超忆人的福与祸

A handful of people can recall almost every day of their lives in enormous detail – and after years of research, neuroscientists are finally beginning to understand how they do it.

一些人可以细致入微地记起他们生命中的每一天——在做了多年研究之后，神经学家终于开始理解他们这些人是怎么做到的了。

For most of us, memory is a kind of scrapbook, a mess of blurred and faded snapshots of our lives. As much as we would like to cling on to our past, even the most poignant moments can be washed away with time.

对于我们当中的大部分人来说，记忆类似于一本剪贴簿，是由我们生活中模糊而褪色的快照式记忆组成的一团乱麻。无论我们多么不愿意放弃我们的过去，甚至是往事不堪回首也会随着时间褪去。

Ask Nima Veiseh what he was doing for any day in the past 15 years, however, and he will give you the minutiae of the weather, what he was wearing, or even what side of the train he was sitting on his journey to work.

问一下Nima Veiseh在过去15年间的某一天他正在做什么，然而，他会告诉你当天天气的细节状况，他穿了什么，或是甚至告诉你在去上班的路上他坐在了火车的哪一边。

“My memory is like a library of VHS tapes, walk-throughs of every day of my life from waking to sleeping,” he explains.

“我的记忆像是一座装载了录影带的图书馆，记录了我生命里每一天从我起床到入睡的走场，”他解释道。

Veiseh can even put a date on when those reels started recording: 15 December 2000, when he met his first girlfriend at his best friend’s 16th birthday party. He had always had a good memory, but the thrill of young love seems to have shifted a gear in his mind: from now on, he would start recording his whole life in detail. “I could tell you everything about every day after that.”

Veiseh甚至能记得这些卷带开始记录的日期：2000年12月15日，那一天在他最好朋友16岁的生日聚会上他遇见了他的初恋女友。他向来记忆力就好，但是年幼爱恋的激动似乎改变了他脑中的齿轮：从那一刻起，他开始记录他全部生命的细节。“我可以告诉你从那以后我生命里的所有事。”

Needless to say, people like Veiseh are of great interest to neuroscientists hoping to understand the way the brain records our lives. Quick explanations – such as the possibility that it may be associated with autism – have proven to be unfounded, but a couple of recent papers have finally opened a window on these people’s extraordinary minds. And this research might even suggest ways for us all to relive our past with greater clarity.

无需多说，神经学家对像Veiseh这样的人抱有极大兴趣，希望去弄明白大脑是如何去记录我们的生命的。草率的解释——像是这种现象与孤独症有关——已被证明是毫无根据的，但一些最近的研究论文最终向这些人的超强大脑开了一扇窗。

Jill Price kept a diary to try to lay her intrusive memories to rest. As a bonus, her notes have now allowed scientists to verify her claims

Jill Price为了安置她不断出现的记忆习惯性记日记。她的记录对于科学家来说是一项福利，可以让他们去辨别她话的真伪。

‘Highly superior autobiographical memory’ (or HSAM for short), first came to light in the early 2000s, with a young woman named Jill Price. Emailing the neuroscientist and memory researcher Jim McGaugh one day, she claimed that she could recall every day of her life since the age of 12. Could he help explain her experiences?

“超级自传体记忆”（英文简称HASM）以一个名叫Jill Price的亲身经历，于2000年代早些时候第一次进入公众视野。一天，她向神经学家及记忆研究员Jim McGaugh发邮件声称她可以记起自12岁之后她生命里每一天的事情。神经学家可以帮忙解释她的亲身经历么？

Intrigued, McGaugh invited her to his lab, and began to test her: he would give her a date and ask her to tell him about the world events on that day. True to her word, she was correct almost every time.

有了极大的兴趣，McGaugh邀请她去他的实验室，开始做测试：神经学家会给出一个日期，要求她说出那一天的国际事件。如她所言，她差不多每次都是对的。

Luckily, Price had also kept a diary throughout that period, allowing the researchers to verify her recollections of personal incidents too; again, she was right the vast majority of the time. After a few years of these sporadic studies, they decided to give her a further, spontaneous test: “Name the dates of every single time you’ve visited our lab”. In an instant, she reeled off a list of their appointments. “None of us was able to recall this list,” McGaugh and his colleagues noted, but comparing her account with their own records, they found that she was absolutely accurate.

幸运的是，Price同样也在那段测试时期记日记，这让研究人员也可以核实查证她对私人生活事件的记忆；又一次证明，绝大多数时候她是对的。在做了几年这种零散的实验之后，研究人员决定去对她做一个更深入并且水到渠成的测试：“说出你每一次来我们实验室的日期”。瞬间，她一口气列出了他们见面日期的清单。“我们当中没有一个人可以记出这份清单，”McGaugh和他的同事记录道，但当他们拿她的列表和自己的记录做比较的时候，他们发现她绝对准确。

It didn’t take long for magazines and documentary film-makers to cotton on to her “total recall”, and thanks to the subsequent media interest, a few dozen other subjects (including Veiseh) have since come forward and contacted the team at the University of California, Irvine. During one of his visits, Veiseh’s memory proved to be so accurate that he even found himself correcting the scientists’ test about the exact date that Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

杂志和纪录片制作者没花多久就理解了她的“全面回忆”，多亏了媒体随之而来的兴趣，一些其他研究对象（包括Veiseh）自那时起自告奋勇联系他们在美国加州大学欧文分校的团队。其中的一名拜访者Veiseh被证实有着非常精确的记忆力，他甚至不自觉地在纠正科学家出的有关菲尔普斯在2008年北京奥运会获得第八金的确切日期的测试题目。

An extraordinary memory can make it hard to escape the pain of the past

超凡记忆使从过去的痛苦中逃离变得困难重重

Given these findings, could we all train ourselves to think and remember like Veiseh, Donohue or Bill? Stark is intrigued by the idea. Some of his colleagues are hoping to launch an app that may encourage the active, detailed rehearsal seen in the HSAM subjects, to see if it improves later recollection. There’s already some evidence that this may be effective: one recent study found that simply replaying an event in your head for a few seconds, immediately after it had happened, led to stronger recall a week later.

