Speaking of Psychology - Encore - What is it like to remember every day of your life, with Michael Yassa, PhD, and Markie Pasternak

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

For people with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or HSAM, every day is memorable. Ask them what they were doing on this date 10 years ago, and they’ll be able to tell you. Markie Pasternak, one of the youngest people identified with HSAM, and Michael Yassa, PhD, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California Irvine, talk about what it’s like to have this ability, what we know about how the brains of people with HSAM store and retrieve this vast amount of autobiographical information, and what studying this unique ability can teach us more generally about how memory works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaking of psychology is taking a short winter break, so we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from the past year. In May, we talked to Dr. Michael Yasser from the University of California, Irvine about his research on highly superior autobiographical memory, the remarkable ability that some people have to remember nearly every day of their life. Markey Pasternak, a woman with H. Sam, as it's known, also joined us to discuss what it's like to live with H. Sam and how her memory works. I hope you enjoy this episode from our archives. Speaking of psychology, we'll be back in January with new weekly episodes. Thank you for listening. Do you remember where you were on April 10, 1999? What day of the week was it? What about the weather? What were you wearing? And what did you do all day? Chances are you can't answer any of those questions.

For most of us, our autobiographical memory is a bit of a blur. Sure, some special occasions stand out, weddings, birthdays, vacations, along with a bundle of random memories that stick with us for no special reason. But for people with highly superior autobiographical memory, or H. Sam, every day is memorable. Ask someone with H. Sam what they were doing on April 10, 1999, or the 11th, or the 16th, and they'll be able to tell you, along with a bunch of other checkable facts. How do they do that? How do the brains of people with H. Sam store and retrieve this vast amount of detailed autobiographical information? What's it like to be able to remember every day of your life? Is it a blessing or a curse? And what can studying this unusual ability teach us about how

memory works for the rest of us? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mill. We have two guests today. Dr. Michael Yasser is the director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine. The center was established in 1983 by Dr. James McGough, and it's where the first research on highly superior autobiographical memory began about 15 years ago. Today, Dr. Yasser and his colleagues continue to study H-SAM, along with how we learn and remember information, how learning and memory change with age,

and how to better diagnose and treat disorders like Alzheimer's disease. Our second guest is Markey Pastornak, one of the few people in the world confirmed to have H-SAM. In 2014, when she was a junior in college, Ms. Pasternak learned about highly superior autobiographical memory in one of her psychology courses,

realized that it described her special memory, and began participating in research at UC Irvine. She went on to earn a master's degree in education, and today works in student affairs at Auburn University, doing mental wellness and health education outreach. She also blogs and speaks to the media about living with H. Sam. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Yes, thank you so much for having us.

Dr. Yasser, you get the first questions. When people with H. Sam retrieve autobiographical memories, are they doing the same thing that most of us do when we remember our past, but they're just much better at it than the rest of us? You know, you started with a very difficult question, Kim. I think this is really what we're trying to get to the bottom of. And part of the problem is that when we were first kind of exposed to this phenomenon, it violated all of our assumptions about how memory works. So one of the first thoughts was, well, they must be using a different mechanism.

But push to the extreme, one can imagine that, you know, our regular memory systems just have a degree of variation in them that it could be part of the regular mechanisms, just like I said, pushed to the extreme. And we're still not sure if they're part of that natural variation or if they're using very distinct mechanisms. And that's what we're hoping to uncover in the coming years with some brain imaging techniques and various other methods that look deep into the neurobiology of the brain.

Markey, can you talk about how this works for you when you remember a particular day from 10 years ago? what are you doing? Does the memory just pop up or do you have to work to retrieve it? So it kind of depends on the day. I was actually talking to a psychology professor at Auburn about this about a year ago because it's fun working at universities, right? Because the psychology departments get real excited. And what I told him is I, and we kind of coined them, I have these things called go-to dates, right? Dates that just stick in my memory because of an event that happened that maybe had more of an emotional connection to it. So for example, I know like sad example to start off with, But if you ask me the day my father died, right? I'd be like March 16th, 2014, and most people could probably do that. But then I also can remember, you know, the day I saw a boy I had a crush on in the seventh grade for the first time in a while. And that was June 26, 2007.

