By Robert Bazell, NBC News chief science correspondent
I am privileged because my job allows me to cover so many things that I find utterly fascinating. But even by those standards, the story that airs tonight on a man with exceptional memory stands out. It is the first of a weeklong series on the brain called 'Mind Matters.'
Brad Williams, who is 51, is an announcer at an AM radio station in La Crosse, Wisconsin. At first he seems like a perfectly pleasant, ordinary man until you start to test his memory. Brad can remember details from the events that occurred during most of his lifetime.
Usually scientists study memory by observing people with Alzheimer’s and other conditions that cause memory loss. But as a research subject Brad is offering a chance to study how memory might be enhanced
I asked Brad what made headlines on October 22, 1975. He replied that it was a Wednesday and Boston and Cincinnati were playing the final game of the World Series. Brad can go on and on like that with details from TV shows he has seen to people he has met over decades.
Many of us joke we can’t remember what we had for breakfast this morning. But Brad can remember meals from weeks, months and years back-- as well as his bowling scores and similar details the rest of us forget quickly.
One of the reasons Jane Derenowski, that the producer I work with, and I were able to present this report is that Brad’s younger brother Eric, a filmmaker based in Southern California is producing a documentary about him called 'Unforgettable'. It is scheduled to come out next year and you can see a preview of it here. Eric generously shared much of his material with us.
It was Eric who brought Brad to see Dr. James McGaugh, an eminent brain scientist at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California Irvine. McGaugh’s major focus over his long career was the effect of stress hormones on memory. But in 2000, a 40 year old woman who is identified only by the initials AJ wrote to McGaugh, claiming to have a superior memory. McGaugh was skeptical but decided to test her anyway and found it to be true.
McGaugh’s studies of AJ received wide publicity. In the ensuing years McGaugh has received dozens of letters from others claiming to have the same extraordinary memory, and he has tested most of them. But among all of them McGaugh found that only Brad Williams actually had similar memory superiority. You can see Dr. McGaugh testing Brad’s memory in a video on this website that comes from Eric’s documentary. Based on his experience testing all the others McGaugh concludes that there are only a handful of people like Brad in the world. And he hopes that studies of their extraordinary brains will reveal a lot about how memory works for the rest of us.
