A rare trait may hold the secret to better memory

In episode two of our video series Exceptional Humans, we go to Italy to spend time with Carletti in San Leo and in Rome, where researchers scan her brain to unlock the secrets of her memory.

We also make a detour to the Netherlands, where researchers in Nijmegen are studying an entirely different group of people with an exceptional capacity to remember: memory athletes, who train to memorize numbers or decks of cards.

By looking where the two lines of research overlap and diverge, we gain an appreciation of how memories can help—and hurt—us, and how improving our memories can alter our brains.

This story was originally published on October 31, 2019.
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