Everyone’s memory is a little different, and as unfair as it might be, some people have better memories than others.

On the extreme side of the spectrum, there are people with eidetic memories, photographic memories, and what is called hyperthymesia. Hyperthymesia is a term used to describe those with significantly higher than normal autobiographical memory.

Researchers found someone with an extreme form of hyperthymesia, and had her run through some tests to better understand just how good her memory was and how it worked. In the study, which was published in the journal Neurocase, the individual simply goes by “TL” because she is a teenager and wants to remain anonymous.

TL claims that she has had this skill since early childhood, but largely kept it a secret from others. This is, she says, because she was called a liar when she said that she could ‘revisit’ her past, which happened when she was just eight years old. Since then, she has been a good student in school but largely kept her skills to herself until more recently.

In the study, it is reported that TL told the researchers that she is able to visualize all of her memories. She describes the method by which she does this as having a mental ‘room’ in her head where the memories are filed and organized into different categories.

If she wants to remember a family vacation, she simply ‘looks’ in the vacations category and picks out the one she wants. From there, she can relive the experience as if she were there. In the study, the authors explain that she said:

“She could re-experience actual episodes vividly and inspect them in full detail, either from the perspective she actually occupied, or from an external viewpoint. I can mentally travel back in time to relive the event.”

The team of researchers administered several tests to determine how well she was actually able to visualize her past and found that her skill was indeed quite exceptional. Of course, they can’t validate her claims about her memory, but they can confirm that what she claims to remember has incredible vividness.

What makes her unique is that she also claims to be able to ‘time travel’ into her future and live moments that have not taken place yet. The researchers found that she is able to come up with very detailed information about what she is able to visualize. The study authors write:

“This is the first observation of hyperthymesia with a full evaluation of mental time travel capacities in different temporal distances, encompassing the individual capacity to retrieve personal events from the personal past as well as to foresee personal events in the future.”

Whether her ‘memories’ of the future are accurate or not has yet to be tested, but this is an incredible claim and even if it turns out that these experiences are just in her imagination, it seems that her ability to visualize them in such detail is authentic.

The researchers also found that TL’s family has other rare traits including perfect pitch and synesthesia, so there may very well be a genetic component to this type of incredible memory.

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