Total Recall

[kleeber]

I know a guy with a photographic memory. He can't understand how people forget things they have read because he is able to visualize material he has read and re-read from the page from memory.

I was driving back from the gun range today and was "listening" to music in my head and I got to wondering if a person with a photographic memory is able to recall a song so accurately that it is essentially the same as listening to a recording on headphones. That would be pretty cool.

I've heard that having a photographic memory can suck because you may have an impaired ability to generalize. That is, you may not be able to recognize a friend if they grow a beard because you are able to recall thousands of people's faces so exactly that your bearded friend appears to be an entirely new person.

[DrThunder88]

I don't think that's necessarily how face perception works, but even if it is, I imagine someone who has the ability to recognize so many specifics that one trait might throw them off would have the ability to recognize the ratios and proportions that can't be easily changed.