Memory magic

Brad Williams

Do you remember every day in your life? Would you like to have that kind of memory or there are some moments you would like to forget? What if you and I, we all, could remember each detail of our life, its every single day? Brad Williams, a mnemonist, can remember it all! 

"Since I was three years old I could remember every day from my life. I remember where I was and what I was doing, what was on the news. I don't have any particular method of memorizing. If you ask me what I was eating 10 years ago for breakfast I can tell you that precisely."

Give Brad Williams a date, and he can usually tell you not only what he was doing but what world events happened that day. He can do this for almost every day of his life.

Williams is one of only three people in the world identified with this off-the-charts autobiographical memory, according to researchers at the University of California-Irvine who gave the condition its name: hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek words for excessive (hyper) and remembering (thymesis).

The California researchers are studying Williams and the two others with hyperthymestic syndrome, a man in Ohio and woman in California, hoping to gain new insights into how a superior memory works.

The goal of the study is to find a way to help people with failing memory.

However Williams himself didn't think he was special at all. "I always thought everyone could remember everything". Maybe we will be able one day...