Young Canadian will help unlock the secrets of her super brain

Emily Nash is one of about 100 people on earth known to have what is called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory. She is able to remember every day of her life in extreme detail and recall precise moments from years ago perfectly.

Emily Nash, 18, is one of only about 100 people confirmed to have Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory and is able to recall every day of their life in extreme detail.

A Canadian teenager nicknamed Wikipedia by her family has become the youngest person known to have a rare ultra-retentive memory.

Emily Nash, 18, from near Ottawa, is one of only about 100 people confirmed to have Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, a condition only identified in 2006.

Those with HSAM are able to remember every day of their life in extreme detail, and recall precise moments from years ago perfectly. Emily jokingly calls HSAM her “superpower” – but she and others with the condition are also unable to forget bad memories, and will relive painful moments as if they happened yesterday.

The teenager has now agreed to assist a study at the University of Texas to help scientists understand conditions that affect the memory such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Emily and her parents have known all her life that her memory was remarkable, but she told Canadian network CTV News that her diagnosis was comforting. “I just felt so much relief knowing that I’m not alone, that it’s not something I made up. It’s something that actually exists.”

Some with the unusual ability say their memory is like a colour-coded calendar, which they can access at any time. Emily said that she saw all her experiences filed in her brain as films. “Each day kind of represents a little movie, where I can rewind and fast forward and replay various points throughout my day.”

As a child, she could recall perfectly a series of coloured bowling pins after her father, Jason Nash, showed her the sequence for 10 seconds.

“She would knock them off right away in terms of identifying every pin, in terms of, you know, red, yellow, green, blue,” Jason said.

At the age of five, Emily could watch a Peanuts cartoon and afterwards recite lines from any moment in the show.

“We knew that at that point in time there was something going on with her memory, but we couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was like,” said her mother, Julie Farnsworth. “So we thought we should just let it develop a little more naturally on its own to try and figure out what it is.”

Many of those with HSAM also have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Emily’s diagnosis came thanks to an actor, Marilu Henner, who starred in the original stage production of Grease and who was nominated for five Golden Globes for the late ’70s-early ’80s sitcom, Taxi.

Henner, now 74, appeared on 60 Minutes in 2010 and discussed her ability to recall every day of her life from the age of 11 onwards. The program also featured professional violinist Louise Owen, who also has HSAM, who described her life as an associate violinist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York City, her time on Broadway and touring North America and Europe with Barbra Streisand.

Eleven years later, on Remembrance Day 2021, Farnsworth was designing a tombstone for her parents. When she was asked for the dates of her parents’ births and marriage, she joked that she would ask “Wikipedia” and texted her daughter, Emily – who replied immediately with the correct dates. The headstone designer had seen the 60 Minutes episode with Henner, and encouraged Farnsworth to watch it.

“It was a jaw-dropping moment when I realised the similarities,” Farnsworth said, after watching the program.

Jason Nash began quizzing their daughter to see how strong her memory really was.

“We said, ‘Well, can you name the day of the week? Can you go back, you know, a year and tell us exactly what you did on that date? You know, what were you wearing? What did you eat?’. She was able to explain all those things,” he said.

Nash said he always knew Emily had an astonishing memory, but never realised it was a condition.

Emily was relieved to know she wasn’t just “weird”.

Emily Nash, 18, from near Ottawa, is one of only about 100 people confirmed to have Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), a condition only identified in 2006. Source: (CTV W5)

The ability is not well understood, and few people are studying it. Some, however, believe it is actually relatively widespread, and could affect up to 700,000 people.

Emily sat for a series of tests conducted by scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago. She also worked with Carmen Westerberg, a psychology and sleep researcher at Texas State University.

Westerberg said she was unsurprised how little research there was into HSAM, given how rare the phenomenon is.

Her study, she said, was the only one of its kind and it took years to obtain the necessary funding. Pharmaceutical companies are yet to see dollar signs flashing because the research is at such an early stage.

“A researcher might not be very willing to take on someone who claims to have a condition like this,” she said.

“Because it’s not harming the person, they might not be so interested, and any doctor they saw, well, that would likely be the only person they saw.”

Westerberg said the 60 Minutes episode, which alerted Emily’s parents to HSAM, was a game-changer. Another person confirmed with HSAM, Joey DeGrandis, was 26 when he saw the program and came to understand his situation.

“We now have enough people to do solid research studies,” Westerberg said.

Her study began in 2020, but was paused by the pandemic. Researchers now hope to conclude their work by the end of the year.

Many of those with HSAM also have obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Farnsworth said her straight-A daughter’s only obsession was her school work.

Westerberg has not found any clusters of people with HSAM; she said they are evenly spread, and age is not a factor.

The fact we all now carry computers in our pockets, to check dates and find directions, was not affecting her work, she said. “I don’t think that that will be a problem, because it’s just their memories for their personal experiences. You won’t get that from an iPhone or a computer.”

Westerberg said the most interesting discovery is that those with HSAM do not suffer from the same memory decay as others. “They’re not really taking in more information. It’s just that they are not forgetting it like most people do.”

Scientists in Italy are already using some of the initial research findings to see if they can help Alzheimer’s patients.

A team from the universities of Perugia and Trento are administering “transcranial magnetic stimulation” – a non-invasive technique that administers magnetic pulses to the brain – to a group of early-stage Alzheimer’s patients. They are targeting the part of the brain identified in HSAM.

Emily now hopes to study biomedical science or biotechnology, and to meet more people who share her ability. Her mother, a psychiatric nurse, is working on helping her daughter deal with the inability to forget bad memories.

“I’ve tried to teach her that everybody has heartbreak. That is part of life,” she said.

“There will be breakups, and she has to expect that, and it’s part of our growth. Sometimes it does keep me up at night, thinking, ‘How will it be for her?’. I don’t think any of us can quite conceptualise what it will be like.”

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Making sense of HSAM

A person who has HSAM

– Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory – is able to recall, in precise detail, every day of their lives.

They can remember dates, events, emotions, even what the weather was like. They remember bad and good feelings and events.

Those with HSAM do not have an abnormally high IQ, nor do they use memory tricks.

But they often have OCD, and can suffer from depression and anxiety due to reliving in vivid detail bad experiences.

The condition was first identified in 2006. Only about 100 people have been diagnosed, but as many as 700,000 could exist.

 

How is it tested?

Scientists will begin by selecting well-known events and asking the person for the date, then the day of the week.

They will then progress to asking about a specific day, chosen at random. The subject will be asked what the weather was, what happened in current affairs, pop culture or politics, and what day of the week it was.

Why are scientists excited?

Understanding why people have extremely good memories will, it is hoped, help us to understand why some have very poor memories, such as those with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Scientists at the universities of Perugia and Trento in Italy are already beginning to explore whether the unusual brain activity identified in sleeping HSAM people can be somehow reproduced to slow memory decay among those with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Two US university teams are midway through a study of 12 adults with HSAM, who are compared with 24 people without the condition. They are analysing the participants’ brains while they sleep, and have detected higher levels of “sleep spindles” – the jagged lines in an ECG, which are believed to demonstrate when memories are being recorded.

Their study will be completed at the end of the year. The human brain is still, however, one of the least-understood organs in the body.

The Times