today. tyler and chatter being quizzed by university of california irvine researcher not veidt farai to see how their memories compare they're both top a students would have been on aug 16th 2014 or i'm guessing some have been was soccer and i was my 1st soccer tournament no. on the 162014 it was a saturday and we went and we adopted our current cat that we have a sentiment that's right. over the script when did you watch the women's n.b.a. game at staples center to 1724 teen thursday. was when we went to the ronald reagan museum. and then that night we went back to brandy winter divine for dinner ok which was close tyler has an obsession with garbage trucks which he films and

shares on you tube he remembers all their numbers thousands of them. was happening on july 26th 2030 all. i remember that day because the cycles just running really lame and the driver was going really fast well remember that the numbers on drugs you are always was 2662. trash was 2658 and every cycle was 27872718 we spent many hours combing through tyler's vast site to check if his truck numbers were right when did you fly to ohio in the summer of 2015 i was sure no july 29th and i saw a lot of garbage trucks i don't normally see out in california and what was the number of the truck 82938.

dollars 81161. and step from the back of the car not the front. neurologist james mcgaugh has found about 80 people in the world with 8 sam so far the renowned scientist says most have one thing in common sense of traits like tyler's passion for garbage trucks. some of the. i will not wear shoes that have shoelaces because your laces touched the ground and there are germs on the ground if they drop their keys they're house keys they have to wash them before they use them we see this as a central feature of the ability but we don't know what to make of it it is just there and there are some big there's some big fat clues there that we have to use and figure out how to use i don't even know how i do it and i mean i had people ask me i give them the answer like wall around like yeah i mean i do that either

information gets brought to me very seldomly do they say give me a minute not think about it and they don't do what we do when asked a question like that we look at the ceiling i don't know why we do that but somebody ask a tough question and we always look at the ceiling as though we're going to go help in some way to. find response but they don't they don't need that help so we're hoping that we can do some really sophisticated imaging say why is it that one of them has the ability i mean one does not this raises a very very interesting opportunity what's gone on in the brain of one that is not going on and the other. neurobiologist michael yassa is examining the 2 brothers with the latest m.r.i. technology to see how their brains compare. 'd

to this one also gives us a lot of those are made about parts of the brain that are really important some memory called the campus the special scan the part of the brain. studies indicate that certain brain pathways seem stronger in adult hates them subjects than other people the hippocampus is a region that is somewhat in march. in the adults that we've. looked at with each step but there's also changes in the connections the connections between the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe. seems to be at least 20 extent at large. and it's one that is almost uniquely human and highly evolved that seems to be different. chad's dental braces interfere with his section. tyler scan indicates that his brain pathways are not larger than those of the general population at least at this age. but yes that is eager to do more scans

once chad's braces are off to see if they can spot other differences between the brothers brains when they're actually recalling the past. maybe there's a genetic variant maybe there's environmental changes maybe there's salient events in their lives that precipitated this ability maybe maybe maybe we still have no idea. whatever's behind the super memories even h. samurais are susceptible to having false memories implanted. in experiments elizabeth loftus gently suggested to each sam subjects' that there was news footage of the $911.00 crash of united $93.00 in pennsylvania but no actual footage exists. like subjects with normal memories about one in 58 sam participants remembered seeing this footage when asked to try and recall it later. it just seemed like something was falling out of.

i was just you know kind of stunned by watching the plane you know go down. the a champ subjects. could remember seeing footage of this crash that they could not have seen in fact these individuals were just as susceptible to developing false memories in these experiments as a control group if they can be susceptible there may be no group that is really amusing from having these kinds of memory errors false memories happen to everyone even memories that are vivid and detailed and that you hold with 100 percent conviction can be false. now that means that every memory potentially is an illusion and that all your memories at least a little bit are false. so the big mystery is why would evolution encourage the survival of humans with such

mistaken and malleable memories. could there be some advantage to this. can we change our memories for the better. you don't need a neuroscientist to create false memories in a lab says elizabeth loftus. because we do it ourselves all the time. so there are studies that show that people remember they they got grades that were better than they actually were that they gave more to charity than they really did that they had kids that walked and talked in an earlier age and they really did we distort our memories in ways that maybe make us feel a little better about ourselves. sometimes you would like the sadness is maybe to recede and not have them being at the forefront of your mind ready. this can be

