<p>There are individuals who possess extraordinary memory ability, sometimes called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory">eidetic memory</a>. With specific reference to your question, a woman in Los Angeles has an extraordinary ability to recall autobiographical events from her past.  You can read the Wired article of her story <a href="http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory">here</a>.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>At the scientists' behest, for example, she recalled—without warning
  and in just 10 minutes—what she'd done on every Easter since 1980.
  "April 6, 1980: 9th grade, Easter vacation ends. April 19, 1981: 10th
  grade, new boyfriend, H. April 11, 1982: 11th grade, grandparents
  visiting for Passover ..."</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Her ability extends to certain momentous cultural events, such as disasters.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>She instantly retrieves from memory the exact dates of the explosions
  of space shuttle Challenger and Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie,
  Scotland. She remembers not just that September 25, 1978, was when a
  PSA flight crashed in San Diego but also that the jet collided with a
  Cessna. She can go in either direction, disaster to date or date to
  disaster. When I say "January 13, 1982," Price has no trouble
  recalling the Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>One theory of her astounding memory is that she obsessively thinks about events after they happen, which leads to more effective encoding and strengthening of the memory for that event.  This seems to be a key distinction between her and a person of average memory - if you didn't encode an event completely when it happened you are unlikely to be able to recall it completely later. Trauma, such as nearly drowning, can either enhance or degrade this process.</p>

<p>If you are curious, a great book that goes over our many memory failings is "The Seven Sins of Memory" by Daniel Schacter. Highly recommended.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-06-20T00:57:48.597Z
2013-06-20T00:57:48.597Z
Craig Bennett
<p>No. I don't think so. There are many arguments for why this is not the case.</p>

<ul>
<li>A common understanding of human memory is that it is part of an information processing system: attention, sensation,  perception,  interpretation, memory consolidation, forgetting, and memory recall. In some sense all these represent possible points of failure. Thus, we can fail to attend to an event in the first place, we can misunderstand the nature of an event, or  memories can be temporarily inaccessible.</li>
<li>Building on the idea of the information processing system, it is important to recognise the huge subjective component to the experience of an "event". This links closely with philosophical questions about the nature of reality. However, regardless of the nature of the truth of external reality, it is clear that human experience is imbued with meaning and is experienced through various cognitive schemas. Thus, the "objective event", whatever that might be, is often never represented in the first place.</li>
<li>Another perspective is that memory has been shaped by the adaptive needs of humans. In such a context, memory consumes resources. Memory also needs to efficiently serve our needs. From such a perspective forgetting of irrelevant memories and consolidation of life saving and life improving memories is important to our adaptation. For example, this is an argument for the benefits of a forgetting curve whereby recent memories are recalled better than distal memories; recent memories are more likely to be relevant to current behaviour.</li>
<li>There is so much research to show the failures of human memory in even short term contexts. For example, check out some of the eye witness testimony research of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus">Elizabeth Loftus</a> to see how poor people are at recalling details even short term. The entire field of memory research extensively documents failure of recall and biases in recall.</li>
</ul>

<p>Despite all this, there are also many times where people can not currently recall something that is stored in long term memory. See for example discussions of tip of the tongue phenomena, spreading activation, fan out effect and so on.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-06-20T08:41:04.290Z
I'm flagging this for no references and reporting you to a moderator immediately. ;)
Chuck Sherrington
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-06-19T02:35:00.917Z
2013-06-19T02:35:00.917Z
Jeromy Anglim
<p>Does a person's brain have a record of every event that happened during a person's lifetime? Is it possible to recall any of those events and is it possible to recall those events in detail?</p>

<p>For example, I almost drowned when I was a child. I know this happened and can remember bits of the event but I don't remember all the details. Is that complete memory still stored?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-24T10:17:25.887Z
Do note that 'the complete memory' is a very dangerous term; the act of remembering often creates details that didn't exist in memory by simply making them up, and this process is very open to suggestion from outside sources. Furthermore, if you think about these details, they *will* get stored in memory, and it may be impossible to ever find out if those details were in the original event, or you imagined/'remembered' them afterwards, they'll feel exactly as real.
Peteris
<memory><long-term-memory>
Does a person's brain still contain a record of daily events?
knightscharge
# Does a person's brain still contain a record of daily events?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-06-14)

Does a person's brain have a record of every event that happened during a person's lifetime? Is it possible to recall any of those events and is it possible to recall those events in detail?

