Exetera Magazine
Drawings by Stephen Wiltshire
The Reminissue
ceptual fiction, but the condition is real and affects a number of Although Price acknowledges eidetic memory can be useful, people worldwide. We are not talking about Derren Brown’s im- she generally see the condition as a burden. She lives an uneditpressive ability to memorise a London A to Z, or British memory ed life, feeling bad about things that happened thirty years ago champion Dominic O’Brien who can remember the sequence of and experiences old emotions viscerally as if grievances had a pack of cards in just three minutes. We are talking about a rare happened just that second. They say time is a great healer. But neurological condition, commonly referred to as photographic for Price the emotions felt after a break-up are as strong as if memory or total recall, officially called eidetic memory. the split happened yesterday. Regrets, choices, decisions – every Notable cases of eidetic memory include event and subsequent emotion appears fresh Stephen Wiltshire, who can memorize the “I have a split screen in my and clear. skyline of a city from one helicopter ride and head. I am here with you in Scientists have a hard time explaining the draw it with implausible accuracy (pictured). the present, but I also have condition. Enlargement in the brain of paJohn Von Neumann possesses similar powers a screen where I have a loop tients reflect the same pattern as those with of recollection: he is able to memorise a col- of memories free flowing all OCD. Just as people with OCD are in a conumn of a phone book with a single glance. It is stant battle to horde and organise things, the time.” Jill Price of America, however, who holds the - Jill Price suffers of eidetic memory too ‘horde’ images title of the most extreme case of eidetic memin their minds. Scientists hope that Price’s ory ever documented. Price claims that is was around the age mind could prove crucial in helping to unlock the secret of of twelve when she started to live two lives simultaneously, one Alzheimer’s disease and may even go some way to understanding in the present and the other in the past. “I have a split screen in the nature of genius. my head,” she told journalist Diane Sawyer. “I am here with you So next time you are staring at a blank exam paper, strugin the present, but I also have a screen where I have a loop of gling to recall information, perhaps take a small, infinitesimal memories free flowing all the time.” Price travels back in time solace in the fact that our happiness depends on not just what we in her mind, trawling through past memories and, like Ireneo, experience, but what we choose to edit from our lives and forget. constructing whole events and experiences. She finds it cathartic to keep a diary and so far has amassed over 50,000 pages worth.
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