a problem for many people with age sam those who study them say they're often haunted by living memories you may remember the loss of a loved one. it was an intense emotion and we cried but when you remember it as 10 or 15 years old as you feel about it but it's not there for them it's there it's just so emotional experience of 10 years ago just how they have excessively strong memories of all of the bad things that happen to them and i wouldn't want to have. in fact depressed people may remember things more accurately than the rest of us say some scientists. they call this condition depressive realism. when we look at depressed people's memories we actually find that they think about it in some ways actually more realistically because they remember equally the good in the negative and remembering things really well and accurately can be

a disadvantage it can lead to you being sad and not having a coherent positive view of your life and where you're going if you remember just tragedies from your life you're going to be depressed if you can reinterpret even bad events as having potentially positive outcomes right and then you can think about them differently that's going to actually help with your emotion emotional wellbeing and self-esteem. we should all accept our clumsy flimsy faulty memory is because that's what makes us human our past is a fictional story i think what you remember creates and defines who you are. so can you change your life by changing how you remember it for jennifer thompson discovering she had wrongly sent ronald cotton to jail for her rape haunted her for 2 years. she finally reached out in contact the cotton hoping to apologize

and he agreed to meet her at his nearby church. and. before i really should get my thoughts together he was in the doorway. and sobs and somehow got the words out you know i spend every minute of the rest of my life telling you i'm sorry could you ever find in your heart to forgive me. jennifer. i forgive me. i knew she did this is honest. she had she was just wrong. a lot of people hold hatred and grudges in their home or you know what i mean then that night i think about that. jennifer. i just want us to be happy to move on in life and so after that you know she cried. and we ended up in each other's arms that day and hung to the parking lot and and you know he's become one of my closest

friend in the world. thompson and cotton and went on to write a book together about their experience called picking cotton. they also work together to change eyewitness laws and free wrongfully convicted prisoners. instead of becoming bitter cotton chose to make other victims lives a better. one of those people who lost. and they made me want to stand. and have fight for others that were then saying situation some of them that we. cotton in thompson work to change north carolina's law and succeeded in 2008 since then some 20 states have reformed their eyewitness procedures many have begun educating police judges and juries about the science of memory with 4 states passing eyewitness reform since 2017.

gary wells says things are better but getting everyone on board is a long shot over half the u.s. still hasn't passed eyewitness reforms based on scientific research. i don't think there's any doubt that people are still being convicted erroneous lead based on state and i was sort of cation we have not fully solved this problem so chances are there are several 1000 still in prison based on the state and i would stuff cation oh that's just the tip of the iceberg. thus the 350 or so d.n.a. exonerations those are just in cases where there is biological evidence that could be tested people have been trying to estimate the wrongful convictions that might occur every. here and some estimates go as high as maybe 10000 a year in the united states alone. perhaps we can all learn from ronald

cotton in jennifer thompson they've managed to revise their own memories of what they've been through and by doing so they've changed their lives for the better. one continent 700000000 people. with their own personal stories. europe. we explored every day life for. what europeans fear and what they hope for. some piss on the road. in 30 minutes on d w. 2 only. real or not too well. what

about assuring economy instead. of a change in thinking is changing the economy to create something new. economics magazine 3 years in germany. 90 minutes w. . in the far north. it's lonely. breathtakingly beautiful. the arctic. sea take a journey around the north pole profiteers and talk with people experiencing

a changing environment. the ice disappears earlier and it keeps retreating we're future depends on what happens you. know. within the circle december 21st d.w. . this is do the news and these are our top stories officials in nigeria say that more than 300 school boys kidnapped last week have been released the students were abducted from a government school in the northwest gate of the state's governor says most of the boys are now free. french president emanuel isolating after testing positive for covert 19 his office says it's highly likely he caught the virus at a european summit spanish prime minister pedro sanchez who met with his

quarantining for a week office has not specified the symptoms he's showing but the french president went ahead with a planned speech by video conference on thursday. russian president vladimir putin has rejected allegations that the kremlin was behind the poisoning of the opposition leader alexina valmy during his annual news conference in moscow putin said if the russian special forces had wanted to fatally poisoned they would have finished the job. this is doable you news from berlin follow us on twitter and instagram news or visit our website www dot com. or. for. the pressure to roll out nationwide coronavirus vaccinations the u.k.