It was a Tuesday. And I could tell you all about that, right? So, like, they can get, you have more random days that you hold with these things. But, you know, if I can go real back to, let's say go that 2007 date, right? if I can go back and say, yeah, I saw this guy, you know, at the ice rink because I was a figure skater and he was a hockey player and I like bumped into him there and I can tell you all about that. I can also piece around the days around it. And that's where the memory kind of starts coming into fruition. And so I can say, oh, I went to that ice skating practice that day,

even though I didn't usually skate on Tuesday nights over the summer, because I had stayed with another friend on my figure skating team that day. And it was her birthday, um, in a couple days. And so I was spending time with her because it had just been our birthday party the day before. So I can like that context kind of comes in and I can start piecing around it. So sometimes if you ask me like a date, I might be like, oh wait, I don't know exactly what I did on that day quite yet, but I can go to my nearest go to date, put the context together and kind of crawl to it. And it's like a mental image for me. And I know this is different, different people with H Sam.

I know I've talked to some friends with H. Sam who say they just picture like a calendar, like a black and white regular calendar. That's not me. I have some synesthesia as well. So for me, what it looks like is it's like a giant like Candy Land Board sort of a thing. I think of it or like a giant map or like a road with a journey. It's all different colors and there's dates everywhere and there's like people and images and places and it's like this fun place in my brain I can kind of go to and like hop around

and different days and I can like zoom in on the days and the years and all in the times and all that stuff. That sounds amazing. Well, Markey, when did you first realize that your memory was different from that of other people? How old were you? And what triggered that realization? Yeah. So I'm going to be honest. I feel like sometimes when I answer this question, I feel like it's supposed to be an aha moment, right? Like this big, like, oh my gosh, my brain's different. But the reality is, is that it was just a series of little moments that added to the realization over a lot of years because it's so unique and kind of difficult to figure out, especially when it's happening to use a kid, you know, and you don't really have all the vocabulary to describe what's going on. And so the first time

I noticed it was different was probably in 2006. I was, I had just turned 12 years old. And I started realizing I could remember what I was doing a year ago every day. Like I was like, oh, it's, you know, May 11th, like a year ago was our band concert. And then we left for Florida the next day. But like, no one else really cared to remember that our band concert was a year ago that day. But for some reason, I just knew. And like, I remember being like, I should check, like, what's happening? I should check this out. So I went to the home video and there it was like, you know, May 11th, 2005. And I was like, I was like, okay. And so I started realizing it then. And then as the years went on, I realized I could keep doing it. Like it wasn't just, I had a good memory for 2005, 2006 stuck, 2007 stuck,

2008 stuck. And so when I was in eighth grade, I really got obsessed with like memories and old pictures and dates and things like that. And it was just becoming something that was kind of crystallizing in my brain more. And I realized that the first, like, week I could remember was the week of February 9th through the 13th of 2005. And the 9th was a Wednesday. And everything just kind of starts on that Wednesday. And then the next days are real vivid. And then, like, the next week or two is kind of blurry. But then after that, everything is really vivid. And I was like, you know, do I have those dates right? And so I remember I was, I had a figure skating competition as I was talking about figure skating earlier that weekend in a place called Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, or is my father like to call

it Beaver Darn? And I went in the basement and I dug through my mom's like totes of like old memorabilia and scrapbooking stuff. And I found the brochure from that competition. And it said February 13th, 2005. And I was like, all right, I have something here. So that was kind of the realization of it is a kid. Wow. There are 7.9 billion people in the world today, give or take a few thousand. Dr. Yassa, how many people have been confirmed to have H. Sam? And how do you find these people? Another tricky question, Kim.

So I'll give you the answer that we have, but there's a caveat, right? So we have identified, it's smaller than 100 that we have identified in the laboratory. But we are also getting reports from our colleagues actually around the world in different countries. of also having individuals kind of come to them and say, I have this extremely vivid memory in the past. And they may not have seen a 60-minute piece or read about it in a book or a paper, but just sort of think it's curious.

