**1. Introduction**

Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevskii (1886-1958) was a man studied by psychologist Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, who thought that Shereshevskii's (S) remarkable memory caused a psychological syndrome with cognitive deficits; consequently, Luria not only described S's memory, but also other aspects of his life such as his synaesthesia, mental imagery, preferences, strengths, weaknesses and personality [1]. Likewise, more recently the phrase "hyperthymestic syndrome" (hyperthymesia) has been coined in order to de‐ scribe the case of a woman (AJ) whose autobiographical memory is extraordinary, but she has said "it is a burden" [2]. On the other hand, Kanner's clinical description of au‐ tistic disorder suggested that excellent rote memory might be involved in its aetiology [3]. In addition, some authors have thought that S could have had an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [4,5]. So the question arises: if S could have had an ASD, then how might his memory have given rise to such an ASD? For this reason, the present chapter begins by reviewing the evidence for the diagnosis of autistic disorder in S using criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Re‐ vision (DSM-IV-TR) of the American Psychiatric Association [6] and from proposed crite‐ ria for its fifth edition [7], the chapter also compares his symptoms with those from a famous case (DT) with Asperger syndrome [8,9]. It is concluded that S most likely had autistic disorder. Next, I reviewed the literature to determine whether the assumption that a superior memory may be the cause of autism symptoms would be acceptable or not. However, the data seem to show that S's job as a professional mnemonist was asso‐ ciated instead with a gradual decrease in the severity of some of his autism symptoms [1], notwithstanding, there are great mnemonists without ASD [10,11]. Finally, an alterna‐ tive explanation regarding the possible relationship between superior memories and au‐

© 2013 Romero-Munguía; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

tism spectrum disorders is given by the mnesic imbalance theory, which posits that a faulty procedural memory is replaced, in some of its functions, by a relatively preserved declarative memory, resulting in all three diagnostic symptoms of autism [12].

*2.1.1. Impairment in social interaction*

pathizing [23].

developed empathizing [23].

about item A1c: lack of shared enjoyment [1,6,14].

*2.1.2. Impairment in communicative capacity*

posals will later be explained in detail.

A total of six (or more) items from criterion A (core triad) are required for the diagnosis of autistic disorder, with at least two from subcriterion A1 (social interaction), and one each from subcriteria A2 (communicative capacity) and A3 (behavioral flexibility), while each of the three subcriteria contains four items [6]. On the other hand, S had impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors to regulate social interaction (item A1a). Since the biography of S ex‐ plicitly describes that some individuals always called him *kalter nefesh*, which is a phrase in Yiddish that means *cold soul*, because for instance, he reacted cold-bloodedly to news that other people said to him, so if someone said "Fire!" S did not understand that something was being consumed by flames and consequently he did not show emotions. In this exam‐

Mnesic Imbalance or Hyperthymestic Syndrome as Cause of Autism Symptoms in Shereshevskii

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Besides, S had failure to develop peer relationships (item A1b), which was manifested in various ways. For instance, he had a very good wife and a very intelligent son, but S perceived them as through a haze; also he had difficulties understanding why his fellow men wanted to have any job, which seems to be in accordance with hypo-developed em‐

Moreover, S showed a lack of socio-emotional reciprocity (item A1d), if his host asked him "How do you like these cigarettes?" he answered "So-so, fair... ", that is, S did not respond reciprocally to the kindness of others, which he explained as secondary to his inability to au‐ tomatically react appropriately because he neeeded to monitor all his own actions con‐ sciously [1]. It might be explained as a sort of self-consciousness disturbance through mentalizing deficit [24] but it might also be explained more directly as secondary to hypo-

In conclusion, the data suggest that S met three of the four items from subcriterion A1, since, unfortunately, the psychobiographical text does not provide enough data to make inferences

The biography of S shows evidence that he met item A2b (impairment to initiate or sustain conversational interchange), as only about the time S was over fifty years of age did he learn to follow a conversation and stick to the subject; moreover, S had marked difficulty under‐ standing abstract concepts because he understood only what he could visualize and, there‐ fore, he did not understand phrases such as "to weigh one's words" or "the pressure is higher" [1]. This difficulty with abstract thinking (verbal) along with a higher tendency to use visual mental representations seems most easily explained by the mnesic imbalance theory [12] than by the three major cognitive theories, but also such a cognitive profile has been extensively described by the thinking in pictures hypothesis [25,26]. Both theorical pro‐

On the other hand, S also met item A2c (stereotyped, repetitive or idiosyncratic language), since he at least utilized some words that can be described as neologisms for the ADI-R [14]. For example, S used the word *zhuk* (Russian: *beetle*) when he meant *chipped part*, *black bread*,

ple, the impairment seems secondary to weak central coherence [21].
