A teenager remembers his life since the age of 3 months.. The mystery of the “supernatural memory”

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A new scientific study documented the case of a 16-year-old teenager who possesses superior autonomic memory that enables him to recall precise details of personal life events at a level that exceeds the performance of 99.9% of the general public, making him one of less than 100 known cases worldwide of this rare type of memory.

This study was conducted by a research team led by cognitive science researcher Christian Barzikowski, and its results were published in the scientific journal Cortex, according to what was reported by the “Science Alert” scientific website.

In addition, the researchers gave the teenager a KCL code to protect his identity. The case began in February 2025, when the boy communicated directly with Barzikowski, who had previously published several research on the phenomenon of involuntary autobiographical memory, and reported that he had very early memories dating back to approximately 3 months of age in April 2009, in addition to memories from his early childhood between 2010 and 2011, which were later confirmed by his parents.

The boy also explained that his feeling of constant self-awareness arose around the age of three, and since then most of his memories have become detailed and easy to recall. He pointed out that his memories are often recalled involuntarily through simple stimuli such as a specific smell, song, or passing sentence, confirming his ability to remember precise details for about half of the days that have passed since August 2022.

Therefore, the research team conducted a series of approved tests with the boy remotely, due to the distance between his place of residence and the team’s headquarters, while the results of those tests confirmed that he actually possesses this superior memory, with a performance that statistically exceeds the level of 99.9% of the general population.

On the other hand, his levels of attention, working memory, and executive functions were completely normal, which is common among people with this type of memory, and his parents did not show any signs of psychological or educational problems in the boy since birth.

Barzikowski and his team pointed out that accumulating evidence confirms that people with superior subjective memory are not cognitively superior in general, but rather are similar to other people in areas such as learning daily information or memorizing numbers, but what actually distinguishes them is the way they remember subjective events and the speed with which they access them.

The researchers focused in particular on the involuntary aspect of the boy's memories, referring to the first officially documented case of this phenomenon published in 2006, which described a woman suffering from automatic and persistent memories that are difficult to control. Although other cases emerged later, most previous studies focused on voluntary recall abilities, while involuntary memories remained less scientifically studied.

The boy underwent a computer task in which he was asked to observe a set of patterns on a screen, while the researchers periodically asked him about the thoughts that came to his mind during the task. The results showed a significant increase in the frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories related to his past compared to the data available on the general public, while spontaneous thoughts related to the future remained within the normal range, as well as the general rate of thoughts not related to the task.

The research team believes that these results support the hypothesis that superior autobiographical memory is not a general superiority in the ability to remember, but rather a shift in the dynamics of retrieval characterized by increased sensitivity to stimuli and a lower threshold needed to access autobiographical information. According to the researchers, the uniqueness of these cases lies not only in what is remembered, but in how those memories are accessed, which places retrieval mechanisms at the heart of understanding this exceptional ability.