You Must Remember This

Anyone who has ever seen the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman has heard the song As Time Goes By. One of the best parts of the song is the stanza that goes “You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply as time goes by…” It sure sounds romantic. The song makes you think about that special love you once had. But what if you couldn’t forget things? I mean, what if the song went more like “You must remember this. Every detail of every day is etched in your mind. You can’t bear to remember more since you can’t forget a thing as time goes by…”

Okay, this was quite an introduction for what I want to talk about today. There’s something called hyperthymesia that some people experience where they can’t forget things. At first, this might not seem like a problem but imagine what life would be like if you couldn’t forget things – ever! So far, only a few people have been identified who have confirmed cases of hyperthymesia. They can tell you encyclopedic details about what happened on a single day that was years or even decades ago. Some people have called them “human Googles.”

We don’t know what causes hyperthymesia yet but it probably involves a brain structure called the hippocampus. The hippocampus functions like a memory indexer. When a memory is formed, the hippocampus sends it out to other parts of the brain where we access it later. Normally we only remember things that are meaningful or personally relevant to us. Hyperthymesia might turn out to be the result of overactive memory indexing that records details of everything a person experiences.

In any case, there will inevitably be a biological cause for hyperthymesia. Understanding the cause of hyperthymesia could lead to treatments that could help people improve their memories. This is an exciting prospect. However, think a minute about what it would be like not to forget anything. One woman who has hyperthymesia has suffered from phobias and depression all her life because she is afraid to do things for fear of overloading her mind. We might all want to have better memories but normal forgetting is okay. Forgetting helps us clear out the clutter in our minds and lets us focus on important things instead of what we had for breakfast on six weeks ago!