Is Marilou a Personof Interest Again
Marilu Henner's Exceptional Retention Spurs Interest in Brain Health
Actress Marilu Henner has a highly superior autobiographical retentiveness, a rare condition identified in only 100 people worldwide. This trait drives her to advocate for more than funding for encephalon research.
Requite Marilu Henner a random date in the by and she can recall it with amazing clarity. Take Apr 30, 1980. "It was a Wednesday," she says without hesitation. "I was in Cancun, Mexico, with my boyfriend at the time, who was soon to exist my first husband."
She remembers wearing a cream-colored jumpsuit with harem pants and a stretchy strapless top with a turquoise jacket. "I drank tequila for the first fourth dimension, and then never once more for 25 years!" she says with a laugh. "The weather was beautiful that night, but it poured rain the next day, and all the plumbing in our resort went out. The whole matter comes back. It'due south like remembering your address or phone number or the color of your eyes. It'south just there."
For nearly people, such vivid memories are commonly associated with major life events-your wedding solar day or the day your child was born-or traumatic moments similar where you were when you heard most the attacks on the World Trade Center. Memories of our lives are typically like impressionist paintings, forming an overall film from a distance but blurry when we try to zoom in and expect at specifics.
But that'due south not the example for Henner, who may be best known for playing Elaine Nardo on the 1978-83 sitcom Taxi and has appeared in numerous TV series since—most recently as Paula, the politically incorrect mother of Dave (Max Greenfield), on CBS' The Neighborhood. Henner can call back past events in almost photographic detail thanks to a highly superior autobiographical retentivity (HSAM), a rare status that has been identified in only nigh 100 people in the earth. The status, which allows people to recall the events of about of the days of their lives with remarkable item and accurateness, was commencement described in 2006 by James McGaugh, PhD, founding chair of the department of neurobiology and behavior and founding manager of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California-Irvine.
Memory Superpower
"Fifty-fifty when I was 5 years old, people would say to my parents, 'What'southward with that kid and her retentivity? She remembers the last time I was here and everything that happened,'" Henner says. "They'd call me Little Miss Memory, the Retention Child, or UNIVAC. Y'all know, the sometime-fashioned computer.
"If someone [in my family] wanted to know when something happened, it was always, 'Enquire Marilu.' Everybody in my family is extremely smart and everybody has slap-up memories, just I knew something was very unusual about mine. When you're one of vi kids, you're always looking for something that makes you unlike from your brothers and sisters."
A Rare Condition
The beginning person to be identified with HSAM was Jill Price, who found Dr. McGaugh's name on the internet and emailed him in June 2000, describing her ability. "Whenever I run into a date flash on the boob tube (or anywhere else for that matter), I automatically go back to that 24-hour interval and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on, and on and on and on and on," she wrote in the email. Later six years of working with Cost, Dr. McGaugh and his colleagues published "A Example of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering" in the neuropsychology journal Neurocase in February 2006.
Shortly afterwards, Henner explains, a producer at 60 Minutes heard about Dr. McGaugh's research and proposed a story on the subject to Lesley Stahl, a contributor on the evidence. Stahl wasn't impressed. She told the producer she didn't retrieve the condition was that uncommon, since her friend Marilu Henner had the same blazon of memory. To prove it, Stahl took Henner and the producer out to luncheon. "This was on Midweek, September 20, 2006. Lesley started asking me all these questions to prove that I had it," Henner says. "And and then the producer said something about her nuptials on June 15, 1998, and I said, 'Why'd yous get married on a Monday? That's then unusual,' and she said, 'Oh my God, yous do have it!'"
Iii years afterwards, Henner says, Stahl called with the news that the condition is very rare. Dr. McGaugh's group had mounted a search for more people similar Henner and Cost, and at that time had simply found near a dozen. Along with four other HSAM "memory wizards," Henner taped a segment of lx Minutes for which she underwent an MRI browse of her brain, answered a lot of questions, and shared stories of memory feats that, to her, were just the way she remembered things.
"I was vibrating all day. I simply loved it," Henner says. "I answered more than 500 questions. They gave us all the regular memory tests they give people for Alzheimer's, like number sequencing and repetition and looking at a box of images or objects. And so they got into the whole autobiographical function. I didn't want it to stop."
Informed Performance
Subsequently her hour appearance, Henner served as a consultant for the TV series Unforgettable, which starred Poppy Montgomery as a law detective with HSAM who uses her detailed recollections to assist solve crimes.
1 of the commencement questions people inquire Henner is whether her extraordinary memory helps her remember her lines. It is useful for that purpose, she says, only her memory is even better for enriching her characters. "Information technology's what's behind the lines that makes the difference in a performance. I love being able to think all my experiences in an emotional style," she says. "When something happens to me, fifty-fifty if it's negative, I think, 'I'll use this as an actor.' I tin't tell you how many times people will stop me and say, 'I think my son, my granddaughter, my sister has this, and they're agape of information technology.' I say, 'Get them in an acting class!'"
An Exciting Power
Henner was a gifted student, but not necessarily because of her recall power, she says. "I did well in schoolhouse, but I think a lot of information technology had to exercise with existence one of 6 kids, all of whom were very smart," she says. "Teachers had expectations when they had a Henner in their class, so you lot'd better be smart."
For some people, HSAM can exist frustrating and overwhelming—like constantly drinking from a fire hose of memory. Jill Price told Dr. McGaugh that information technology was "nonstop, uncontrollable, and totally exhausting." Just Henner takes cracking joy in her extraordinary memory and considers it a gift.
"People remember the highs and lows of their lives. I go asked if information technology'south difficult remembering all the bad things that have happened to me—but the bad memories, you're going to remember those anyway," she says. "I happen to exist able to absorber that and the happy memories with all those nice middle-of-the-road memories that make upward your life. I call them the 'Our Town moments' [a reference to the Thornton Wilder play about the dazzler of everyday life]. To this day, my siblings will say, 'Mare, exercise a week from our babyhood.' It's so corking to accept your life experiences at your fingertips."
Memory as Solace
Henner lost both her parents at a relatively young age—her father when she was 17 and her mother when she was 26—and she says that having such a rich trove of memories of them is a bang-up comfort. In her book Total Memory Makeover (Gallery Books, 2012), she recounts the tale of her father finding her—a la Jennifer Grey in Muddy Dancing—making out with ane of the waiters at a holiday resort. "I can recall in item his finding me. I can see him standing there and feel my eye jump as he catches Sammy and me making out on the lounge chair by the pool," she says. "It is intense and it is sad, but I wouldn't lose this retention for the world. Every memory of my parents—good, bad, indifferent, the whole range of emotions—I have it all there."
Her belief in the power of retention has spurred Henner to piece of work with the Alzheimer's Association and UsAgainstAlzheimer's. She participated in the latter's Uniting Communities for a Cure summit on brain health in September 2018 and has advocated before Congress for more funding for brain research. "Your memory is your story, information technology's your life, it's everything," she says. "What's more important than creating memories with people, spending fourth dimension with them, and relating to the world in a sure fashion that's uniquely yours?"
Read More
Find out what researchers are learning from people with memories like Marilu Henner, and acquire some tips on edifice a ameliorate retentiveness.
Source: https://www.brainandlife.org/articles/actress-marilu-henner-has-a-highly-superior-autobiographical-memory-a/
0 Response to "Is Marilou a Personof Interest Again"
Enviar um comentário