“Do you know the average IQ is only 100? That’s terribly low, isn’t it? One hundred. It’s no wonder the world’s in such a mess.”
— Clive Wearing as reported by his wife Deborah in her memoir, Forever Today.
In a New Yorker article, A Neurologist’s Notebook: The Abyss, Dr. Oliver Sacks tells the fascinating story of Wearing, who after a brain infection in 1985 has been left with no episodic memory whatsoever: “He was left with a memory span of only seconds—the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. New events and experiences were effaced almost instantly.”
It’s a fascinating article about something incomprehensibly frightening to imagine. Blink your eyes and your life starts all over again.
It’s also interesting to learn about the various types of memory — semantic, emotional, procedural — that Wearing retains. How amazingly compartmentalized our brains are.