Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM)

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Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is a condition that causes people to remember almost every single detail of their autobiographical events. Given that patients with amnesia, depression, and/or suicidal thoughts have trouble imagining their future because their pasts are disrupted, those with abnormally detailed pasts should have greater ease in simulating future autobiographical episodes. However, this does not seem to be the case. Rather, the patients seem to be just as stuck in time since their past always accompanies them (following the static time model). In fact, one patient describes, “it is… like living with a split screen: on the left side is the present, on the right is a constantly rolling reel of memories” (Rodriguez McRobbie, 2017, para. 9). Similarly, Brockmeier (2000, p. 67) describes this mode as “a fixed constellation determined by an all-dominating experience or by irresolvable contradictions and conflicts.” For HSAM patients, though, it is not so much an “all-dominating experience,” as it is the fact that all experiences are on the same level of dominance. All of a patient’s autobiographical past has a say in the present and future which can have an overwhelming effect or place the patient into a mode of constant reminiscence.

Following the fact that the entire autobiographical past is remembered, it seems that autobiographical time may not exist for HSAM patients, as it would only be chronological time. However, patients can still place importance on certain memories and their narrative can still vary from context to context, so autobiographical time would still exist separately from chronological time for HSAM patients. Furthermore, HSAM patients have been shown to be just as susceptible to false memories, meaning that their present and futures are indeed affecting their past memories, as a memory recall “is formed not only by what they think happened and how they felt at the time, but by what they know and feel now” (Rodriguez McRobbie, 2017, para. 58).