An Interview with AJ

Here is the interview that Discover Magazine conducted with AJ the woman who does not forget.

Perfect Memory
Some people really do remember everything.by Susan Kruglinski
AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH A WOMAN WHO CAN'T FORGET

In a recent issue of Discover, we wrote about people who use mnemonic skills to demonstrate incredible feats of memory (How to Win the World Memory Championship, April, 2006) Post press update: Our writer, Joshua Foer, actually won the event. Neuroscientists at the University of Irvine now claim to be studying a remarkable woman who is the first ever reported to have an extraordinary capacity for memory without using any mnemonic tricks – long ago memories simply pop into her head. Critics of this research wonder if she is not simply using ordinary memory skills in an unconscious way. In our June issue of Discover, we will have an article about this woman, who remains anonymous but is called AJ, and the controversial research. In the meantime, associate editor Susan Kruglinski has conducted an E-mail interview with AJ, asking her what it is like to remember every day as if it were yesterday.

When and how did you realize you had superior memory skills?
It was in 1978 when I was 12 years old. I was studying for my first set of finals at the end of the 7th grade and I was sitting and listening to my mother drone on and on about science and such, and I started to think about the year before when I was in the sixth grade, and how easy life was back then. It was May of 1978, so I started to think about that exact day back in May 1977, and I just started thinking about each day from that month the year before. It actually startled me at first to think that I could remember so exactly.

What are you good at remembering?
I can remember everything that has happened to me. What day it was on, what was happening in the world, who was in my life at the time, and usually what the weather was like. I am very affected by the weather, so it is always something I remember. If you were to tell me the day you were married or the day your child was born (in the last 30 years) I could tell you what day it was, what I was doing, etc.

You had a couple of traumatic events in your childhood -- a move to a different state when you were eight, and a car accident when you were sixteen that required facial reconstructive surgery. Do you believe these events contributed to a desire to hold on to the past?
The move from the east coast to the west coast was a HUGE trauma for me. As I look back at my behavior the first few months in my new world I realize I was trying so hard to hold on to everything from before. It is after the move that I started to remember exact days and dates. The accident I had when I was sixteen had no effect on me whatsoever.

You kept a diary from when you were a child until you were 34. What inspired you to do this?
I started my diary the week I turned 11. I was away on a family vacation and I was having such a good time I wanted to write it all down so I could remember it. At this point, late 1976, I did not realize that I could remember everything. I started to write and I did not stop until 1999/2000.

In your daily life, do you think a lot about dates and events?
I do. In my job I see a lot of birth dates, so whenever I do, such as 4/11/1995, I will automatically "see" the day in my head, as if someone put a video in a VCR. The day just plays in my head. I know that the day was a Tuesday and what I was doing. This happens a million times a day, even while I am functioning in the present.

Do you think that your need to remember dates and events is obsessive?
I don't know if it obsessive. I do know it is uncontrollable. I have tried to stop writing in my journal, but it never works. I went back and wrote five years (2000-2004) after not writing for that long. I did that because after not writing, it started to gnaw at me, so I had to go back and get everything down. And I did.

How has this skill been helpful to you in your life?
I have always been the "historian," who people come to for fact-checking. When they say there are three sides to a story -- yours, mine and the truth -- I am always the truth, because I see it as it happened.

How has this skill been a problem in your life?
I NEVER FORGET ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do your thoughts of dates and events crowd out other thoughts?
No matter what I am thinking about I am always in the present. Someone would never know that while I am standing there talking to them in the present, in my mind I am in my backyard in 1973.

Is it somehow comforting to have these event memories?
I never forget anything, good or bad, so it is hard to "move on." But the flip side is that I am comforted by my memory.

What does your husband think of your skills?
My husband and others in my life have always found this to be a gift. I look at it like that too, but I also know how deeply I feel about things because of how deeply I remember things.

What has it been like to be the subject of scientific investigation?
I have loved this process. After reading the paper on me by Dr. Parker, Dr. Cahill and Dr. McGaugh, I cried because finally somebody understood what I have been screaming about for the last umpteen years

This interview was taken from:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/perfect-mem

What if we remembered everything...

