Susie Mckinnon - The Strange Case of the Woman Who Canʼt Remember Her Past—Or Imagine Her Future (memory)

Susie McKinnon was discovered to have an intriguing and extreme case of SDAM - severely deficient autobiographical memory.

Susie McKinnon doesn’t remember being a child or remember being any age other than whatever age she is when someone speaks with her. She can’t remember special events, either. She knows she went to her nephew’s wedding. She knows her husband went with her. But she can’t actually remember being there.

In fact, she has very few memories from her life – but she doesn’t have amnesia.
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This video was created to supplement the 2016 article on Susie in WIRED - https://www.wired.com/2016/04/susie-mckinnon-autobiographical-memory-sdam/

The audio content for the video is from this short CBC radio interview with Susie in June 2015: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2670406429

*** WIRED article excerpts***
- For decades, scientists suspected that someone like Susie McKinnon might exist...living an ordinary life—hard to tell apart from the next person in line at the grocery store, ...sure enough, they found her (or rather, she found them) in 2006.

- McKinnon is the first person ever identified with a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. She knows plenty of facts about her life, but she lacks the ability to mentally relive any of it

- “I don’t remember being shorter or smaller or having to reach up for things. I have no images or impressions of myself as a kid.”

- The way McKinnon experiences life scrambles much of what we presume is essential to being human. No less a figure than the philosopher John Locke argued that memory, the kind McKinnon lacks, is the very thing that constitutes personal identity.

- Spend enough time with McKinnon and it’s hard to escape the creeping sense that she’s not just different—she’s lucky. Memories that would be searing to anyone else leave little impression on her.

- McKinnon also quickly forgets arguments... She cannot hold a grudge. She is unfamiliar with the feeling of regret and oblivious to the diminishments of aging.
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ADVANCED CIVILIZATION Reference material - https://interestzine.com/brain/