canada and the us are already doing it the european union hasn't even approved a vaccine yet that should change next week just before christmas and we know who french president emanuel mccrone will most likely spend christmas eve with himself and only himself today mccrone revealed that he has tested positive for the corona virus he responsively admitted to letting down his guard pandemic fatigue he'll have plenty of time now in self isolation to reflect on what he did and didn't do i'm burnt off in berlin this is the day. gifts that nobody not even the president of france has been spat that we will cool for extra vigilance especially as the holidays approach as we enter the coldest months we must be vigilant and keep this virus under control. the fact is the

nation is on the way out of this pandemic and we are well prepared for that respect seemed will be the christmas gift for all europeans if everything goes well and tendency in when we see how many people are dying from the corona virus so we know how many lives this could say if it comes next year and we hope it will not just christmas because we will do everything. also coming up they say their coach called them fat and ugly and was even willing to let them fall to the ground tonight accusations of abuse in. german gymnastics you'll meet 2 gymnast who say instead of being trained they were bully he pushed me 2 or 3 times to go down but i knew he wasn't holding me properly that's why i didn't go. and then i did under pressure but he let go of maine said that you see.

lots of our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and to all of our viewers around the world welcome we begin the day tracking and tracing all the people who recently shared the same space with the french president today emmanuel mccrone announced that he has tested positive for the corona virus and is now in self isolation the news triggered a political gaffes across europe and beyond in the last week mccrone spent time face to face with european leaders such as german chancellor angela merkel mccrone and his wife also had dinner with egyptian president. for them and they have a long list of others it could be a week of quarantine here is what france's top public health official said today about the president and his diagnosis. it was that's what you know with the president is an example to everyone he isolated of a slight his symptom that's what we say to old french people he took a test when he had the slightest doubt that's also what we want and he is

a supporter of our tracing app i can say he is extremely attentive to hygiene measures is disinfectant everywhere and he had his the social distancing guidelines and then it's not the people. well emanuel mccrone was not the only prominent european dealing with a coronavirus misstep today the king of sweden in a rare public rebuke said that the government's pandemic policy has been a deadly disaster is words came just as a stinging report on the country's handling of the crisis was released an independent commission said the swedish government failed to protect the elderly from the virus nearly half of sweden's coben $1000.00 deaths have been in nursing homes take a listen to how the kings summed it up let me david they really have i think quite simply that we have failed too. many people have died and that is horror over take it to the crypt of threat where the 1st vaccine against the

corona virus is expected to be approved and rolled out to the public sometime next week here in europe here in germany as has been the case in the u.k. and the u.s. residents of nursing homes their staff and front line health care workers will receive the 1st injections but the vaccines won't provide relief for germany's hospital's intensive care units are filling up and now a leading physician is predicting that in the coming weeks a growing number of medics will be forced to make decisions on who gets lifesaving treatment and who doesn't we have this report tonight on a hospital where the situation is already dire. a new kind of a patient has a drive by ambulance to try birds university hospital he's traveling in a specialized elation pod so none of the transport team gets infected the patient is only in his forty's he's transferred to viviane it starts months intensive care

unit with 5 members of the team she turns him on his stomach the prone position is an important therapy for seriously ill patients the team make sure the patient is well padded as he will lie like this for several hours afterwards the inflammation sits at the back of the lungs and a lot of fluid collects there the lungs can't heal if we lie on them the whole time by turning patients on to their stomachs their lungs get air and can heal. once a day the team turns each patient on to their front and back again it's a big effort but printing and being put on a ventilator is not sufficient for many critically ill patients. need to be connected to an artificial lung to keep them alive. it pumps the patient's blood into a machine where carbon dioxide is extracted and oxygen added.