鉴于这些发现，我们会训练自己像他们一样去思考和记忆么？Stark着迷于这个想法。他的同事正希望在超级自传体记忆项目里去开发一款应用来鼓励积极详尽的训练来看看这种方法是否可以提高后天的记忆力。有一些证据表明这或许是有效的：一份最近的研究发现：在一件事发生完之后，大脑立即用几秒钟简单重复一件事，一星期之后的记忆都会比较牢固。

In reality, Stark compares it to exercise: the idea of a super memory might be nice in theory but harder to put in practice. “Look, many of us could also have fit, athletic bodies. There are great motivations – yet few of us do it.”

事实上，Stark把好记忆力类比成锻炼过程：超级记忆的概念或许在理论上很完美，但是运用到实际中比更加困难。“看，我们当中许多人也拥有健美身材。远大动机有很多——然而鲜有人去做”

The people with HSAM I’ve interviewed would certainly agree that it can be a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it allows you to relive the most transformative and enriching experiences. Veiseh, for instance, is something of a polymath. He travelled a lot in his youth to compete in international taekwondo competitions, but in his spare time, he visited the local art galleries, and perhaps because his love of art is entwined with his identity, the paintings are now lodged deep in his autobiographical memories.

我面谈过的拥有超级自传体记忆的人们都必会同意他们的这种特质是一份福祸相惜的天赐。从正面讲，这种能力可以让你重现最具转折及最丰富的人生历程。例如，Veiseh就是个博学多才的人。他在年少时出游甚多去参加世界跆拳道比赛，但是在业余时间，他参观当地艺术画廊，或许他对艺术的热爱已与他的人格交织在一起，那些绘画现在深深的印在了他自传体系的记忆中。

“Imagine being able to remember every painting, on every wall, in every gallery space, between nearly 40 countries,” he says. “That’s a big education in art by itself.” With this encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of art, he has since become a professional painter, under the moniker "Enigma of Newyork". Similarly, his memory may have also aided his other career as a doctoral researcher in design and technology, he thinks, by helping him to absorb a vast body of knowledge.

“想想一下能够记得将近40个国家在画廊的每一个空间、每一面墙上的每一幅画，”他说道。“这本身就是一项巨大的艺术教育。”“拥有百科全书式艺术史方面的知识，”他后来成为了拥有绰号“纽约之谜”的职业画家。同样，他认为，通过吸收大量的知识，作为一名设计与技术专业博士研究员，他的记忆力也助他拓展了职业领域。

Donohue, now a history teacher, agrees that it helped during certain parts of her education: “I can definitely remember what I learned on certain days at school. I could imagine what the teacher was saying or what it looked like in the book.”

Donohue，现在是一名历史老师，承认在她上学的时候这项能力很有益处：“我绝对可以记得在学校某一天的所学所得。我能想起来老师说了什么或者书上是怎么写的。”

Not everyone with HSAM has experienced these benefits, however; Price “hated” school and as a result, seemed not to be able to access the information she had learned. Clearly, the information still has to be personally important for it to stick.

并不是所有拥有超级自传体记忆的人都能体验到这些福利，然而，Price“痛恨”学校，因此她无法利用她所学的信息。显而易见，信息仍然不得不对于个体来说很重要才能被记住。

Viewing the past in high definition can also make it very difficult to get over pain and regret. “It can be very hard to forget embarrassing moments,” says Donohue. “You feel same emotions – it is just as raw, just as fresh… You can’t turn off that stream of memories, no matter how hard you try.” Veiseh agrees: “It is like having these open wounds – they are just a part of you,” he says.

以高清晰度观察过去同样也能使克服痛苦与遗憾这件事变得非常困难。“忘记尴尬时刻是非常艰难的，”Donohue说道，“你感同身受——记忆没有任何变化，仿佛刚发生...无论你有多努力，你都无法关掉那股记忆流。”Veiseh表示同意:“这感觉就像是身上一直长着这些开放性伤口，他们是你一部分。”

This means they often have to make a special effort to lay the past to rest; Bill, for instance, often gets painful “flashbacks”, in which unwanted memories intrude into his consciousness, but overall he has chosen to see it as the best way of avoiding repeating the same mistakes. “Some people are absorbed in the past but not open to new memories, but that’s not the case for me. I look forward to the each day and experiencing something new.”

“往事回现”中一些不堪的记忆总是闯入他的意识中，但总的来说他选择去把这件事视作避免去犯同样的错误的最好方式。“一些人专注于过去而不能面向新的记忆，但是这不是我的情况。我期待每一天，期待经历新的一些事。”

Veiseh even thinks his condition has made him a kinder, more tolerant person. “Some say ‘forgive and forget’, but since forgetting is a luxury I don’t have, I need to learn to genuinely forgive,” he says. “Not just others, but myself as well.”

Veiseh甚至认为他的自身状况使他成为了一个善人，一个更宽容的人。“一些人‘既往不咎；不念旧恶’，但是自从忘却成了我不可能拥有的奢侈品，我就需要去真诚地原谅，”他说，“不仅仅原谅他人，也要原谅自己。”