This blog is on Chapter 6. I skipped this chapter by mistake last week and wrote about Chapter 9. Well after reading this chapter it made me think about what would happen if we remembered all of the details of our lives. Can this really happen? The answer is yes because a woman known as AJ has the ability to remember with incredible details the events that happened in her life. She claims that if you give her any date she could remember which day of the week it was, the personal details of her life at the time, and any news events that occurred on that day. James McGaugh, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, thought is was not true at first but after performing some tests he states with certainty that her ability is real. One of the first theories that McGaugh and his colleagues proposed was that she remembered emotionally packed event in her lives. This theory was quickly disproved because she remembered events that really did not have any deep personal meaning like the death of Elvis and a plane crash in Chicago. It is as if AJ keeps a diary in her brain.

A second theory that McGaugh and his colleagues proposed was that she categorized events with those who were in her life at the time and facts so she could remember them better. McGaugh states that this might be true but it does not explain why she remembers it and how much she is able to remember. Researchers do not know exactly why AJ remembers so much but one theory is that her brain is wired differently. Researchers are going to conduct some MRI studies to see just how AJ’s brain works in the following months. AJ’s case is so special that the researchers at Irvine have given her condition a new name “hyperthymestic syndrome.” More research needs to be done in order to truly understand AJ and her condition. What we do know is that AJ’s ability is amazing.

Personally, I would not like to remember all of the events of my life. Imagine remembering all of those embarrassing moments in detail. There are things that are just better off forgotten. I also feel that remembering so many things would be very overwhelming.

The article can be found here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1738881&page=1

The real life "Groundhog Day"

While I was channel surfing this week, I came across one of my favorite movies “Groundhog Day.” For those who have never seen the movie, it is about a man named Phil who relives the events of February 2nd over and over again. It is really funny. It made me wonder if there is an actual condition that causes people to experience déjà vu repeatedly. While browsing I found an article on the BBC News website that talked about a condition called chronic déjà vu, which is caused by a faulty memory process. An elderly man with this condition claimed that all of the programs on television had been on before and that he would hear the same bird singing every time he went outside. This should be so frustrating because you may have a detailed memory about something and people may argue that it never happened.

Many of the people who have this condition have experienced some type of head injury or chronic pain which lead researchers to believe that this does not happen naturally. Dr. Chris Moulin believes that chronic déjà vu could be caused by a defect in the temporal lobe, where a circuit that fires when one remembers something is malfunctioning. Much like having false memories about an event, these people believe they are remembering something that has already occurred but in reality, they could have never experienced the event at all.

The article can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4671380.stm

What's in a face...

This week’s reading looked at recognition vs. recall. Like the people described in the text, I have always felt that recognition is easier than recall. This is a misconception that many of us have and this chapter tries to explain that it all depends on the test setting. Some of the factors that affect our ability to recognized an item include having prior knowledge of being tested (knowing about test increases recall), the frequency of a the word (high frequency produced better recall and low frequency produced better recognition), the quality of the cues presented, the context that is used during test, and the items itself (we tend to remember pictures better but we tend to know words better). The authors also try to explain that recognition is not a simple process because it includes at least two processes: recollection and familiarity. In order to recognize something we first have to see if we actually have a conscious recollection of the item being tested and then we need to evaluate the level of familiarity of the item.

The part of the chapter that I found the most interesting was the section on face recognition. This is something that is of great importance in law. When a witness has to identify a suspect it is obviously crucial that they identify the correct suspect but many times witness identify the wrong person. This inaccuracy could be caused by differences the in race of the suspect relative to the race of the witness. It has been proven that we recognize faces of our own race more accurately than faces from a different race. This section of the chapter also discussed how we commonly cannot put a name to a face but can describe things about the person such as their occupation. When this happens to me, I get so frustrated and I cannot stop thinking about it. I have always thought that it was caused by a faulty storage of information about the person. This led me to do some research on the areas of the brain that are involved in the processing of faces.

Research done at the University of London has shown that a face is processed by three brain areas. The subjects of this study were shown pictures of two known icons: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and actor Marilyn Monroe. They were shown a pair of pictures that were identical, a pair that the physical features were different but Marilyn or Margaret could still be recognized, and a pair that differed by the same degree in physical features(only one was still recognizable). The subjects viewed these pictures while they were undergoing an fMRI scan. One area that showed activation was the inferior occipital gyri, which is a pair of structures located in the posterior region of the brain. This area is responsible for processing physical characteristics. The researchers found increased activation in this area when the physical features in the two pictures were different. A second brain region that was active was the right fusiform gyrus, which is located behind our ears. This area was most active while the subjects were shown different pictures: Marilyn vs. Thatcher. It can be inferred by this activity that this area is involved in distinguishing between faces. It is likely that this area of the brain becomes active while we are trying to find a friend in a crowed room. The third brain region that showed activation was the anterior temporal cortex. This area seems to hold the knowledge we have about the face. This area showed increased activity when subjects were very familiar with the face. The reason why we do not remember a person’s name could be because the person’s name might be absent in our anterior temporal cortex.