to everything that the blood is and pumped back into the patient's body. just for patients who are there aren't many options left this is the last trump card we've got. my therapeutic options are so boring we give oxygen and the artificial lung but that only gives us more time it belongs have to heal on their own up. in the hospital pharmacy there's no wonder drug against the coronavirus ramdass of a one of the great hopes at the start of the pandemic has yielded disappointing results as have many other drugs. medics of the virus for nearly a year now but the odds of surviving a severe case haven't improved much you know it's what every 2nd person on a ventilator dies behind each of those numbers is a human being much in the 2nd wave many young and healthy people have also been

infected but that's no guarantee for a mild a cause of the illness. and you have to think you know this is a young man 45 years old with a severe case of coma he's a prime example that a young healthy person without any notable preexisting medical conditions can be brought to the brink of death by this fire going forth. into the intensive care units really are at that limit we have to be clear about that there might still be some spare beds but every day there's fewer and patients like here for a long time for weeks or even months and that means beds don't free up quickly. at the moment they can still fight for every single patient's life but the time off to christmas could turn into the intensive care teams was a nightmare. grim scenes there let's pull in our correspondent simon young he's on the story for us tonight here in berlin good evening to you simon you know we have heard since the pandemic began the germany had huge hospital capacity that there

were more than enough intensive care beds and now as we're seeing in that report some hospitals are in a state of emergency how did this happen. well we've got a worsening picture here in germany and hospitals are feeling the pressure the sheriff's a hospital here in berlin one of large one of europe's largest hospitals for instance has announced that it is halting routine non-essential operations from monday and moving to an emergency schedule in order to make sure that it has capacity still available from other places around the country we've heard reports of hospital mortuaries that are reaching capacity and bodies stored in containers and as you've mentioned in some parts of the country doctors are even reporting they're already having to make that decision whether seriously ill patients should take up resources and get treatment or whether those resources should go to other

patients with a better likelihood of survival so gemini says that still has 4000 i.c.u. beds available and another 11000 potentially in temporary hospital so there is capacity left but it's a worsening situation infection numbers still on the rise a new record today over 30000 new infections. and it's a worrying picture that's why we've got this strict new lockdown now i mean even if the verse corona virus vaccine is approved next week here in europe the lag behind the u.k. and the u.s. it remains obvious and troubling do we know why i journeyed did not push earlier to get an emergency authorization for the use of this vaccine. well indeed a spin a controversial questionnaire germans are looking for instance at the u.k. where 137000 people are reported to have already received the vaccine here germany

the country where one of the 1st vaccines was developed people still waiting but the reason is that germany took the decision back in the spring that it. would follow the european the e.u. vaccine approvals regime and the vaccine rollout so the health minister. says that european processes or delay and it's thora and he also points out that it's a full approval rather than an emergency approval as has been done in the u.k. and also in the united states and so he hopes that will contribute to public confidence in the vaccine when it arrives fully they say in the wake of the christmas and of course that if there is confidence then that could improve take up of the vaccine is also a concern. about public sentiment are people in support of this. i guess normal pace that europe is going on when it comes to approving the vents the

. well there is general approval in germany at least of the government's approach at the moment and for instance when it comes to the latest lockdown measures we've got over 2 thirds of germans saying that they happy about that and they think it's enough some of them even think it doesn't go far enough so there is general support for the government's handling but at the same time you've got experts saying that with the current right of full and infections of stabilization of infections measures will have to go on long believe beyond the 10 to january which is the current date when those restrictions are set to be lifted so you know it's a mixed picture there. some young on the story for us here in berlin tonight simon as always thank you well still to come on the day 10 years ago today a young tunisian set himself on fire to protest hopeless living conditions his act

of desperation gave birth to the arab spring a movement that did not last the anti government protests multiplied tropically be on china's is borders social media was used to spread the word unorganized and few other countries were left untouched by the un vast. well known to sports and the controversy within the world of german gymnastics there have been allegations recently of abuse bullying and mistreatment by a coach at a national gymnastics center here in the country. has spoken to 2 former elite gymnast who trained at that center they say the abuse is real in that it extends far beyond where they used to train. naomi and ruby vandyke are learning to love gymnastics all over again for many years their love

for the sport had disappeared. aged 10 and primed for big things between this move to an elite training center near cologne but when their performances dipped they say they were called fat and lazy by their coach just slims the front is the worst thing was when he said he wouldn't come to competitions with us because we were embarrassing him when you're 14 or 15 you need to coach he supports you no matter how badly he always let us down just before the competition saying you're so you have a you're embarrassed i may be out a mess on one occasion injuring a ball as exercise naomi said she was purposely dropped on her head to teach her a lesson before i had to fight he pushed me 2 or 3 times to go down lower but i knew he wasn't holding me properly.