It sounds like a simple game – if you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flying, invisibility, and others all do sound pretty cool. But what about having a perfect memory?

We forget so many things, especially at the worst times, that it seems like it would be fantastic to be able to remember everything. In other words, having a perfect episodic memory would be ideal. When you think about it, though, and flesh out the consequences, things don’t seem as rosy anymore.

Jill Price, 42, is a resident of California and is the subject of a case study examining her outstanding (if not perfect) episodic memory. While she is able to remember a meal she had in 1985 (including prices), sometimes bad memories are so intrusive that she has trouble making sense of the world.

From the article:

In addition to good memories, every angry word, every mistake, every disappointment, every shock and every moment of pain goes unforgotten. Time heals no wounds for Price. “I don’t look back at the past with any distance. It’s more like experiencing everything over and over again, and those memories trigger exactly the same emotions in me. It’s like an endless, chaotic film that can completely overpower me. And there’s no stop button.”

She’s constantly bombarded with fragments of memories, exposed to an automatic and uncontrollable process that behaves like an infinite loop in a computer. Sometimes there are external triggers, like a certain smell, song or word. But often her memories return by themselves. Beautiful, horrific, important or banal scenes rush across her wildly chaotic “internal monitor,” sometimes displacing the present. “All of this is incredibly exhausting,” says Price.

Her semantic memory (memory for facts unrelated to a specific context) is average, which is interesting. Because every fact is learned in some context, one would expect someone with a perfect episodic memory to also have a perfect semantic memory. She can remember the price of a meal in 1985, but she has difficulty remembering poems. Odd.

And, of course, anyone who is saying “I bet she’s just faking it” are simply uninformed. These are scientists who have their methods of insuring that the neuropsychological patients they encounter are genuine. So there.

Der Spiegel: An Infinite Loop in the Brain

The next superpower gone awry is the case of a 5-year-old girl who cannot feel pain. Pain, as we all know, hurts. It’s amazing how annoying it can be – “Yes, I know I stubbed my toe. You can stop hurting now!” But what would life be without pain? It turns out that it is pretty horrifying.

Steve and Trish Gingras first noticed something was wrong when Gabby was 4 months old. She was biting her fingers until they bled. By the time she was 2, her teeth had to be removed so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Now, she must eat very small bites of soft food — and like everything else she does, she eats with gusto.

But biting her fingers wasn’t the only danger.

When she was a toddler, Gabby scratched her cornea and was given eye gel, the standard prescription. Because her doctors and parents were unaccustomed to treating a child who doesn’t feel pain, no one anticipated what would happen next.

“The thick gel had a reflux reaction to rub your eye,” Steve said. “When you don’t feel pain, you don’t know how hard you’re rubbing, and pretty soon she had damaged both eyes.”

The Gingrases tried something else — safety goggles. But the damage was done. One eye was so infected it had to be removed; otherwise her other eye might’ve become infected too. Gabby got a prosthetic eye, and the sight in her remaining eye is dim.

This poor girl’s family must remain ever vigilant for any possible damage this girl could sustain. Imagine not even understanding the concept of pain. At five years old, the semantic knowledge of not doing something is not enough. Pain serves as a punishment for doing something wrong, which conditions someone against doing it again. Without it, we’re lost.

Something to think about the next time you stub your toe. Though it would be nice if the pain subsided a little faster, right?

CNN: Life full of danger for little girl who can’t feel pain