But that's really the issue, is that until maybe Markey has gone through this exercise and really confirmed it, or somebody has seen a piece on 60 minutes or read a paper or heard about it in a class, class, it's really difficult to see this as something different from everybody else. So my guess is that actually there's a lot of people out there that have it and just don't know and have no reason to suspect that it's all that different.

They may just be on the extreme. They might think of themselves as having really good memory, but they may not think of it as a unique condition. And they might look at others around them and think, well, why does everybody else have really crappy memory, you know, as opposed to them sort of being the unique ones? So I think we're probably underestimating the number of folks who have it. I don't think it's limited to 100. I think it's more likely to be in the thousands, which still makes it a unique enough condition.

But we have to have a better means to get those numbers. What are the tests like when you're trying to confirm that somebody actually has it? Yeah, so you've gone through this already, Marky. And here's the problem with the tests, is that the initial phase of the test, testing was really based on sort of almanac type knowledge. Let's pick on something that is can have a veridical record that could be confirmed. So public events, things that, you know, it's very clear what the actual answers are. But it turned out as we, and we were able to identify a lot of people that way. But it turned out as, as time went on, you recognize that there are folks who just, this may

not be their area of expertise. They may not be very attuned to celebrities in particular, you know, public events, but they have incredibly good autobiographical memory. So how do you derive a test that is sensitive to those variations and expertise? And in fact, that's work that's ongoing in our lab right now. We're trying to devise a more individualized approach that takes the categories of expertise of the individual and then selects the questions for the tool based on the areas that they have selected in a pre-test to say, those are the things I'm comfortable with. Those are the areas where I think I have a lot of knowledge that are related to my autobiography. I was a big TV buff when I was growing up.

I love sports, you know, whatever it may be. And then we can be a little bit more sensitive to their special abilities in those kinds of domains. Do people with H-SAM have above-average memories in general, like for facts and figures and non-autobiographical knowledge? That's the part that's really, really interesting. Not at all. So it really is just autobiographical. I know, Marky's making that.

expression that suggests that you wish it was better for everything else. And I think that's the reaction we hear from most people. You know, they weren't maybe all that exceptional in terms of their school. It's not like they could memorize all Shakespeare and all of these things. You know, their memorization is really just average. And if you test them on standardized memory tests, you know, word list, recall and things like that, it's really just average. It seems to be highly specialized for the person's own narrative,

for their own autobiographical memories and events, things that have happened to them and other things that are related to that narrative. So if, say, you're studying French in school and you have H-SAM, does that mean that you're going to have better memory for vocabulary and verb conjugations, for example? Not at all. Unless you can figure out a way to make French really be part of your autobiographical narrative. So if it's, you know, if you've traveled to France and spent time there, it became sort of part of your background and autobiography that I think that that's a possibility. But

just naturally taking it in class, I think the reaction is the same one that you get from everybody else. I'm not going to remember much until I practice it. Marky, what was it like to take the test to confirm that you actually have this? I love this question because not a lot of people ask it. So that's what's cool about being on this podcast in particular. You know, I was nervous. I was really nervous because for me, the stakes were high. The stakes for me taking this test were if I don't, if they asked dates and events that I don't get right, I'm going to be excluded from this group of people that I know I belong to. And that could give me some sort of solidarity in a community where I feel isolated in a lot of the world because of my memory. So I was really nervous,

you know. And so I was a junior in college at Marquette University. I had just learned the previous semester about H. Sam in a class like you had said in the introduction. And my professor was confident I had it. Like she was a neuroscientist and a neuroscience professor studying Alzheimer's opposite of what was going on with me. And she, you know, she knew a lot. She had done her postdoc at UC Irvine and knew a lot of the folks over there and was like, you have. You have. these are the people you need to talk to. Yes, exactly. And so I did the test over the phone.

And I believe my first test was on March 1st of 2015. And what had happened was my friends actually helped me like kind of practice a little bit. So what they did was they would throw me like for the week before like current events randomly. I'd be like studying for a test. And they'd be like, what was the Sandy Hook shooting? I'd be like December 14th, 2012. And like, you know, just so I get my brain in that kind of like, in that mode of like, I can do it quick. Because I can do it if you allow me enough time.

