Tonight on 20/20: The Woman Who Can’t Forget
Thought this might interest some of you…
From ABC News:
What would you do if you couldn’t forget anything in your life? For most of us, our memories fade as we age, and only the occasional song, smell or photo will take us back to a particular time and place.
Jill Price can recall almost every detail of her past.
But for the woman formerly known to the world as simply "A.J.," her memory is so powerful that it dominates her life. She sat down with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer recently to reveal herself publicly in the hopes that others with unusual memories like hers will come forward and be studied.
In her first television interview, 42-year-old Jill Price told Sawyer, "I am in the moment, but I also have, like this split screen in my head. I always explain it to people like I’m walking around with a video camera on my shoulder. And every day is a videotape. So if you throw a date out at me, it’s as if I pulled a videotape out, put in a VCR and just watched the day. As it happened. From my point of view.
"I walk around with my life right next to me," she said.
Watch more of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jill Price tonight on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET.
We still understand so little about how memory is formed, stored and recalled - there should be some interesting clues in this woman’s experience.
MindTweak: "Happiness is good health, and
a bad memory." - Ingrid Bergman
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
After posting this, I actually *forgot* to watch it! I wanted to know if they had figured out, brain-wise, what was going on. Did anyone else catch it?
The way Jill uses her brain is a complete surprise to the public and to some doctors of medicine. For a long time scholars have belittled the idea of using Powerful Memory Training Systems because they believe it is a trick, like memorizing a deck of cards and winning at the blackjack table in Las Vegas. Since it is now illegal for “card counters” to play in Las Vegas, this gives credence and acceptance to the power and accuracy these systems possess. Our youth can learn PMTS and apply it to school work, home work, debates, discussions and posture themselves for 4-year scholarships and high paying jobs or self-employment. The reality is, when you learn new information by association, as Jill has done, (everything she has encountered was ASSOCIATED TO WHAT JILL WAS DOING THAT DAY, it works.) The PTMS replicate that procedure and as time moves on, we “forget” how we stuck information into our memory brain cells, and simply remember the facts. These are learning systems like the alphabets. You probably have not stated the alphabets aloud for 20 years, yet you know “E” comes after “D” instantly. You can read any book, and the letters are scrambled in a different order, yet you don’t think of the alphabets in sequential order, at all while reading. Numbers, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 are all the numbers you will use in your lifetime. From calculating your change to budgeting, most of us will simply perform adding, subtraction, multiplication and division, and never practice counting from 1 to 100 to make sure we remember how to count. When you remember 70 facts crucial to closing a deal on your job in the presence of a major potential client, and the client wants you to manage the project, YOUR BOSS IS NOT GOING TO SAY YOU PERFORMED A TRICK… YOU CLOSED THE DEAL!!! You are more likely to get a bonus check or a pay raise. memorytrainingsystems @ yahoo.com connects you to learning these systems.
I approved that last comment, even though it’s spammy, because I wanted to respond.
Jill Price’s memory is a *problem*, not a plus. It interferes with living a normal life, and it’s an oddity in the way her brain is wired. It is NOT related to the various train-your-memory systems out there, and while I’m a believer in neuroplasticity and training your memory and all that — no amount of training in the world will turn someone into Jill.
*glares randomly at spammers*