For example, I almost drowned when I was a child. I know this happened and can remember bits of the event but I don't remember all the details. Is that complete memory still stored?

**Tags:** memory, long-term-memory

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Do note that 'the complete memory' is a very dangerous term; the act of remembering often creates details that didn't exist in memory by simply making them up, and this process is very open to suggestion from outside sources. Furthermore, if you think about these details, they *will* get stored in memory, and it may be impossible to ever find out if those details were in the original event, or you imagined/'remembered' them afterwards, they'll feel exactly as real.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2013-06-19. Score: 10 | Accepted answer

No. I don't think so. There are many arguments for why this is not the case.

* A common understanding of human memory is that it is part of an information processing system: attention, sensation, perception, interpretation, memory consolidation, forgetting, and memory recall. In some sense all these represent possible points of failure. Thus, we can fail to attend to an event in the first place, we can misunderstand the nature of an event, or memories can be temporarily inaccessible.
* Building on the idea of the information processing system, it is important to recognise the huge subjective component to the experience of an "event". This links closely with philosophical questions about the nature of reality. However, regardless of the nature of the truth of external reality, it is clear that human experience is imbued with meaning and is experienced through various cognitive schemas. Thus, the "objective event", whatever that might be, is often never represented in the first place.
* Another perspective is that memory has been shaped by the adaptive needs of humans. In such a context, memory consumes resources. Memory also needs to efficiently serve our needs. From such a perspective forgetting of irrelevant memories and consolidation of life saving and life improving memories is important to our adaptation. For example, this is an argument for the benefits of a forgetting curve whereby recent memories are recalled better than distal memories; recent memories are more likely to be relevant to current behaviour.
* There is so much research to show the failures of human memory in even short term contexts. For example, check out some of the eye witness testimony research of [Elizabeth Loftus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus) to see how poor people are at recalling details even short term. The entire field of memory research extensively documents failure of recall and biases in recall.

Despite all this, there are also many times where people can not currently recall something that is stored in long term memory. See for example discussions of tip of the tongue phenomena, spreading activation, fan out effect and so on.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: I'm flagging this for no references and reporting you to a moderator immediately. ;)  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2013-06-20. Score: 5

There are individuals who possess extraordinary memory ability, sometimes called [eidetic memory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory). With specific reference to your question, a woman in Los Angeles has an extraordinary ability to recall autobiographical events from her past. You can read the Wired article of her story [here](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory).

> At the scientists' behest, for example, she recalled—without warning
> and in just 10 minutes—what she'd done on every Easter since 1980.
> "April 6, 1980: 9th grade, Easter vacation ends. April 19, 1981: 10th
> grade, new boyfriend, H. April 11, 1982: 11th grade, grandparents
> visiting for Passover ..."

Her ability extends to certain momentous cultural events, such as disasters.

> She instantly retrieves from memory the exact dates of the explosions
> of space shuttle Challenger and Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie,
> Scotland. She remembers not just that September 25, 1978, was when a
> PSA flight crashed in San Diego but also that the jet collided with a
> Cessna. She can go in either direction, disaster to date or date to
> disaster. When I say "January 13, 1982," Price has no trouble
> recalling the Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac.

One theory of her astounding memory is that she obsessively thinks about events after they happen, which leads to more effective encoding and strengthening of the memory for that event. This seems to be a key distinction between her and a person of average memory - if you didn't encode an event completely when it happened you are unlikely to be able to recall it completely later. Trauma, such as nearly drowning, can either enhance or degrade this process.

If you are curious, a great book that goes over our many memory failings is "The Seven Sins of Memory" by Daniel Schacter. Highly recommended.


---

