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HK is only the 2nd to be reported in the scientific literature.
and six that have been verified that can actually do what HK does.
When he was ten years old, there was a tornado that hit the Goodlettsville/ Gallatin area.
There's no trick here, he is right every time.
As long as he heard it or experienced it in his life,
nothing is forgotten.
Vanderbilt neuroscientist and memory expert, Doctor Brandon Alley
tested HK and found that he is off the charts for a specific type of memory
called autobiographical memory.
What really separates us
as humans is
,interestingly enough, this aspect of HK's memory autobiographical memory to
remember exactly what happened to us. The same type of memory dramatically
increased in HK
maybe what is decimated in alzheimer's disease.
And that's primarily where my research focuses is understanding exactly how
memory breaks down
in alzheimer's disease
The brain structures of someone with near perfect autobiographical memory
charted and measured
and the researchers could hardly believe what they saw
It's 20 percent larger his amygdala is 20 percent larger than normal.
But it is the link with Alzheimer's disease that is do tantalizing to Alley
His connectivity is also
very much
more dense, almost ten times
more than normal individuals.
In every other way, HK's memory is just normal. It was very shocking it was
it was a shocking finding. We were hoping to find something
but we were not expecting that particular structure.
Most of what we know historically has come from single cases
H.M. had his hippocampus and medial temporal lobe removed in 1953.
It wasn't until they removed that part of the brain that he could no longer
make new memories that we learned that hippocampus was critical.
Phineas Gage is another guy from the 1800s who had a tamping iron
from railroads go through his head. It wasn't until then that we learned that
personality changes are associated with changes in the with the frontal cortex.
and so now perhaps with H.K. we can learn a little bit
He provides a case study for us to learn about
where and how we might improve memory.
As you can imagine and I haven't been back.
this gift
has given him the opportunity
reach out and meet an audience
that may
initially be interested in
the kid with the perfect memory, but then once they get to sit down and meet H.K.,
they realize there's a lot more to this. There's a lot more to this story and there's
so much more to his message. My biggest accomplishment is yet to come
On Friday,
June 1
I am graduating from high school
It is a once in a career opportunity
to work with somebody like this.