The teenager with a SUPER-memory: 16-year-old can 'time travel' through any event from the age of three

While many of us struggle to recall what happened last week, one teenager has the ability to remember almost everything he has ever done.

The boy, known only as KCL to protect his anonymity, can supposedly use his incredible powers of recall to 'time travel' through to almost any event in his past.

According to the researchers, KCL is better at recalling events from his own past than 99 per cent of the population, stretching back to an unusually early age.

KCL's first memories emerged when he was just three months old, and by his third birthday, he had developed a 'sense of continuous, conscious autobiographical experience'.

Most strikingly, KCL can remember detailed events from random dates with 83 per cent accuracy.

Scientists believe that fewer than 100 people around the world have this condition, known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM).

While many of us struggle to recall what happened last week, one teenager has the ability to remember almost everything he has ever done (stock image)

Although scientists have been aware of HSAM for years, studying this bizarre phenomenon is exceptionally challenging because genuine cases are so hard to find.

That changed in January last year when lead author Dr Krystian Barzykowski, of Grenoble Alpes University, received an email from a boy claiming to have unbelievable powers of recall.

KCL had noticed his unusually good memory, and reached out to the researchers to see whether it 'warranted scientific investigation'.

After an initial meeting, Dr Barzykowski soon realised that KCL's memory abilities were truly exceptional, and began to test just how good they really were.

In one trial, KCL and a random selection of adults were asked to match 15 public events, such as 'Aleksandra Mirosław winning the Olympic gold medal in speed climbing', to their exact dates and weekdays.

They were then given 15 random dates and asked to recall a major public event that happened on that day.

To push KCL's recall even further, the participants were also given 10 random dates and asked to recall the day of the week, a news event from that time, and a specific personal memory from the day.

On the public dates test, KCL was able to answer correctly 51 per cent of the time, compared with the comparison group's average of just 20 per cent.

On personal memories, he performed even better, recalling events from random dates with 83 per cent accuracy, compared to the average of 28.75 per cent.

What makes this so unusual is that, besides his uncanny autobiographical memory, there isn't anything unusual about KCL.

He doesn't use any special memorising techniques to store away information, and parents reported nothing abnormal in his physical or psychological development.

Likewise, his attention, working memory, and executive functioning all seemed relatively normal.

Scientists have reported the case of a 16-year-old boy, referred to as KCL, with a super memory that allows him to 'time travel' back to events from when he was just three years old. Pictured: KCL's memory scores (blue) compared to average people (orange)

In their paper, published in the journal Cortex, the researchers write: 'Accumulating evidence suggests that [people with HSAM] are not cognitive 'superheroes'.

'On the contrary, they appear largely comparable to the general population in domains such as learning everyday information or memorising numbers.'

What actually seems to set these people apart is not how good their memory actually is, but how they access their memories.

A key detail the researchers noted is that KCL says his memories are often triggered by even the smallest cue, such as a smell, a snippet of music, or even a particular sentence.

KCL says that he often spends several hours a day lost in memories from the past, and the researchers suggest that this recall is largely involuntary.

Dr Barzykowski had KCL take a test in which he monitored patterns on a computer screen, while researchers periodically asked him for the thoughts that crossed his mind.

They found that KCL had a 'markedly elevated' level of involuntary autobiographical memories arising during this simple task, as well as higher levels of 'involuntary mental time travel'.

Interestingly, this is something that appears to be common across many people with HSAM.

In 2006, scientists described the case of a woman who was constantly bombarded by 'nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic' memories from her past.

The researchers now believe that this unstoppable flood of memories might be what makes people with HSAM so special.

Dr Barzykowski says that KCL has an extreme sensitivity to sensations, acting like an amplifier for the subtle cues that normally trigger memory recall.

As a result, personal memories arise far more easily than they would in most of the population.