The famous American cyberneticist John von Neumann made a sensational discovery in the middle of the last century: he calculated that the human brain can contain about 1020 "files" of any information - more than all the collections of the Russian National Library! But do we need to remember so much? Neumann himself, possessing a phenomenal memory for numerical calculations, kept forgetting where his house was and what his family looked like. So amazing memory syndromes cause a lot of problems not only for scientists who cannot figure out their mechanisms in any way, but also for those who have such unique abilities
Without a brain, but with memory
The most famous syndrome that affects human memory is the syndrome of giftedness: genius people often have a phenomenal, but very selective "memory". Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and our commander Alexander Suvorov knew the names, faces and characters of all their subordinates, whose number reached 30,000! But at the same time, in other areas, their memory was absolutely powerless. In the same way, the composers Mozart, Rachmaninov and Glazunov had hundreds of thousands of scores in their heads, but could not even remember the address of the concert hall.
But the most unique and most unfortunate owner of the giftedness syndrome is the famous "rain man" Kim Peek. Friends call him "Kim Pewter" because he has a huge database of world and American history, sports, cinema, geography, space exploration, the Bible, church history, literature and classical music in his head. He knows all the area codes and postal codes of the United States, the names of all the local television stations in the country, remembers the maps of all cities in America and can tell you how to get around any of them.
At the same time, the unique is by no means distinguished by genius, with great difficulty coordinates the actions of his arms and legs, cannot button the buttons on his jacket, does not know how to joke and does not understand the meaning of common proverbs. His brain is struck by an inexplicable anomaly: it is much larger than that of 99% of people, the cerebellum is severely deformed, and there is no necessary ligament between the two hemispheres - the so-called corpus callosum. Scientists cannot explain how Kim manages to live with such a brain and, most importantly, why he remembers so much.
Eternity does not smell - it means that it does not exist
Another strange memory anomaly bears the name of our compatriot - Shereshevsky syndrome. This man was a reporter and lived at the beginning of the 20th century. Shereshevsky involuntarily memorized gigantic volumes of various data due to the fact that he literally saw and felt them. For example, recalling the voice of a person, he said: "You have such a yellow and crumbly voice." He saw the number 7 as a man with a mustache. Moreover, once perceived, Shereshevsky could reproduce in 10 and 20 years.
But this amazing syndrome turned Shereshevsky's life into sheer torment. For example, it was very difficult for him to read - the strings of images that settled in his head did not allow him to break through to the meaning of the book. In addition, the reporter did not manage to forget at all, so he suffered from insomnia. But Shereshevsky could not remember some abstract concepts, because he could not see their color and feel their smell: it is not known, for example, what eternity smells like. And finally, it turned out that the unique, memorizing many words, did not at all perceive their meaning: when he was asked to remember the word denoting an infectious disease, the unique was confused.
Shereshevsky is not the only owner of the syndrome of his name. Rimsky-Korsakov also suffered from it, remembering notes only by the colors, which, as it seemed to him, they radiated. And for another composer, Scriabin, the sounds evoked a physical sensation of touch, so it seemed to him that he was playing not the piano, but his own body.
Conscience is not forgotten
Even more interesting is the forgetfulness syndrome (biographical amnesia), when people, having experienced some kind of stress, completely forget a part of their life. This phenomenon was recently studied at the Russian Institute of Forensic Psychiatry named after Serbsky.
As the professor of the institute Zurab Kekelidze said, victims of attacks sometimes forget everything - down to the instincts that are considered innate! For example, one patient forgot why and how to have sex with his wife - his instinct for procreation has completely disappeared! Another patient lost the instinct for self-preservation to such an extent that he did not even realize that he was hungry and he needed to eat.
But the most interesting thing is that even those who forgot all basic human instincts kept their conscience! Who was a conscientious person - and after loss of memory remained so: for example, several patients asked to show them on TV, saying: “What if I’m a criminal, what if I did something wrong? After all, I must be punished! It turns out that morality does not depend on what we remember about ourselves, and is a kind of genetic memory.
Remember all
The opposite also happens - there are people who remember in detail every day of their lives from birth! True, there are very few of them - so far only 3 people have been found all over the world. They remember the faces of the obstetricians who took them during childbirth, remember in detail all the conversations they had themselves and heard from others, remember all the addresses, titles and books they read. These people suffer from absolute memory syndrome.
Interestingly, all the owners of this syndrome are ordinary people with average mental abilities. One of them - American Brad Williams - chronicles on local radio. Another unique woman - known in scientific articles under the code AJ - is generally a housewife. They agreed to become "guinea pigs" for scientists only because they dream of getting rid of many unnecessary and unpleasant memories. However, while scientists are powerless to help them - the mechanisms of the syndrome are still not clear.
Fantasy or Past Life?
The most controversial is the so-called false memory syndrome. It is believed that only nervous and suggestible people are subject to it: they are sure that they keep some kind of memory, and when checked, it turns out that they just invented this part of their past - nothing like this has ever happened to them. For example, one American woman was absolutely sure that she remembered being raped by a school teacher at the age of 11, by whom she became pregnant and had to have an abortion. The memory was so vivid that the woman sued her alleged abuser! And only in court, when checking medical documents, it turned out that there had never been any rape.
For some reason, sexual harassment is the most common theme of false memories. Moreover, it is impossible to convince people affected by this syndrome. But scientists also consider memories of a past life to be a manifestation of this anomaly. True, this theory has a refutation. For example, there is a reliable case of a Soviet serviceman who came under fire in Afghanistan and after that, waking up in the hospital, spoke in strange languages. After listening to the recordings, linguists confirmed that the man speaks flawlessly in several little-known "dead" dialects! After all, he could not come up with them - it turns out that our memory, in addition to the already known syndromes, keeps a lot of mysteries.
Natalya Barsova Onegin's
MK-fact
saved the memory
It is known that we owe Alexander Pushkin's poem Eugene Onegin not only to the poet himself, but also to his brother Lev, who had a rare auditory memory. Moving from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Pushkin lost the fifth chapter of Onegin, which he had not yet had time to send to print. And the draft chapter had already been destroyed. The upset poet wrote a letter to his brother, to whom he had already read his work once, and asked him to recall at least some lines. Imagine Pushkin's surprise when, in response, he received the full text of the lost chapter, reproduced with precision to the comma!