Marilu henner memory 60 minutes

Actress Marilu Henner, best known for her role as Elaine Nardo in the hit sitcom Taxi, has a highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), a rare condition shared by only people worldwide. Other types of unusual memory include something called “eidetic memory”—the ability to look at an image once briefly and then recall it in detail.

The condition is most common in children and tends to go away in adulthood. But a true “photographic memory” is a misnomer, says James McGaugh, PhD, founding chair of the department of neurobiology and behavior and founding director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California-Irvine. “It doesn’t exist,” he says.

In some cases of unusual memory, people have what’s been called “savant syndrome”—serious cognitive disabilities, but extraordinary recall.

Marilu henner memory claims Henner can recall past events in almost photographic detail thanks to a highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), a rare condition that has been identified in only about people in the world.

Laurence Kim Peek, who inspired the movie Rain Man, memorized more than 7, books. Stephen Wiltshire, a British artist and autistic savant whose story was recounted by Oliver Sacks in An Anthropologist on Mars (Vintage Books, ), can draw a landscape from memory after seeing it only once.

A New Memory Type

Highly superior autobiographical memory is a “brand-new chapter in the field of memory,” says Dr.

McGaugh. Since meeting Jill Price, one of the first people to be diagnosed with the condition, in , Dr. McGaugh has authenticated approximately people with HSAM. Every week, he hears from about three or four people who claim to have the condition, although most of them don’t. “When we screen them, only about 15 to 20 percent who claim they have this ability actually turn out to have it.

The others, they have good memories, but they’re not like these people.”

People with HSAM perform similarly to their peers on most standard memory tests. Where they are extraordinary, Dr. McGaugh has found, is in their ability to recall the events of their own lives and those around them, and the dates and days when those events happened.

Brains Wired for Recall

Dr.

Ascenta spark After hours of research conducted during the “60 Minutes” report in , Henner was the sixth person on the planet to be identified as someone with HSAM by leading researcher Dr. James McGaugh and his colleagues at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UC Irvine.

McGaugh and his team have identified some key differences in both the brain structures and the brain function of people like Henner and Price. “An area in the region of the striatum is larger, as well as a region in the parahippocampal gyrus,” Dr. McGaugh says. (Both of these areas have been identified as important to learning and memory.) “A fiber pathway connecting the back of the brain to the front of the brain appears to be more active.”

Memory-Charged Brains

Using functional MRI (fMRI), Dr.

McGaugh has also identified differences in the brain activity of people with HSAM. When asked to remember events from their lives, they are much faster than the average person at accessing those memories, and specific regions of their brains interact more quickly.

The big question is whether these differences in structure and function are present from birth in people with HSAM or develop differently because these individuals are constantly calling up more memories.

Marilu henner memory book Every week, he hears from about three or four people who claim to have the condition, although most of them don’t. “When we screen them, only about 15 to 20 percent who claim they have this ability actually turn out to have it. The others, they have good memories, but they’re not like these people.”.

That’s still unknown, says Dr. McGaugh, who continues to study Henner and others with HSAM.

A Continuum of Recollection

In a study published in Neuropsychologia, scientists identified people with the opposite condition, something they call severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM), which goes beyond “having a really bad memory,” says Brian Levine, PhD, one of the authors of the study and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest and professor in the departments of psychology and medicine (neurology) at the University of Toronto.

People with SDAM can remember the facts of the events of their lives—they don’t have amnesia—but they can’t remember what it was like to be there, explains Dr.

Levine. A mother with SDAM might remember that she took a Caribbean cruise with her family last winter, but she can’t picture herself sitting on the deck with an umbrella drink in her hand, watching the kids in the pool.

HSAM and SDAM may represent opposite extremes on the continuum of autobiographical memory, says Dr.

Levine. “Think about your own family. Is there someone who has the better memory of life events?” he asks. “Usually people can immediately identify a person or people like that. That, to me, suggests that there is a range for autobiographical memory.”

Studying Memory

In a study published in the journal Cortex, Dr.

Levine and colleagues studied a sample of 69 healthy adults, using both brain imaging and questionnaires designed to identify how well they remember details and experiences from their lives.

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“We found that people who were really good at remembering details about past episodes in their lives showed increased connection between the hippocampus and the back of the brain—the area responsible for imagery—even when at rest and not being asked to think about specific things,” he says.

“Even when they’re lying in the scanner doing nothing, they’re calling up images in their mind.”

Researchers like Dr. Levine and Dr. McGaugh hope to learn what these different types of episodic memory might mean for the rest of the population—those who aren’t on one end of the spectrum or the other—and what they might tell us about aging and dementia.

Aging and Remembering

People with outstanding episodic memories would seem to have a cognitive advantage as they age—after all, they have more memory to start with.

But Dr. Levine theorizes that it could be just the opposite. “You may be accustomed to using your episodic memory to solve problems, but with age the medial temporal lobe—which is critical to long-term memory—starts to deteriorate and you might be more severely affected by that because you haven’t developed any means to compensate,” he says.

“On the other hand, if you’ve always had a poor episodic memory, you may have learned to solve problems in spite of that, so it’s possible that memory declines of aging might not impair you as much.”