Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory

Discussion in 'Health' started by Garns, Apr 16, 2022.

  1. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    So, yesterday I discovered that most people, when they remember things that happened to them in the past, can somehow "replay" or "relive" the experience in their heads, a bit like a flashback in a movie. To me this sounds like science fiction. I can definitely not do this, and in fact am unable to picture anything that I'm not physically looking at. My memories of my past are of the same nature as my knowledge of, say, the American presidents, they are facts that I remember. Apparently also when people "daydream" they literally fantasise an alternate reality. I had always assumed it just meant letting your mind wander, and thinking about things not directly related to the task at hand.

    What I learnt is that I probably have something called "Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory" (thanks guys, don't make it sound too stigmatic):

    https://sdamstudy.weebly.com/what-is-sdam.html

    Honestly this is blowing my mind a little bit, I had no idea that everyone else remembered things in such a radically different way. Does anyone else have this "deficiency"?
     
  2. Woland

    Woland Friend

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  3. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    Yes I knew that not visualising things (aphantasia) was unusual a few years ago, but had no idea visualisation was also a mechanism for memory! My memory is pretty good, but I just don't record things the way other people do, it seems.

    I do have an inner monologue and a reasonably good "inner ear", I can play back pieces of music in my head and distinguish, eg, an oboe from a cor anglais. If I listen to something enough I can accurately reproduce the starting note, though I don't have absolute pitch.
     
  4. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    My memory can be visual, but it is like finding a few old pictures, putting them in an album, and regretting that I lost the rest.

    It can also be what I call precisely inaccurate. Like, I remember something exactly but wrong!
     
  5. OldDude04

    OldDude04 Friend

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    When I was 20 years old I had a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm near my left trigeminal nerve cluster. I was very lucky because I lived and wasn't left with any form of paralysis, But, I do have Trigeminal Neuralgia on the left side of my head (Horrible shit, trust me, but at least mine is occasional and not constant like some deal with, which still allows me to enjoy headphones). Anyway, after the hemorrhage my memories prior to the incident are very similar to yours, in that I don't have any visual cues with them. I know what happened to me, and I can feel the emotions attached, but it's just more like a list of facts on a piece of paper that I can reference. My memories after the hemorrhage however are "normal". I can see and relive those memories visually without a problem.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2022
  6. roshambo123

    roshambo123 Friend

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    There's an episode of House MD where Hugh Laurie thinks he's found someone with perfect memory until he realizes she's just a narcissist that memorizes events she was victimized.

    So while you're clearly the exact opposite @Garns, do you think there are things you remember better than other people? I have an old coworker that can still rattle off IP addresses of equipment he installed at previous jobs 5+ years ago.

    I have known since high school I don't recall a lot of events very well. Recently, I had the epiphany that a big part of my outlook on life was shaped by re-heating old trauma and choosing to forget good things. I had to do some self work to realize some of this was in my control.

    So, in summation, my point is assuming you don't have a physical constraint like @OldDude04 has to contend with, you might look at trying some active techniques to see if you can remember things you usually don't. Growing up, I was a very intuitive person but I almost entirely ignored my senses and I had to train myself to look at those data inputs. Over time, you become more sensitive to them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2022
  7. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    I had a colleague who could do that with licence codes! He did memory training exercises, and never missed such a chance,

    I'm amazed that I can now remember the PINs for my bank cards, and can recall a six-digit OTP long enough to enter it (I can't: but I can remember two 3-digit numbers!) because I never used to be able to. Numbers is my really big dumbo area, for memory and everything else.
     
  8. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    That's super interesting. One distinction is that my memories of the past don't have emotions attached to them either, so I am basically trauma-proof (except that I can still condition myself to act maladaptively in the present). The down side is that I am terrible at keeping in touch with people because, as I now realise, I have no memory of it being fun to hang out with them.

    For sure, at school people thought I had a photographic memory (lol, couldn't have been further from the truth). I can memorise things pretty easily. I've acted in a few plays, at one point I learned to incant The Waste Land in doleful tones (I think that gives you a fairly good picture of the kind of arsey youth I was).

    That is a very good point. I took up meditation a while back and initially couldn't feel any bodily sensations at all. After time spent actively practicing trying to discern them, when I rest my attention on a body part I can now detect all sorts of things. I don't think training would ever turn my memory into a "normal" one (and not sure I'd even want it to, to be honest) but for sure there must be ways of making it work better!
     
  9. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    It's amazing. Humans start from an assumption that life is much the same for all of us --- but actually, even basic-life-experience can be completely different.
     
  10. roshambo123

    roshambo123 Friend

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    I am the same, except I actually do remember that I didn't enjoy hanging out with a lot of those people. :p
     
  11. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    Being a visual thinker with ptsd there are some video's i don't want to be replayed. I can usually spot a trigger a mile away but some get through or take me by surprise and then it's the whole package, sight, sound, smell and emotional state.
    Happens more often when i'm sleep deprived or depressed, guess my guard is down or something. The aftereffects can last a while but then i bounce back eventually.
    Not to be a downer or anything just saying i wouldn't mind experiencing thought without pictures.

    Anyway a fun thing i found out recently is that it's unusual that i do math in my head visually with shapes of the numbers. Like a 3 fits into a 7 to make a 10. Or i break apart numbers visually in my head. Apparently it's called number form synesthesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Number_form
     
  12. Bobcat

    Bobcat Friend

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    I can sometimes call up the image of book pages in books that impressed me for some reason or another (entirely out of my control, near as I can tell). So I can sometimes call back that a particular quote was maybe 2/3 of the way through the book on the lower left page with a graphic on the right reader page facing it. But it's somehow positional and I can't ever do it if I only read the book in digital form (e.g. Kindal reader).

    Rob
     
  13. roshambo123

    roshambo123 Friend

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    One interesting thing I learned doing my Psych degree was memory is very screwy.

    Whenever we recall a memory from long term storage and move it to the front of mind we modify it before putting it back. Over time you can guess how much that can really warp things.
     
  14. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    It's interesting that. There were lots of articles during the panny d about how lockdown was turning everyone's memories to mush. Mine was simply the same as ever. I guess like with your e-reader, staring at Zoom screens is way less conducive to forming visual memories than actually physically seeing someone or going somewhere.
     
  15. Bobcat

    Bobcat Friend

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    Yeah, I’m not sure why the electronic version would be less “memorable” than a physical version. It may simply be that through long use of books, I’m more comfortable with them (I’m not exactly young). But I think that it’s simply that the electronic version just lacks the cues of a physical book.

    Rob
     
  16. Mystic

    Mystic Mystique's Spiritual Advisor

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    I’ve heard of this condition before. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to read a book then.

    To me Lord of the Rings is this grand epic that I played out in my head when I was a kid and reading the books. Hard to imagine what reading a book of fiction would be like without the visuals playing in my head.
     
  17. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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