A brain and a French teenage girl.
For most of us, memories aren’t very vivid unless we've encoded them as important. Still, they aren’t that reliable and are bound to fade over time. However, there is a tiny group of people with a condition known as hypermnesia who have a memory that’s so incredible that if you ask them what happened on a random date, they can tell you precisely what went on.
Hyperthymestic people can move within their minds with incredible speed and ease to retrieve highly detailed memories and paint vivid pictures of the future that are rich with perceptual information. "In these individuals, known as hyperthymesics, memories are carefully indexed by date. Some will be able to describe in detail what they did on July 6, 2002, and experience again the emotions and sensations of that day,” Valentina La Corte, a research professor at the Memory, Brain, and Cognition Laboratory at Paris Cité University, told Paris Brain Institute.
A girl with an extremely rare ability
Researchers from the Paris Brain Institute recently studied a 17-year-old French girl they call TL, whose hypermnesia allows her to travel through different locations in her mind to retrieve detailed memories.
While most of us are groping in the dark when we attempt to access memories, TL has her brain mapped out like rooms in a house. She has “dark memories” that contain encyclopedia information, such as things she learned in school, that carry little emotional charge. But her emotional autobiographical memories are laid out like a floor plan.
A map of TL's mind.via Paris Brain Institute
In her mind's “white room," TL has the events of her life filed chronologically. When looking back, she can flip through the files to recall information about her family life, childhood objects, and vacations. She also has rooms she visits to soothe herself emotionally. There’s a “pack ice” room where she sits to cool her anger and a “problems” room where she reflects on her difficulties. Inside the white room, she has a chest that contains painful memories of her grandfather’s death.
TL’s visions for the future are incredibly detailed
“When researchers asked her to imagine future events, she provided an unusually rich amount of temporal, spatial, and perceptual information, far beyond what an ordinary person can produce,” the Paris Brain Institute said in a statement. “These observations reinforce the idea that mental travel into the future relies on mechanisms similar to those used in conscious exploration of the past. In both cases, sensory information seems to play a crucial role.”
Traveling through time.via Canva/Photos
Researchers say that hyperthymestic people are so adept at recalling events from their past and foreseeing events in the future that they are akin to time-travelers. However, this can bring up some serious mental problems, especially when they recall painful moments of their lives that return to them with incredible intensity.
TL is just one of a handful of people with hypermnesia, so researchers have a lot of work to do to get a firm grasp on the mysterious condition. “It is difficult to generalize findings about hyperthymesia, since they rely on only a few cases. Does ageing affect the memories of these individuals? Do their mental time-travel abilities depend on age? Can they learn to control the accumulation of memories? We have many questions, and everything remains to be discovered. An exciting avenue of research lies ahead,” La Corte told Paris Brain Institute.
Joyful moments captured: A cheerful day out!
Two generations connecting through their smartphones.
Elderly man working.
A group of happy teens.via 
A kid wearing headphones raising his arms in celebration.