What was reported in 2018
CBC's feature on highly superior autobiographical memory, published in October 2018 alongside The Nature of Things, presented Hickenbottom as a teenager with the condition. The detail that made the story travel was not the calendar recall but the garbage trucks: he remembers the ID numbers of every truck he has seen, records them on video and shares them.
Wikipedia's article on hyperthymesia carries the same report in a single sentence: that in October 2018 it was reported that teenager Tyler Hickenbottom, an identical twin, had the condition, which allowed him to remember every day of his life like it was yesterday. Both are reports of a claim rather than published clinical findings, and this page treats them that way.
What the condition is said to be
Hyperthymesia, also called highly superior autobiographical memory, is described as a condition in which people recall an abnormally large number of life experiences in vivid detail, often spending a great deal of time thinking about their own past. It is not a perfect memory: the same account notes that people with the condition may struggle with arbitrary information and with ordinary memorisation tasks.
The first documented case was Jill Price, identified in 2006 by Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill and James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine. CBC's account adds that brain scans show enlarged structures associated with autobiographical memory in people with the condition, that those areas are also associated with compulsive behaviour, and that researchers do not know whether the difference is a cause or a consequence.
How rare it is - and where the sources disagree
The two sources used here give different counts, and the gap is worth stating rather than smoothing over. CBC reports that more than fifty people have been identified with the condition since Jill Price. Wikipedia states that as of April 2016 six cases had been confirmed in peer-reviewed articles.
Both can be true at once, because identification by researchers and confirmation in a peer-reviewed paper are different thresholds. What follows for a page like this one is caution: Hickenbottom's inclusion rests on a 2018 news report, not on a published case study, and no researcher is named in connection with him in either source.
The twin
The identical-twin detail comes from Wikipedia's hyperthymesia article and is the one biographical fact attached to his name in the sources used here. No brother is named, no age is given, and neither source states where the family lives or what was tested.
Twins matter to memory research because they allow inherited and environmental explanations to be separated, but neither source reports any study of this pair. Drawing a conclusion from the twin detail would mean inventing science, which this page declines to do.
What is documented - and what is not
What is documented is narrow: a CBC feature from October 2018, a sentence in a Wikipedia article summarising the same report, the garbage-truck videos, and the fact that he was a teenager at the time.
What is not documented is nearly everything else. No birth year, no home town, no school, no test results, no clinician's assessment and no statement from the family appear in the sources used here. Nothing after 2018 has been published about him in those sources either, and this page will not speculate about a person who was a child when the report was made.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler Hickenbottom | United States | Reported case of highly superior autobiographical memory (2018) | — |
| Rebecca Sharrock | Australia | Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) | — |
| Marc Umile | United States | Reciting 15,314 digits of pi | — |
| Krishan Chahal | India | Reciting 43,000 digits of pi | — |
| Rick de Jong | Netherlands | Reciting 22,612 digits of pi | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- CBC's October 2018 feature presented him as a teenager with highly superior autobiographical memory
- The same feature reports that he remembers garbage-truck ID numbers, films them and shares the videos
- Wikipedia's hyperthymesia article records the October 2018 report and states he is an identical twin
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No published clinical assessment, researcher or case study connected to him
- Sources disagree on how many people have been identified with the condition
- No birth year, home town, school or any information later than 2018
Questions people ask about Tyler Hickenbottom
What is Tyler Hickenbottom known for?
A 2018 CBC report described him as a teenager with highly superior autobiographical memory who also remembers the identification numbers of every garbage truck he has seen and posts videos of them.
How old is Tyler Hickenbottom?
No source used here gives a birth year or exact age. He was described as a teenager in October 2018.
What is hyperthymesia?
A condition, also called highly superior autobiographical memory, in which people recall an abnormally large number of life experiences in vivid detail. It is not the same as a perfect memory.
How many people have it?
The sources disagree. CBC reports more than fifty people identified since the first case; Wikipedia states that as of April 2016 six cases had been confirmed in peer-reviewed articles.
Is his memory scientifically confirmed?
Not in the sources used here. His case rests on a 2018 news report. No researcher, test or published study is named in connection with him.
Does he have a twin?
Wikipedia's hyperthymesia article states that he is an identical twin. The twin is not named in the sources used here.
Is Tyler Hickenbottom on Wikipedia?
He has no article of his own. He is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on hyperthymesia.
Where is Tyler Hickenbottom now?
Nothing after the 2018 report appears in the sources used here, and this page does not speculate about a person who was then a minor.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Tyler’s story?
What unusual set of numbers is Tyler Hickenbottom reported to remember?
What is the other name for hyperthymesia?
Who was the first documented case?
Sources
- Total recall: some people can remember every day like it was yesterday — CBC (The Nature of Things), 2018-10
- Hyperthymesia — Wikipedia, n.d.
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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