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“Forgot”, “I don’t remember,” “flew out of my head” – how often we our forgetfulness fails! How we envy people who possess a phenomenal memory! But among these “unique” there are “Champions”. That was Solomon Shereshevsky, who easily remembered EVERYTHING. A reporter with amazing memory in the early 20’s years of XX century, the editor of a Moscow newspaper held a meeting. Reporters scribbled a list of tasks for the day in notebooks: where to go, with whom to meet, what to ask about and what to do emphasis in reporting. Only recently recruited Shereshevsky just looked out the window. “Why aren’t you recording anything?” – “A why? “, and Shereshevsky literally repeated everything he talked about editor in the last 30 minutes. The surprised chef directed employee to a familiar psychologist – let him look at this phenomenon. So the first meeting of Solomon Shereshevsky with the young scientist, future academician and founder of the national neuropsychology by Alexander Luria. Memory Without Borders Than the longer the conversation went on, the more unusual a patient. He easily remembered long rows of numbers and words, without labor repeating them both in direct and in reverse order. The increase in the amount of information did not cause him any difficulties. Shereshevsky easily remembered whole pages random set of words and numbers. A second was appointed, then a third a meeting. For 30 years, Luria periodically met with Shereshevsky. It turned out that not only the volumes of assimilated information, but also the timing of its storage. All texts shown to him Shereshevsky easily repeated after several months and even years. A passage read to him in Italian (which he did not speak) from “The Divine Comedy” Dante Solomon accurately repeated through 15 years old, with the same intonation and expression. Remember every day Shereshevsky remembered absolutely everything in his life. He could easily literally by the hour to remember how every day of his life passed, starting from very early childhood. Solomon himself claimed to remember even how the diapers changed for him. You can question it, but Shereshevsky without hesitation called what day of the week was a certain number since the 90s of the XIX century. Moreover, for he didn’t do any mathematical calculations in his mind, he REMEMBERED! It was worth moving to earlier years, as Shereshevsky replied: “So then I was still gone, how can I remember?” Help forget! Shereshevsky perceived his gift and how good and how heavy a burden at the same time. He complained repeatedly Luria, how painful it is to remember absolutely everything. Besides memories that I would like to get rid of, in memory constantly an absolutely unnecessary burden of facts and events surfaced. With time Shereshevsky began to demonstrate his abilities in public, and the inability to forget turned into a serious problem for him. Hundreds of matrices from previous performances were stored in his brain, overlapping one another, and Solomon had to constantly iterate over them to choose what you need. After a few years experiments Solomon developed an original technique that allowed erase certain blocks of information from memory. Happy Shereshevsky sent Luria a telegram: “Congratulate me: I learned forget! “XXI Century In the spring of 2000 to Dr. J. McGaw on email contacted Jill Price. She wrote that with remembers the events of each day to the age of 14 own life. McGaw-led medical team for worked with Jill for several years. Research results were systematized and published in 2006. In that publication and the term “hyperthymesia” was first used, which has already become among doctors are generally recognized. By 2014, the McGaw group identified more 50 people unable to forget anything. In addition to his amazing ability to remember everything, they are not distinguished by any other phenomenal abilities. They do not know how to multiply in six-digit numbers, but they’ll easily say where they were in what day and hour did you eat for breakfast that day and what The movie was watched on TV. They are all in constant contact with scientists. Researchers are confident that observing these people will help us learn how to manage our memory, and then the words “forgot” and “don’t remember” will disappear from our vocabulary.
A life
