Hi! My name is Maureen and I have a confession to make. I have an uncanny memory for faces which is quite ermm…strange to some extent. If we have met before and I had a chance to look at your face for more than a minute, or if I see you on TV more than once, or I have seen pictures of you, rest assured that I will remember your face for the rest of my life.
If I ever meet you and we had previously been introduced to each other and I pretend like I don’t recognize you …know that I’m telling a big untruth. See, I am a super-recognizer (a term I just learned of this morning as I was going through my random morning reads) and I remember most faces, voices and even people’s laugh. I can vividly remember my nanny’s face from when I was about 3 years old, my first teacher and classmates from when I was about the same age as well. Had I had my eyes open during my delivery, I bet I could have remembered the doctor who helped deliver me into the world. I kid!

Often, I will try to underplay this ability because while some people find it a little creepy, some find it way too cool and I find it slightly embarrassing especially when I’m reminding someone of how I know them, how we met and the circumstances under which we met when on their part they can’t remember me, even if there was money at stake… But then, while I can keep a photographic memory of a face I have seen before, names give me quite a challenge unless I was really keen on meeting  you or on what you were on about.

I don’t know about you but I have a super power …oops sorry, super sense!

According to the article I read on Daily Mail, about 1 to 2 per cent of the population is believed to be super-recognizers. Super-recognizers can recognize faces of people they have had a brief interaction with and recall them over a considerable period of time. “While ordinary people can recognize about 20% of faces they have glimpsed before, super-recognizers can manage 80 per cent. On the downside though, super recognizers don’t remember everything else so well.

It may be interesting to also learn that there are people with other heightened senses that make them a little extra-ordinary than others. There are those with intense color vision, heightened taste buds and even heightened smell abilities.

Super-taster!

Super-tasters have magnified taste buds. The article on Daily Mail went on to say that “If you find the flavors of say, coffee, chocolate or vegetables disgustingly powerful…You may just be a super-taster!”

While the average person has 10,000 taste buds on their tongue, allowing them to taste sweet, bitter, sour, salty and savory foods, a super taster can have up to twice as many taste buds. It is also interesting to learn that women are more likely to be super-tasters than men.

The article went on to explain that possessing super-tasting powers can make you healthier hence lowering your risk of heart disease and this is because super-tasters in general do not like sweet and fatty foods because they find the flavors of such foods a little too overwhelming for their palette.

Super color-vision!

Some women possess a super sense known as tetrachromacy meaning that they see extra detail in colors and can detect the difference between the subtlest of shades. While most of us have three cone cells in our retina, women with heightened color vision possess an extra cone cell while color-blind people have a cone or two that is faulty meaning that they are able to see color alright but have difficulty telling the difference between certain colors.

It is interesting to note that only women possess this power as the color gene responsible for creating the red and green cone types are located on the X chromosomes and women just happen to have not one but two X chromosomes. This two X chromosomes situation makes it possible for some women to carry two different versions of the gene making them tetrachromats. The article went on to explain that tetrachromacy may boost vision in dim lighting.

Super-memorizer!

Then we have those people with a highly superior autobiographical memory or if you like “Hyperthymesia”. This group of people happen to have total recall of their personal lives and they will remember conversations, events, what they were wearing, the food they were eating etc in detail at a specific time or date in the past time and without difficulty.  In short, a person with this condition can recall the vast majority of personal experiences and events that have occurred in their life.

Memory in such individuals is stored in more areas of the brain than in normal people.

So do you posses a super sense that is scientifically recognized? Do share below…