alive and 150 years old.

    The journalist ran to his house shouting: but how? how?

    The old man answered:
    "fried, fried eggs."

    I though this piece of news was in fact my old joke!

  11. xadrian
    March 26th, 2009 at 10:37 am

    What a crappy segment. I want this lady to have her own TLC special.

  12. ted
    March 26th, 2009 at 10:40 am

    I wouldn't want to live my life without the excuse of "I forgot".

  13. Gail Pink
    March 26th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    Yuu mean Diane Sawyer is in her sixties and looks that great? Sheesh.
    Great post!

  14. Li
    March 26th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    What a boring job. If I were her, I'd go to casinos all around the world to play blackjack.

  15. Irredeemable
    March 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    @ fiestoro

    Your joke made me smile. I was funny how the.... I am sorry, I forgot.

  16. JamesM
    March 26th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    I have a similar issue, maybe not exact and unfaltering like this woman's... but my memory does tend to get a bit crowded as I have a hard time forgetting things. I don't remember exactly everything nor do I make an attempt to, but I remember bits and pieces that happen to be precise details. This makes retracing my steps quite easy and I'll have exactly what I needed based on what I remember.

    The problem? I remember the stupidest things. Even if it's just an offhand remark that I read in an email that somehow comes back to haunt the person I'm talking to. "I never said that!" / "Lemme find that email, you said 'blah and blah'... Yep, here it is." / "Aww, crud. You suck."

    The worst part about remembering trivial and stupid details is that, yes, it really does crowd the mind. I can't shut my brain off when I try to get to sleep and end up remembering/reliving moments from my years' past that I'd really, really like to forget. Nearly every morning I'll wake up shortly after having a pretty extensive vivid dream. Details as rich as it was happening. Checking the mail 4 years ago, what I got in the mail that day, how I felt, etc... It doesn't go away easily.

    Quite frankly, I'm tired of remembering the one moment where I screwed up during piano recital (when I was 7 years old! 23 years ago!) and waking up to it feeling just as embarrassed now as I did then.

  17. El Arcano
    March 26th, 2009 at 8:53 pm

    I remember (I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb) the tale "Funes, the Memorious" from the argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, about a man who was able to remember EVERYTHING: "In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it."

    http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/borges.htm

  18. Vagabond
    March 26th, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    I guess also she can't forget to eat.

  19. Marco te Pas
    May 11th, 2009 at 5:35 am

    I also remembere everything i can not forget anything, just like her. i have the same good memory. i dont understand people when they dont remember things....


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