Hyperphantasia & Scene-Indexed Recall

General Memory Chat
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Hey everyone,

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and during the process my psychiatrist noted that I have a “not normal” memory. I’ve been doing a deep dive into how my brain actually encodes and retrieves information, and I’d love to know if anyone here shares this profile, if it’s common, and how I can best train it.

My memory tends to always capture everything in videos and imagery. If someone says a shop or literally anything my brain just automatically calls upon say the shops front or servo, anything really.

Most my memories have a “checkpoint” or reference scene. I recall where I was and what I was looking at, and then the facts just hang off that scene. I replay memories from my own eyes (I don’t watch myself from the outside). It unfolds in time, and I can add sensations sound, smell, temperature on demand but its effortless and happens automatically.

Small cues constantly and uncontrollably surface vivid scenes in my mind. I have genuine, highly detailed memories going back to when I was 3 years old and when recalling these memories my family was surprised and confirmed it was not made up.

But under cognitive load, my brain tends to involuntarily latch onto one specific detail or scene and records it permanently. Is this common? From my research, this aligns heavily with Hyperphantasia. While hyperphantasia itself is statistically uncommon, I’m curious how common this specific combination is hyperphantasia + deep episodic store + involuntary triggering + scene-based organisation. Do many people on this forum have this exact mix?

One thing i know about myself is that if I learn by doing, or if I truly understand the mechanics of something, the memory is permanent. On top of that I can fully simulate and manipulate environments in my head before they exist. Everything i’ve ever planned on doing has already been done mentally many times and sometimes even subconciously. Almost every waking minute of my life i typically imagine things like if music is playing i fully go into a lucid dream like state of fight scenes, the band playing and whatever else my mind goes to. This is something i do everyday all day whether im at work, gym, driving, about to sleep, anything.

But my rote memorization is a nightmare. Intentional rote memory (flashcards, random numbers, word lists, re-reading text) actually feels worse than not trying. My verbal working memory buffer is very small, so abstract phrasing and dense syntax just never easily syncs to my brain.

Because my memory triggers automatically, it can be hard to shake distressing or distracting memories. I tend to relive harsher times and find it annoyingly hard to get over things leading to me imagining future outcomes like me confronting it in any form. This happens daily when doing any task.

Some questions i have are:

I am honestly kind of in a pit fall of confusion. Doesn’t everybody have this in some form to this extent?

If this isn’t normal should i be learning how to drive it?

Is there any actual positives to this? I finished my bachelors of cyber security 2 weeks ago, never studied and the final 2 years i never attended any lectures because i cant sit there my brain does the visual crap and i dont pay attention.

Does this give me any sort of natural advantage for specific memory sports or techniques?

Should I not ignore this and if i do is it a wasted opportunity?

I also took the VVIQ test and got an 80.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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I think the most relevant question is: what do you want to do? What do you enjoy? What do you need to do (for example professionally)?
If you enjoy memory sports go for it, and find out how to use your strengths and compensate for weaknesses. But if you don’t enjoy it, there are tons of other interesting things you can do.
Don’t start with a tool/technique and try to find a use for it, but choose a project/subject and find out which tools/methods are the best fit for it, given your personal wiring.
This may mean trying a lot of different things before finding out your preferences.

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I can relate to some of what you’re describing, especially the part about remembering places and events as vivid scenes instead of isolated facts. Everyone’s brain seems to organize memories a bit differently, so it’s really interesting to read experiences like yours. I’d be curious to know whether this has always been the case for you, or if you only started noticing it after your ADHD assessment.

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I cannot relate with-

the natural memory retention you describe.

I can relate with-

simulation and forethought.

And I think this is essentially what Jung would term the “transcendent function” - or a cooperation where the ego and conscious mind submit to the subconscious or “shake hands”. I had to work for years to control the daydream like state and to come back to reality in order to function, but it was attainable. Just remember who’s in charge, and keep working hand in hand with your own mind. Meditation and active imagination work helped me most in this area.

as far as wasting this opportunity - you genuinely might be if you pass up the opportunity to learn basic mnemonic techniques. especially for you imo, creating an alphanumeric index would be not only helpful but fun. Think of it like this - if you can remember what you witness well, then you will be able to remember what you witness while imagining well. You have essentially done the hard work up front, might as well learn how to let it all pay off. go watch some magnetic memory method or Nelson Dellis on youtube.

Learning to quiet your mind might be as important as it is to me, it not only makes things clear and obvious but it also removes all those pesky “i dont care about these” thoughts.

best of luck friend.

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Hey! thanks for the reply, i’ve always had this as a kid i have very descriptive memories dating back to around 3 years old where i could completely remember our house, the layout, structure of rooms and can draw diagrams of the house itself. My parents for a long time told me its normal so i never really went into it. Once discovering more now that im a adult it seems as if i had a hunch on something. I find the adhd medication made me weirdly more vivid and uncontrolled until i fixed my dosages!

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Thank you so much for the resources! I found the method of loci supremely easy i never really needed to learn it. Saying that i havent actually intentionally applied it ever when it came to stuff like studying. I also have a weird downfall where i can remember scenes well, but when it comes to words and speech i just remember tone. Numbers and sentences are on the harder side for me to remember but ive never actually trained my memory and have a extremely bad sleep schedule which im fixing haha

I already can imagine/remember every scene i create effortlessly its moreso even easier to create a virtual environment and remember than actually intentionally grabbing information to remember. Visuals are everything but letters and numbers alongside pure rote memory is id say below average.

Could you go into a little more detail on where you said “if you can remember what you witness well, then you will be able to remember what you witness while imagining well”?

Absolutely agree with meditastion and silencing the mind. Its my biggest enemy at night as i tend to completely lose myself in some random reality ive made up or replaying events/memories.

Thank you to the moon and back truely!

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I just completed my bachelors in cyber security. Through the whole degree i never really studied properly because im incredibly lazy but what weirdly worked was downloading the unis html page with all the data and getting chatgpt to teach me the night before for about 20 minutes. Then in the exam i could recall fragments of me downloading the page and unintentionally gazing over random info that would just appear. Only odd thing was whenever that happened it associated with the scene of me looking at it like a video but then there was some like deja vu association that made it stick permenently. This is something i experience a lot with music, when listening over a certain period of time i could revisit the song 10+ years later and fully recall many many many video replays of random meaningless scenes. I just can never really point this to work for me rather than just purely randomly.

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Numbers and sentences (letters) are the kinds of things I have to TRANSLATE into visual material. For instance - when you see the word “concepts” it means nothing visually in your mind. The meaning is derived from elsewhere, and it has no form. You and I have to give it form, to be able to conjure it up later. So a work like concepts might turn into a con-man with forceps or concrete or concert. Those things are visual and will remind us of the word we are trying to remember. I think it is misleading to have a memory where you have a large vocabulary when you HEAR the word, but are not able to access the same vocabulary when you speak- and this is the difference I’m trying to point out. The words we don’t access easily, the ones that are not available at a moments notice and we have to dig for- are the ones with no visual representation.

if you want to start memory work, the essential idea is to give complex things a symbolic identity that reminds you of the complex thing.

Also - being able to visualize a memory palace is different than using one for sure. I bet you would be more happy building an alphanumeric index or number system and start remembering pi or something. Its extremely confidence boosting and gets you into the methods.