Jill Price has hyperthymesia and remembers every day of her life in perfect detail. But she can't forget painful memories either, which stay as vivid and agonizing as when they happened. Forgetting, researchers say, isn't a glitch. It's how we heal and move on.
Quick, if you could have any superpower in the world, what would you choose? Invisibility? Teleportation? What about the ability to remember everything? Believe it or not, a woman named Jill Price has that exact superpower. Ask her about any Tuesday and she'll tell you the weather, what she wore, and who she talked to. But here's where it gets twisted. For Jill, even the bad memories stick. Bad experiences that she had decades earlier are still vivid and painful today. Researchers say her condition isn't just a remarkable ability to remember. It's also an inability to forget. We think of forgetting as a failure, a glitch in our mental hardware. But forgetting might be one of the most important things your brain does. It's how we let go of pain, update our sense of who we are, and keep moving forward. For more insights into the science of the mind, tune into Hidden Brain on Apple, Spotify, or hiddenbrain.org. Thank you.