But, you know, I didn't know how long these researchers were willing to give me to answer the questions. And so I had some nice collaborative roommates and friends on campus who were like, we know you have this. We're going to help you. We got this. You know. And the test ended up going well. but to kind of jump on what Dr. Yasa was saying as well is that it's a really difficult thing to test because I was one of the youngest people they had ever tested at the time back in 2015. So they were asking a lot of questions that were not relevant to me and they were not in my time frame.

So if they asked me, you know, gosh, I'm just trying to think, you know, when the Oscars were in 97, I didn't know that because I was three years old and I did not care about the Oscars. but I didn't want that to be a point against me. So they had to like ask me, you know, different questions. And I think that's the another part part about testing H-SAM is that you've got these age groups who can remember different things at different times. So it's not only the interests, but it's the ages because even if I can remember in 2005 and there's like a political event that took place, a fifth grader doesn't care. And probably if I was, you know, I was privileged enough to probably not even have to care at the time. if it didn't affect my population. And so that can be, I think, really difficult, too.

And that's what we ran into in the testing a lot was like, there are just some events that they had asked that were in my time frame, but I didn't hear about, you know, in sixth grade. But they were able to do some replacements. It sounds a little bit like you were studying to go on Jeopardy. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But just like, again, getting my brain in that mode, because I knew I could do it.

I wasn't like memorizing dates or anything. It was just kind of getting in that like recall mode where I could go kind of fast with it. So there was that, you know. Dr. Yasser, what do we know about the causes of H-Sam? Is there a genetic component to it or any other hints about the etiology? Yeah. So we're trying to get to the bottom of the potential heritability. So we don't think it's a direct genetic component as in if somebody has it, they're going to pass it on.

to their children. But interestingly, in some of the cases, it turns out that there's also kind of extended family, relatives, cousins, maybe who have some traces of it as well. So it's a complex heritability pattern, if there is one. And we're working with some colleagues who are really exceptional in terms of working on genetics to try to reveal the basis of this. Interestingly, one thing that might give us some clues is a set of identical twins, and one of them has it, the other one does not. So it automatically tells us that it cannot be genetically inherited directly, because otherwise they would share that.

But there may be something that happens after the original splitting of that DNA that might be different, and we're trying to get to the bottom of that. But it is complicated because we don't have a huge sample to test. And certainly, even within that smaller sample, the number of folks where there might be a trace of heritability is even smaller. So it's not entirely clear how much of it is heritable and how much of it is environmental. With respect to the onset, it does vary from individual to individual. Usually there's sort of a precipitating period or event. usually it's during adolescence where that kind of comes to fully to fruition.

And it may be sort of the first person's first realization that this is what's going on. Or it may be that memories start to get really, really strong after a particular event that could be a big change. It's possible that it's traumatic. It's possible that it's just a kind of a big event that happened in the person's life that is highly salient, consequential, maybe a move or something like that. And then typically folks would report that from that point onwards, they've had these experiences kind of be sealed more into their memories. So, Markey, are you aware of any relatives you have who also have H-SAM? No, but at Marquette, when I was working with Dr. Nielsen in their psychology department, she asked a lot of questions about my parents and actually brought my mom in to do some cognitive testing in an interview.

And what we found is that my mom is really good with like verbal recall and she's also good at, she has a very strong autobiographical memory, not as strong as mine, like remembering certain dates. But if you ask her, she could tell you about events where we sat when we were at this concert or, you know, what was going on in our family last Christmas or, you know, whatever it was. my dad was already passed away by the time that we realized I had H. Sam and there was a name to call it. And so he died the same year I found out I had H. Sam, so a couple months before. But what we remember about my father is he had an incredible ability to remember numbers. He knew people's addresses from his childhood, people's phone numbers from his childhood that he didn't need anymore.

