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Comment by neongreen | Hacker News Reader

Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia.

SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes.

Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ

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You’ve just made me realize that my brain is (more) broken than I thought it was.

This explains why I lose every argument with my wife about things that happened in the past.

Perhaps you just think you are loosing.

Oh no… that is just every marriage.

Your brain isn't broken. You're just a man.

Now wait until you have arguments about the future…

No! You can fight back! The thing I have realised about SDAM is that although you don’t get that emotional/movie/visual experience, you also remember what you remember.

My wife (and particularly my daughter), have vivid imaginations that can make memories up at times. If I’ve “fact-committed” a memory, it’s not wrong.

Granted, this only helps in the 0.1% of cases when you have done the fact memory committal and can thus have any argument at all. For the rest it’s “I don’t remember that, and your memory is unreliable, so…”. Ahh the comforting couch, I should just take my pillow there now ;-)

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I always feel like a complete tool when people talk about events in their adolescent years or even if we talk about the movie we watched at the theater yesterday. I remember what the movie was about and I'm probably able to recall one or two scenes that had the most impact on me, but then someone roles up and starts a discussion on "all the scenes where Rebecca and Lydia felt lost and how they were set in similar places" and I'm just lost myself. I'd be able to recall they were lost but not what scenes there were to transport that idea to me.

Memory is a funny thing, you can in fact remember things that didn't actually happen or just completely misremember things that did happen. See, for example, the 'Lost in the mall technique': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique

Interesting, combined with the article below I also start to wonder about more connections/correlations.

I have many vivid dreams a night, and often wake feeling exhausted. I have been thinking this might be my brain overcompensating for aphantasia. First time I have heard of SDAM, and that certainly applies to me, along with face/name memory, especially people out of context.

I speculated the other day that it could be 40 years programming has rewired my brain. Great at making logical connections, mapping/route memory is amazing, along with logical analysis.

Probably SDAM is related to depression too. If we are not able to recall the happy times/memories in the same way as other people do, not counting those technical solution wins!

Also as bad as my memory is, SDAM or old age ;) it actually feels worse since Covid and plenty of fuzzy/foggy brain days.

'Sleep deprivation disrupts memory' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40681345

[edit] tried to explain it better.

I started a small meditation where I attempt to walk back through the whole day as best I can, while trying to drift to sleep. It has made me appreciate my life more and I remember more mundane details because I have at least recalled it once, if that makes sense.

Unless it is a day to forget... If you have too many of those, you know something needs to change.

correct - it’s like playing an extremely low resolution “replay” of that moment in time.sometimes the frames skip but it’s still visible to me.

Yeah, for me, it's like watching a movie through fog. Although, I feel like when I was younger, I had far more vivid recall.

All I have are one second long snippets, but they are visual (+ audio, smell, etc.).

Huh, when reading the parent comment I didn't think it applied to me because I felt like I remember stuff that happened in enough detail to walk through the sequences of events that happened, but reading this makes me think that maybe I don't actually have it because it's nothing I'd describe as being able to "watch" it as much as just recall the details. I could potentially imagine a visualization of the vents I remember, but I certainly don't remember what enough of the details actually look like to replay the real thing.

idk. I can watch my memories but I often see myself slightly in the third person in them, as if from over my own shoulder, which imples they're not really what I experienced but more like a reconstruction from place and dialog.

>And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ

what the fuck

I am also like this. Why would I remember that? I don't remember almost anything I don't work to remember or is unusual. It's amazing to me that people do.

(I also have aphantasia and find it extremely difficult to believe that the entire thing isn't just a misunderstanding of language.)

What is the point to eat a good breakfast (any good experience) if you don’t remember it?

>Why would I remember that?

Why wouldn't you lol

Because it's useless information. Some people (like my wife) remember literally everything, at least until their brain fills up. I, on the other hand, have to explicitly commit to memory things I want to recall later. If I don't, it's gone. And why go through the effort of committing something as useless as what I ate for breakfast?

You have to realize that it's you who is the oddball, not the rest of us.

It's not useless information - I get to track what I ate when, I get to figure out the recipe if I like something etc etc. Imagine going "What you had for breakfast is useful information" as if your brain isn't already full of useless information.

> at least until their brain fills up.

(X) That's not how it works.

>If I don't, it's gone.

As I said, for the rest of us, it isn't an issue. We just remember. You don't - so you just go "it's useless information." It's not for us.

As you are discovering in this thread, everyone's brain works differently. You are exhibiting the mind projection fallacy--assuming that everyone else's mind works the way yours does. In fact, neurodiversity is a thing and pretty much every person out there has a unique mental experience.

Ha. That describes me perfectly. I have heard the distinction between “episodic memory” and “semantic memory” made before, and so I just thought that my semantic memory was a lot stronger than my episodic memory. I hadn’t realised it had a specific name. Thanks for sharing.

FWIW, I’m also very much aphantasic (I’d be a 4.5/5.0 on the test in Guardian article).

Holy cow, that's me. Thanks for this tip.

Whelp… TIL… again

Memory is a weird thing.

I think I have this. But didn’t know there was a name for it other than shit memory.

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