Bob Petrella can remember every day in the last 50 years. Called HSAM

Shut Up & Listen with Bob Golub Podcast

Think about this for a moment. What if you could actually remember every year, every month, every day and practically every single minute of your entire life? Are you one who never forgets a face? What if you could put a name with every one of those faces? And besides remembering their name, you could also remember their birthday, their anniversary, even their phone numbers? Meet Bob Petrella. Bob is currently one of only 20 people in the world diagnosed with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory or more commonly referred to as HSAM. Who is Bob Petrella - The Memory Man University of California at Irvine researchers have recently explored this extremely unusual phenomena and they have discovered that an individual with HSAM has a brain that is actually seven times larger than the average person. The results of their intensive studies reveal that an HSAM individual has a nearly infinite potential to store and recall vast amounts of detailed information. In 2008, a team of doctors and researchers at UC Irvine identified Bob Petrella as the fourth person (at the time) known to have the rare condition of HSAM. Currently, Bob and a handful of others believed to have HSAM are participating in a new series of studies at UC Irvine in an attempt to try and find a link between the memory retention found in HSAM individuals versus the debilitating memory loss triggered by devastating diseases such as Alzheimer's and Dementia. Unlike other people with advanced memory conditions, such as an autism or savant syndrome, who use calendrical calculation, individuals with HSAM rely heavily on their personal "mental calendar." Unlike average people who store important information in the cell phones, like numbers, dates, reminders, directions, etc., those with HSAM merely "look up" the needed information -- somewhere in their brains. In Bob's case, when he is presented with virtually any date from the past 50 years, he most likely will remember precisely where he was, what he was doing that day, and, if applicable, what world or national events that may have occurred that day or closely around that time.