He had our whole family's social security numbers memorized, you know, that he could just say. And so, you know, he had that. And then my mom had the memory thing. So it's kind of interesting how for me those kind of combined in like a memorization of numbers or an ability to remember numbers like dates. And then also the autobiographical part of it as well. I understand there are some links between H-SAM and. and some mental health conditions. Markey, you've written about the connection between your H-SAM and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Can you talk about that? Okay, yeah. So I really feel like my H-SAM and OCD are pretty heavily linked. And it's because any time after I got diagnosed with OCD, people would be like, what are you obsessed with? What are you obsessed with? And I honestly didn't know. I was just like, I have compulsions. and I feel like I have to do things and I have a lot of anxiety and I have a tendency to hoard

things, you know, all things I've been treated for and whatnot. But then as I started working with my, you know, with H-Sam and stuff, I realized my obsession was dates, dates and calendars and my own events in my life because, you know, what it kind of helped me do, or not help me do, but it helped the OCD flourish in a lot of ways when I was younger because I could remember exactly how something happened and then I'd create a ritual to reinforce it. So what would happen was, let's say I wore a particular shirt the day I was taking a math test I was really nervous about. Because of my memory, I could remember, you know, everything I did that day, the shirt I wore, what I ate for breakfast, you know, who I talked to that day. And then my, the part of my brain that

had, you know, was responsible for my OCD would be like, all right, well, next time you've got a math test. If you want to get an A, guess who you have to talk to? Guess what you have to eat for breakfast? Guess what you have to wear? And it started reinforcing that. So I think my memory played a large role into creating a lot of rituals that I was kind of slave to for a long, long time. Dr. Yes, is that common among the people you work with? Absolutely. So we see elements of this, perhaps maybe not at the level of a full diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder, but certainly obsessive tendencies and obsessions, so the thoughts themselves, that seems to be much more highly represented in the group with H. Sam. And, you know, it's interesting, actually, for me really

to hear Markey speak about it because we've struggled to try to understand the causality chain. In other words, is it that those two are sort of co-occurring conditions and they're sort of feeding off of one another and some individuals maybe to an extent but not others, or is one actually leading to the other? In other words, if there's evidence of obsessions that are related to dates, if that happens in any individual who might otherwise be, you know, perfectly fine, does it lead to this H-Sam condition? And we don't know the answer to that. I don't know if it's going to be that simple or straightforward, to be honest with you. I do think that there are some interesting shared traits and shared mechanisms, especially as Markie was talking about,

obsessing over dates, and they become much more important, much more consequential, because you see the value. That kind of feed-forward cycle can precipitate the condition, can perhaps lead to higher levels of anxiety and higher levels of OCD, but also can make the H-SAM abilities much more reinforceable. So if you're practicing this often and thinking about it often, you can imagine, just like anything else, you're going to get better at it. One thing that Mark you mentioned earlier, which I love because I've heard it now from a number of our volunteers, is the notion of going back a year. So saying, you know, today is April 16th. What happened on April 16th, 2020? What about 2019?

What about 2018? And we'll often hear that. And it seems like, you know, kind of a strange thing, maybe, but it is an archival mechanism. It's a way to kind of build a record of the past day by day. So we're still trying to figure out what those organizational schemes might look like, but I'm fascinated that this game of going back a year is actually something that was commonly shared across a number of volunteers that we've spoken to. You were both quoted in a Wall Street Journal article last summer about how the COVID lockdowns were affecting people's memory. And as you talked about this, going back a year, going back a year and going back a year, what has the lockdown done to the memories of people

with H. Sam? So if you're directing this at me, I can tell you just in generalities. And what we have heard from some of our volunteers is that they don't feel that their track record, their memory of the past is as good as it was. Because there's not enough events and not enough things happening, not enough salient dates with real occurrences to be able to gravitate to. But we've heard the same thing also from everybody else. So I don't think it's just limited to H-SAM. I think it really is kind of almost like a memory fog that we're all experiencing because it has been so monotonous and we've all been stuck at home and locked down.

There hasn't been enough experiences with novelty in them that our memory systems kind of gravitate to and say, this is important, I need to store that for later use. But I'd love to hear from Marky what her feelings have been also. Yeah, I would too. Is it disconcerting that you don't have these hooks to grab onto? Yeah, and it's, I've really found it's just a portion of lockdown. And maybe it's because I live in Alabama, so it looks a little different here. But, you know, last March is really vivid. Last March when, you know, I remember like, you know, everything shutting down and all all of like how that was playing out.

