Dottorato in PSICOLOGIA DINAMICA E CLINICA

Titolo della tesi: An investigation of the neurocognitive processes underlying enhancements in autobiographical memory organisation, (in)voluntary retrieval and future thinking

The following thesis includes nine complementary articles which shed light into the mechanisms that support a form of exceptional memory called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). In Chapter one, I present a published Systematic Review on the phenomenon of HSAM (Talbot, Convertino et al., 2024), which summarises evidence from behavioural and neuroimaging data to conclude which shared characteristics define HSAM, and provides insight into the mechanisms, such as specialised consolidation and enhanced retrieval, which likely drive it. The review highlighted that current HSAM individuals have an extremely varied inter-individual clinical profile, thus, I next present a critical perspective article that outlines the risk that over-general nomenclature poses in this field (Talbot & Mazzoni, under review). In Chapter 2 I attempt to elucidate how personal memories are organised in HSAM and understand how these individuals can exert a level of control over their memory access. Results from a novel priming task highlight the important role of emotionality and temporal configuration in exceptional memory organisation, and support that specialised memory connectivity in HSAM can accelerate voluntary retrieval (Talbot, Gatti et al., 2024). Next, to identify which cognitive processes operate to protect HSAM individuals from being by flooded by their past, I examined inhibitory control processes (Talbot et al., 2025) and involuntary autobiographical memory frequency in HSAM. In Chapter 3, I used a combination of neurostimulation and behavioural paradigms to explore the features and limits of voluntary retrieval and future thinking in HSAM. Chapter 4 adopted wearable camera technology to objectively investigate memory accuracy and false memory prevalence in HSAM. In the final experiments, the impact of memory performance extremes on metacognitive judgements is explored. Overall, this works illuminates further the capabilities and neurocognitive features of HSAM.