Rebecca Sharrock remembers just about everything.
Posted October 30
The young thirty-year-old knows what happened on this date 20 years ago: the clothes she was wearing, the temperature it was doing, what was said on the news bulletin…
She lives with autobiographical hypermnesia. That is, she remembers every day of her existence from a certain point in her childhood. About sixty people, only, in the world, would currently have this capacity.
I often think of them, since I read the portrait of Rebecca Sharrock in The Guardian.
What a weight, that of a lifetime. There are so many sorrows and fears that we must want to get rid of… At the same time, I would give a lot to review certain scenes in their precious details.
As a child, my mother taught me to take “mental photos”.
According to her, if I wanted to remember a specific moment forever—a ray of sunshine on my skin, a hug, or a bucket full of pumpkinseeds (I liked to fish)—I didn’t. I just had to watch the scene carefully. After a few seconds, all you had to do was say “click!” and take a picture in my head.
I could thus collect snapshots of a lifetime.
It helped me a lot. At school, I learned by “photographing” my note pages. It is still useful to me when I have to memorize texts, as a facilitator. Above all, it encourages me to fully savor certain moments in order to keep a clearer picture of them.
But scientifically, is it valid? Can we really encourage our memory to make a scene a memory?
“We have a certain power,” replied Sylvie Belleville, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging and Brain Plasticity.
The researcher invites us to take care of our autobiographical memory, ie everything that relates to personal memories, identity and important events: “The memories that we recall are often those that we keep the best. That’s why I think it’s important to cultivate positive memories and take pictures, for example. »
When we memorize an event, we also memorize its context: where we were, with whom and in what state. Often, it is precisely the context that will allow us to recover a memory. By observing a photo (a real one!), we remember the moment in which it took place. Suddenly, the memory unfolds. And the more we see a memory, the more we solidify it.
There are people who have experienced terrible things and who prefer to take care of their present. It’s correct ! But you can also find a nice balance; the more fully we live our present, the better it will be encoded in our memory.
Sylvie Belleville, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging and Brain Plasticity
Which brings me back to the idea of mental photos advocated by my mother. His invitation to observe a happy scene in order to remember the smallest details, isn’t this an invitation to fully live the present, basically?
The one who is also a full professor in the psychology department at the University of Montreal agrees with me, but she points out that it is rare to have a photographic memory that really allows you to “scan an image”. It is more people on the autism spectrum who exhibit this trait.
“But your case shows how important it is to know each other and to build on our strengths,” continues Sylvie Belleville. We must know how we, we memorize scenes. »
If mental photos are not your thing, I assure you: there are other strategies to better store memories. Like creating links with what we already know…
By discussing with others or observing a scene, we can say to ourselves “it makes me think of such and such a thing”, suggests the researcher.
The more you create links around a memory, the more likely you are to recover it, in fact.
Sylvie Belleville, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging and Brain Plasticity
(The next time you want to remember a beautiful event, think about this chronicle while living it!)
Sylvie Belleville also suggests mental imagery, or visualizing what you want to memorize. Let’s think of a little grocery list: lemon, milk and broccoli.
“I will associate each item with a place in my apartment and create a funny image,” she says. So I see a bunch of lemons tumbling down from my entrance bench; I see milk flowing under my wardrobe door; and my kitchen light fixture suddenly turned into broccoli. Once at the grocery store, I mentally go around my house and I see lemons, milk, broccoli again… This exercise ensures that I don’t passively repeat the list to myself, I become active in the art of to memorize. »
I can’t wait to play! But a question remains: what explains that a memory can emerge while another remains forever buried in our memory?
Sylvie Belleville goes there again with a beautiful image: memory is like a forest in which there are many houses. Some are at the crossroads of several paths, while others hide at the end of a single path. We may need help getting to our destination. This explains why, sometimes, a forgotten memory comes back to us only because a loved one rehashes an old story.
And, often, we don’t have the same point of view on the said story!
“Difficult to know what the reality is, according to Sylvie Belleville. Our memory constantly reconstructs our memories according to the conception we have of ourselves. I’m not a bad person, so I don’t remember starting the battle, for example! Everyone sees the film with their own perspective. »
Contrary to what the mental photos that I have collected since childhood suggest, “memory is not a photograph, it is something that is reconstructed”.
(But I swear there really was an impressive number of pumpkinseeds in my boiler.)