And like my last, the last day, like the day we found out that like the university, Auburn University was going to shut down like March 13th, right? That was that Friday. And then that Sunday on the 15th, all staff got an email like, hey, we're going to start doing some remote work. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's happening? And I remember, you know, on the 11th that Wednesday, I was seeing the movie Emma about the Jane Austen novel.

And it was, you know, I didn't know it was the last time I'd be sitting in a movie theater for a really long time. And all of a sudden, my phone just starts buzzing and buzzing. And I was like, what's going on? And the NBA is getting canceled. March Madness is getting canceled. And it was like, what's happening? But man, I have to tell you, April is blurry. April is is gone.

Like it's, I remember Easter, because we did like a family Zoom Easter. My boyfriend and I and then my two friends that are back in Indiana, we did. We played ticket to ride virtually together one weekend, and that'll be a year ago on this coming Sunday. So I remember that. But there's like very few events because when you're working from home and you're not, and you're not even leaving your apartment, you know, for anything besides going to the grocery store, it's, it was murky.

But when it came back was Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, Memorial Day weekend of last year with not only having a holiday. and things like that, but then the killing of George Floyd happened. And so that is, like, I think a big event for me that kind of like started the H-SAM again of like, okay, we're back. Like, and events started happening. Dr. Yasser, what is the practical application of your work in this area? I mentioned in the intro in looking at Alzheimer's, kind of the opposite where people

lose their autobiographical memory. Is this going to help with that? We hope so. And in particular, some of our colleagues have also kind of identified what we think is the opposite scheme, what they call S-dam or severely deficient autobiographical memory. So this is my colleague Brian Levine and his laboratory have identified individuals who have very, very fuzzy records of the past. Now, they still do okay on other memory tests and okay in other facets of life. And they're not Alzheimer's patients or anything like that, but their record. of the past is not as rich as most of us would have.

So it seems like there is sort of a continuum or maybe a bell-shaped curve with two extremes here. And understanding the extremes always informs us about the process and the mechanism. When the condition was first identified, Dr. McGaugh, I think, is quoted, as saying this might have us, you know, rewrite the textbooks and really rethink the way we think about memory, we've always grown in the field to think that memory is adaptive because it doesn't store everything. It leaves a lot out and really focuses on things that can be used for generalizable knowledge. And in fact, there are lots of examples about how damaging it would be if we tried to store everything because we would not be able to generalize.

However, seeing and the experience of those with age, Sam suggests otherwise. suggest that maybe we miss something in that original assessment, and that it is possible to generalize flexibly and be able to apply knowledge and have an exceptional track record of the past. So from a fundamental neuroscience perspective alone, it's really informative to try to understand that condition. And, of course, once you understand the machine and how it works, you can start to understand also how it breaks down.

So I do think there's going to be a lot of applicability to conditions where we have memory loss, not just Alzheimer's disease, but a variety of different neuropsychiatric illnesses as well. So, Markey, I'm guessing that as a result of your work with Dr. Yass's lab, that you were able to meet other people like yourself with H. Sam. What was that like to finally meet somebody who has a memory like yours? I would say that the first meeting was very dramatic because 60 Minutes Australia made it very dramatic.

But Dr. Yes is like, yeah, I think I've seen this video. But anyway. What did they do? Oh, my gosh. So I met Becky, who is a lovely, lovely woman from Australia, from, I believe, Queensland, Australia that has H.SAM as well. And 60 Minutes Australia wanted to do a segment on her as being, at the time, at least, the only Australian and maybe still the only Australian with H-Sam. And her dream was to meet another person with H-Sam.

So they looked at kind of the prospective folks and noticed I was the closest one to her age and also a girl. And so, you know, they thought it'd be good for us to meet. So 60 minutes and all their team flew my mom and I out to Los Angeles and we got to meet Becky. And they did this very dramatic like walk-in scene of like me standing in a courtyard and like her walking in, like it was the bachelor or something. And then also the hilarious part too is like,

and anyone listening to this who has filmed a TV show before will know this, but they had to do that take like 10 times. And so, you know, I met her for the first time once, but I had to act as like surprised and shocked and in awe as like I did the first time. And you know, Becky and I aren't TV actresses here. Like we're not, we're not trying to get big or anything. So it was just kind of funny as they're like, all right, act surprise again. And we're like, okay.

