‘Extraordinary’ teen, 16, can ‘time travel’ through his memories and recall life like a movie

Credit: Getty A TEENAGE boy with extraordinary recall can time travel through his memories and recall his life in “striking” detail. The 16-year-old – nicknamed KCL in a report describing his case – has an extremely rare condition called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). It’s also called hyperthymesia, which literally translates to ‘over-remembering’ – and means having a very strong autobiographical memory that lets someone recall personal life events in vivid detail. While the average person’s memory of events slowly dulls over time, people with the condition can pluck through memories from years before with no effort at all. Sign up for the Health newsletter Thank you! Researchers, led by Prof Krystian Barzykowski from the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University, describe it as such: “What were you doing on March 19, 2024? “Can you remember where you were, what you were doing, what day of the week it was, what the weather was like, how you felt, and what stood out as the most important event of that day? “For most individuals, such retrieval is effortful, fragmentary, or simply unsuccessful. “However, a small number of people can access this type of information with precision and ease.” This is the case with KCL, from Poland, who boasted of being able to remember events from at least half the days of his life – claiming to have memories from when he was three months old. He also described getting a constant influx of snapshots from his daily life, prompted by “minimal contextual cues” such as a family photograph, a song, smells, or specific words. Most read in Health People with HSAM can have difficulty forgetting personal life experiences Credit: Getty Symptoms of hyperthymesia The main feature is that you have a very strong autobiographical memory. This means you’re able to recall personal life events in great detail. These memories can be about your major events or your small, everyday moments. The memories may: Appear suddenly, like flashbacks Be hard to stop or control Be tied to personal memories only (not facts, numbers or general information) Have a strong focus on calendar dates It’s important to note that if you have this condition, you don’t necessarily remember everything. Instead, you have difficulty forgetting your personal life experiences. Source: Cleveland Clinic The teen told researchers, who he reached out to seeking assessment, that he spent between five and seven hours a day dwelling on his past. HSAM has been a subject of scientific interest for decades. But much of the research “has examined what happens when these individuals are asked to remember, rather than whether memories also enter consciousness spontaneously, without any intention to retrieve them”, Prof Barzykowski told Psypost. His research, published in the journal Cortex, aimed to test whether KCL also experienced an influx of spontaneous memories in controlled laboratory conditions. The study authors first gave him a set of memory quizzes. They asked him to recall the exact dates of recent public events and to remember news stories and personal memories from randomly selected calendar dates. For each answer, KCL had to rate how confident he was and whether he felt he was when remembering the event. His performance was compared against a group of eight typical adults and another 16-year-old boy. On a quiz asking for the dates of public events, KCL scored 51 per cent, while the comparison group scored an average of about 20 per cent. On the personal memories quiz, KCL successfully recalled details for 83 per cent of the prompts – way above the comparison group’s average of 29 per cent. This confirmed that his memory met the formal criteria for HSAM. To test involuntary memories, the researchers compared KCL’s abilities to a separate group of 36 young adults. They were asked to watch a continuous stream of horizontal lines on a screen and press a button whenever a vertical line appeared. Every so often, random everyday phrases appeared on the screen as potential memory triggers. The task was designed to be simple but repetitive, giving participants the space for their mind to wander. At unpredictable moments, the task was paused, and participants were asked to type out what they were thinking about before the interruption. They also had to rate whether their thoughts were intentional or spontaneous. The researchers found that KCL’s mind wandered about as often as the people in the comparison group. He also recognised the random phrases at the same rate as the other participants. But while the comparison group reported that about 39 percent of their wandering thoughts were memories of the past, 87 percent of KCL’s thoughts were involuntary personal memories. Researchers said this showed that KCL’s spontaneous thoughts tend to focus on his own past experiences. Prof Barzykowski said: “KCL was not simply having more spontaneous thoughts overall; rather, when his mind moved away from the task, those thoughts were disproportionately memories of his personal past. “Even more strikingly, we did not see a corresponding increase in spontaneous thoughts about the future, suggesting that the effect may specifically concern access to stored autobiographical experiences rather than spontaneous cognition in general.” In additional questionnaires, KCL reported a much higher confidence in his memory abilities than typical people. Researchers said the difference in his memory – compared to other people – lies in how readily memories become accessible”. “One important misconception is that HSAM means having a photographic or infallible memory. It does not,” Prof Barzykowski noted. “Our findings concern accessibility—how readily autobiographical information can be retrieved or enter awareness—not perfect accuracy, and previous research shows that people with HSAM can still be susceptible to memory distortions like everyone else.” The researchers noted that their study focuses on one individual – meaning other people with HSAM might not experience the condition in the same way as KCL. But they intend to look into whether this is the case and whether “the threshold for a memory entering consciousness is lower” for people with the rare condition. The case follows a report on a 17-year-old girl who was able to re-live any day of her life like an HD movie and preview possible future events like she’s watching a trailer. Comment now