A woman who has a perfect memory and can recall basically every day in her life in vivid clarity has spoken out about her…well, what would you call it? Is it a talent, a curse, or a blessing? – you can start to make up your mind in the video below:
Californian Jill Price has been studied by the University of California-Irvine since 2000 because of her remarkable memory.
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In fact, Price has a condition called hyperthymesia syndrome, which you have probably never heard of because the term was coined specifically to describe Price's condition.
She claims to be able to remember just about anything from her life after the age of 14, right down to the dates of specific days and world events that were ongoing at the time, so long as she knew about them then.
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Christ, imagine being able to recall every single day you spent as a teenager right up until this day.
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That’s every bad hair choice, every awful romantic experience, every school embarrassment.
Obviously it’s also every happy memory you’ve ever had in that time as well, but Price doesn’t see it as a blessing necessarily.
Back in 2008, she told HQBrain: "I've been through hell in my life.”
For Price, the memory of her unhealthy relationship with her mum – who she claims is responsible for her unhealthy relationship with food, weight, and her body – is a particularly tough thing to recall.
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She remembers her mum telling her: “If you eat anything bad, you’re going to die.”
Price believes that moving from New York to Los Angeles as a child might have been a trigger for her condition, which has been observed in less than 100 people ever.
Scientists are obviously very interested, as Price’s syndrome directs a challenge to the idea that memory changes over time, along with the emotional power of events we recall.
Sadly, it doesn’t mean that Price can remember all sorts of pieces of knowledge too, as her own huge personal life memory makes it hard for her to complete other memory exercises, such as remembering and reciting poetry.
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Price said: “When I first went to the doctors, they were like, 'Oh, you must have been really good in school.
"I went, 'Nope.' In fact, I hated school. School was very painful for me."
When things have become too much to control, Price has kept journals to try to cope.
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"It's all swirling and kind of in the front of my head because it's not written down," she said.
"As soon as I write it down, it kind of relaxes everything."
In the time since her diagnosis, she’s written a book called The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science but largely keeps her life private.
She did appear on a Channel 4 show about another person with hyperthymestic syndrome, entitled The Boy Who Can’t Forget in 2012, but that’s one of her most recent interviews.
Featured Image Credit: Nine AustraliaTopics: US News, World News, Science, Health, Weird