So, you know, it was kind of funny. But Becky and I did get to develop a relationship and become friends. And that was the actual meaningful part. And that was the first time I had met anyone. The second time was when I was doing a segment for Scientific American and they filmed us in New York City when I was a graduate student back in 2017. and I got to meet Joey and Nicole, who are both East Coasters with H-Sam. And so meeting them was really awesome too.

They didn't do the dramatic meet scene. They kind of just had us all like in a, you know, in kind of a panel kind of mode and stuff like that. But it's really cool to meet others with H-Sam because you can talk about like similar experiences that you have because of your H-Sam that other people may not experience. You can make jokes with them too, you know, date-related jokes. that are super fun. And just, again, just relate to, you know, we all have friends that we relate to for certain things, right? Like if me and a friend are really into at the NFL, you know, we're going to connect over that. But there's only a handful of people in the world that you can connect over this with. And so it's really special when you get to meet. Dr. Yes, where is this research going next?

What's the big question you would still like to answer? So there's a few avenues that we're pursuing. One is that we would like to use more sort of validated tests to really fully assess the extent of H-SAM and be able to cater to different ranges of experiences in different ages, as Markey said. So we've developed a couple of tools that we're able to use in children and adolescents that are not so time and era sensitive. We've developed another one that is tapping into different areas of expertise, and we're just in the process of validates. those tests and making sure that they are reproducible and reliable and using them on a large enough data set so we can get a better feel for the prevalence of H-SAM. Second, we would like to keep experimenting with the neurobiology and really try to understand how is it that brains might be wired a little bit differently or have developed in a slightly different way to allow for these superior abilities to manifest. And that involves brain imaging studies, which we're embarking on. And then the third piece is the genetics and trying to really figure out if there is a heritable pattern

and trying to figure out if there's something about gene environment interactions, perhaps in the earliest ages and during childhood and adolescents that allow for this to fully kind of come through. So those are, I think, the three areas that we're mostly concerned with right now. And we're expanding to work with some collaborators who really do exceptional work in these areas to have a better handle on it. Last question, to Markey, are you glad you have this ability or would you give it up? That's a hard question. It's really a hard one. And the answer lies somewhere in the middle. And that's what I've had to come to in the choices I've had to make. So when I found out that I had obsessive disorder, you know, I had the opportunity to start getting

treatments or getting medicated. And when I started getting medicated, my ability to recall as fast and quick and almost even sometimes accurately as I could started to go away. And so, you know, I had to end up making the choice. Do I want to live with OCD and H-SAM or do I want to not really live with a muted version of OCD and a muted version of H-SAM? And I chose living with a muted version because I'm a full functioning human being with dimensions to my wellness and to my life. And I love having H-SAM and the ability to go back in the past and recall. call and remember and cherish and savor those memories is so important to me. But it can't get in the way of the rest of my life in my future. It's kind of like picking between the past and the future.

And it's a hard choice. But, you know, I still have the ability. Could it be, again, more entertaining on TV shows if I stopped my treatment for OCD? Maybe, yeah. But is it worth it? It's not. And so it's kind of hard, but I'm glad I'm at where I'm at now with balance. Thank you both for joining us today. It's been a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate you taking the time and telling us personal stories. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much, Kim. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology at www.combeingof Psychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us

at Speaking of Psychology at APA.org. That's Speaking of Psychology, all one word, at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condihan. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills. Do you remember where you were on April 10th, 1999?

What day of the week was it? No, no, no, we were supposed to answer that. I'm so sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I was just, my bad. my bad. I was just like, I was four. I thought it was a question, too. No, this is the intro. This is the intro. I'm trying to.

My bad, my bad, my bad. Trying to bring people in. All right. Okay, Chris, Chris, never mind all that.