Rebecca Sharrock is an Australian woman from Brisbane who is one of fewer than 100 people worldwide diagnosed with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), also known as hyperthymesia—a rare condition that allows her to recall nearly every day of her life in vivid, precise detail. Her story offers a rare window into what it’s actually like to live with a memory that never lets go, for better and worse.
A Memory That Starts at Birth
Sharrock says she remembers everything that has personally happened to her since she was born, describing specific sensory details from when she was just twelve days old. Her very first memory, she says, was of being a newborn in the hospital—she recalls a cotton blanket and a tag being clipped to her ankle. She can recall any day she’s experienced, and if she had knowledge of the date at the time, she can place it precisely on a calendar. Beyond waking memories, she also says she remembers every dream she has ever had.
Discovering the Condition Wasn’t Normal
For most of her childhood, Sharrock didn’t realize her memory was unusual. On a Sunday morning in January 2011, her parents called her into the living room to watch a television segment about people with HSAM, and she turned to them and asked why the reporters were calling it amazing rather than normal. It wasn’t until her twenties that Sharrock truly realized her memory was extraordinary—fittingly, she remembers the exact date this happened.
After her family recognized how rare her ability was, she was enrolled in a groundbreaking two-year study at the University of California, Irvine, led by neurobiology professor Craig Stark, which involved interviewing HSAM participants repeatedly over time to track how their recollections held up.
Living With Total Recall
Sharrock’s condition intersects with other aspects of her life and diagnoses. She was diagnosed with autism at 15 and obsessive-compulsive disorder at 16, and didn’t realize she had HSAM until roughly five years later. For a time, she attributed her unusual memory to her OCD rather than recognizing it as a distinct condition of its own.
Sharrock has described being able to “get lost” in a memory, losing track of the present moment because the sensation of recalling the past is so intense—sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. She has called these episodes irritating and annoying rather than something she experiences as a gift in the moment. Because her recall is so vivid, remembering past physical injuries can bring back the actual sensation of pain, and she has described her short-term memory as comparatively poor—though anything that becomes a long-term memory tends to stay with her permanently.
An Unexpected Party Trick
One of the more striking demonstrations of Sharrock’s memory has nothing to do with her own life history. She is able to recite all seven Harry Potter books from memory, word for word. By the age of two, she could also recite the capital city of every country in the world.
A Rare and Still-Mysterious Condition
Sharrock’s case is part of a very small global population that researchers are still working to understand. Hyperthymesia is extraordinarily rare, with fewer than 100 people worldwide diagnosed with the condition as of the early 2020s. Scientists first began seriously studying the phenomenon in the 2000s, and much about why it occurs—and why it affects some people so differently than others—remains an open question. Some researchers have noted that even a remarkable autobiographical memory like this tends to be selective rather than a complete, indiscriminate record, and ordinary in certain respects despite its overall power.
Join The Discussion
Have you encountered stories of people with exceptional memory conditions like HSAM, or wondered what it might be like to remember every day of your life in such detail? What do you find most striking about Rebecca Sharrock’s experience—the vividness of her recall, or the challenges that come with never being able to fully let go of the past? Share your thoughts, questions, or anything else you’ve learned about memory and the brain below.
