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Hyperthymesia is the condition of possessing an extremely detailed autobiographical memory. Hyperthymestics remember an abnormally vast number of their life experiences. Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill, and James McGaugh (2006) identified two defining characteristics of hyperthymesia: Spending an excessive amount of time thinking about one's past, and displaying an extraordinary ability to recall specific events from one's past.〔 The word "hyperthymesia" derives from Ancient Greek: ''hyper-'' ("excessive") and ''thymesis'' ("remembering"). Hyperthymesia is also known as hyperthymestic syndrome and highly superior autobiographical memory. ==Defining characteristics== Individuals with hyperthymesia can recall almost every day of their lives in near perfect detail, as well public events that hold some personal significance to them. Those affected describe their memories as uncontrollable associations, when they encounter a date, they "see" a vivid depiction of that day in their heads.〔 Recollection occurs without hesitation or conscious effort. It is important to draw a distinction between those with hyperthymesia and those with other forms of exceptional memory, who generally use mnemonic or similar rehearsal strategies to memorize long strings of subjective information. Memories recalled by hyperthymestic individuals tend to be personal, autobiographical accounts of both significant and mundane events in their lives. This extensive and highly unusual memory does not derive from the use of mnemonic strategies; it is encoded involuntarily and retrieved automatically.〔 〕 Despite being able to remember the day of the week on which a particular date fell, hyperthymestics are not calendrical calculators like some people with autism or savant syndrome. Rather, hyperthymestic recall tends to be constrained to a person's lifetime and is believed to be a subconscious process. Although hyperthymestics are not necessarily autistic, and likewise savants do not necessarily memorise autobiographical information, certain similarities exist between the two conditions. Like autistic savants, some individuals with hyperthymesia may also have an unusual and obsessive interest in dates. Russian psychologist Aleksandr Luria documented the famous case of mnemonist Solomon Shereshevskii, who was quite different from the first documented hyperthymestic known as AJ in that he could memorise virtually unlimited amounts of information deliberately, while AJ could not – she could only remember autobiographical information (and events she had personally seen on the news or read about). In fact, she was not very good at memorising anything at all, according to the study published in ''Neurocase''.〔 Hyperthymestic individuals appear to have poorer than average memory for arbitrary information. Another striking parallel drawn between the two cases was that Shereshevskii exemplified an interesting case of synesthesia and it has been suggested that superior autobiographical memory is intimately tied to time-space synaesthesia. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「hyperthymesia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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