This research can be very helpful in finding out what parts of brains might be defective in people with prosopagnosia (face blindness). It can also help us discover ways that we can more effectively remember people.

The complete article can be found here:
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1439

Pump some iron and improve your memory

In one of my earlier blogs, I stated that exercising can keep your brain healthy. Now new research has revealed that working out causes the growth of more brain cells in the hippocampus. Scott Small a neurologist at Columbia University ran a three-month program that included intense aerobic exercise. This program required its participants to spend 1-2 hours, four days a week on treadmills. The participants of this program, who were healthy males and females, showed a 30% increase in the production of neurons in the dentate gyrus area of the hippocampus and improvements in memory related tests. Rose Andrel, a gerontologist at the University of Florida in Tampa, stated that what running on a treadmill did was increase the amount of blood that reaches the brain, which brings an increased amount of molecules that promote cell growth up to the brain.

This discovery could be crucial in decreasing the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease in future generations. Exercising can also can help delay memory loss caused by aging. This is why exercise programs in assisted living homes or nursing hormones should be enforced more.

The entire article can be found here:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/070315/15health.memory.htm

Memory Aromatherapy

People use aromatherapy candles to relax but now researchers at the University of Lubeck have found that that the scent of a rose may improve memory. Jan Born and his colleagues performed a study in which subjects were exposed to the smell of a rose one evening while they learned the location of picture cards. Half of the participants were then exposed to the scent of a rose again when they were sleeping and the other half were not exposed to any scent. The participants were tested the next day on what they learned the day before and those who were exposed to the rose scent actually had a better recall percentage than those who were not exposed to anything while sleeping (97% Vs. 86%). It should also be noted that exposure to the order during the test phase did not show any increase in recall. The researchers believe that no effect was found because the hippocampus is more sensitive when we are sleeping.

This research supports the theory that we strengthen our new memories while we sleep. These new memories are first in our hippocampus and are then reactivated and transferred to the cortex while we are sleeping. The memory of smells are said to have a very strong effect on the hippocampus which is why Born and his colleagues thought that odor could help strengthen reactivation and make the transfer of these memories to long-term memory more effective.

Now don’t run to get rose scented candles from the store just yet. This is more complicated than it sounds. The participants of this study were exposed to the scent during slow-wave sleep, which is when the hippocampus is triggered into reactivating memories. The odor was also not given continuously to get the desired memory effect because we get accustomed to odor quickly. Consequently, it would be very hard to recreate this study at home without expensive equipment and assistance. The type of task being learned while using this odor technique is also important factor. The only memories that were strengthened were those that depend on the hippocampus. This means that no skill based memories will be strengthened.

I thought that this article was very interesting. It would also be interesting to see if the pleasantness of the odor influences recall. I think that an unpleasant odor like the one of garbage would be much more memorable and thus improve recall. I would also like to see if the potency of the odor influences recall as well.


The article can be found here:
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070305/full/070305-10.html

Stress and Its Effects on the Young Brain

It is estimated that 15 to 43% of girls and 14 to 43% of boys have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Of those children and adolescents who have experienced a traumatic event in their lives, 3 to 15% of girls and 1 to 6% of boys could be diagnosed with PTSD.

Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center have found a decrease in the size of the hippocampus in children with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which causes them to be less able to handle stress and caused increased anxiety. They have also found higher levels of cortisol (stress hormone) in these children’s brains. Cortisol has detrimental effects on the hippocampus because studies on animals have shown that they have the ability to kill brain cells and lead to increased levels of anxiety. The ability to handle stress is important for these children because their lives are filled with stressors like violence at home and physical/emotional abuse. Living at home with these types of stressors is unbearable but imagine the stress that the children are experiencing if they have a defect in the system that helps you cope with the stress.

One of the main researchers in this study was quoted saying “One common treatment for PTSD is to help a sufferer develop a narrative of a traumatic experience. But if the stress of the event is affecting areas of the brain responsible for processing information and incorporating it into a story, that treatment may not be effective.” I wonder if other types of therapy like play therapy would help these children because it entails that children draw and play games to process the traumatic event they experienced. Would medication help these children deal with their PTSD?

The article can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6411351.stm