"Where did the years go?"

Middle-aged people often ask that plaintive question as time seems to accelerate, the days blur together, and children grow up in a flash.

But it's not a question 42-year-old Jill Price ever asks, because she can recall in vivid detail every day of her life since age 14, and many earlier days, too.

"The Woman Who Can't Forget" (Free Press), her book with writer Bart Davis, tells the story of the woman who is believed to be the first person confirmed to have such a superior autobiographical memory. She was studied by experts at University of California-Irvine for six years before they reported the feats of "AJ" in a professional journal in 2006.

Now "AJ" has decided to reveal her identity. She lives in suburban Los Angeles and works as the administrator of a religious school. Price is fleshing out this story in the hope, she said, that others like her will come forward for scientists to study. Exploring clues in the brains of memory "overachievers" might hasten discoveries that could help those with memory problems, experts say.

Two other "bona fides" came forward after the journal report in "Neurocase," said James McGaugh, the neuroscientist contacted by Price eight years ago because she was bewildered and tormented by her nonstop barrage of memories.

McGaugh, with colleagues Elizabeth Parker and Larry Cahill, gave Price a battery of memory and cognitive tests. She had kept a diary from ages 10 to 34, so the researchers could verify Price's recollections with pages randomly selected from 1,460 diary days, he said.

But that wasn't all. You could give her a date, "and within seconds she'd tell you what day of the week it was, not only what she did but other key events of the day," McGaugh said.

Aug. 16, 1977? A Tuesday; Elvis died. May 18, 1980? A Sunday, when Mount St. Helens erupted. She also quickly could come up with the day and date of noted events: the start of the Gulf War, Rodney King's beating, Princess Diana's death (Aug. 30 or 31, 1997, depending on France or U.S. time, she told McGaugh).

Daily life for Price "is like a split screen," she said. Though living in the present, "a dozen or more times a day, I'll be cued back to detailed memories of the past."

She'll read a date, see something on TV, hear a song, smell something, "and it can take me back decades," Price said. She'll tell you where she went, what her mother ordered in a restaurant and the friends she saw on routine days many years ago.

Normally, people retain memories linked to strong emotions, "and they get talked about, like the birth of a child, which leads to greater retention," said Brian Levine, an expert on autobiographical memory with Rotman Research Institute-Baycrest Centre at the University of Toronto.

But even vivid memories of red-flag events can fade over time, Levine said, "and that's what makes this case of AJ so remarkable. They're not emotional high points, and apparently they don't fade."

A TRAUMA AT AGE 8

Price traces the start of locked-in memories to a wrenching move from the East Coast to Los Angeles when she was 8. Her book depicts a life lacerated by bouts of depression and anxiety. Separation anxiety is a powerful force in her life. Price has lived with her parents most of the time, even during a two-year marriage.

She said her most ardent hope was to have a happy marriage and children. But after marrying at 37, she had a miscarriage, and her husband, Jim, died of a stroke.

The constant onslaught of memories is both a curse and a blessing, Price said. Especially under stress, the good memories give her great comfort. "I have this warm, safe feeling, and I can get through anything."

The dark side is that she recalls every bad decision, every insult and excruciating embarrassment. "Over the years, it has eaten me up."

Peaceful sleep is rare because memories assault her, she said. "It has kind of paralyzed my life."

Squelching the gusher of memories isn't an option. "I can't stop. It doesn't work — short of a lobotomy."

And, amazingly, she wouldn't stop even if she could. "The idea of losing some of my memories is actually anxiety-provoking. I've felt an urgent desire to hold on to the days and places and events."

There is not just one cause of Price's "gift," scientists say. Her memory potential "probably was wired in when the brain developed," but her environment also probably played a role, said Jill Goldstein, a clinical neuroscientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School.

At McGaugh's request, Goldstein has studied MRIs of Price's brain and found unusual structural qualities. Now she's analyzing brain scans from the other two super-memory subjects. McGaugh doesn't want to reveal Price's differences yet because it's chancy to identify true causes from just one person, he said; coincidental life events can be mistaken for causes.

For example, Price said the move west amplified her memory abilities. "But the other two didn't have this kind of trauma in their childhoods, and they have roughly the same ability," McGaugh said.

That doesn't mean the move didn't influence her brain. Because the brain has multiple ways of doing tasks, the other two may not have arrived at super-memory by exactly the route Price did, Levine said.

One possible clue to Price's condition is that she scored poorly on abstract reasoning; it was hard to grasp concepts and see analogies.

"Most of us extract generalities. We get the gist of things, so we can navigate in similar situations," Levine said. "But if you have trouble seeing generalities, every instance becomes a unique instance, interesting in its own light."

'IT'S BIGGER THAN ME'

Because she's swamped with details, Price may find it easy to store and retrieve specific memories but hard to see the bigger picture, Levine speculated.

Her unusual scores also could help explain why she was a poor student, according to a letter from neuropsychologist Parker, who collaborated on her testing, that Price excerpts in the book.

But one of the other two subjects, Brad Williams, 51, of La Crosse, Wis., skipped a grade in elementary school and won his state's spelling bee. Williams hasn't had the thorough neuropsychological testing yet that Price had, so his abstract and rote memorizing abilities aren't known, but he says school never gave him any trouble.

A radio reporter for WIZM-AM in La Crosse, Williams got intensive testing for autobiographical memories in 2006 by McGaugh's team and was found to be in the same league as Price. But he's different from her in many ways.

"The memories surface on their own, but I also can submerge them," he said.

While Price says her memories control her, and they tilt toward the negative, "it's no big deal in my life, and bad memories don't come up very often," Williams said.

Conversations with Price and Williams are like experiencing day and night. Her recollections are suffused with sorrow; he's an inveterate wise-cracker who views the world through a light prism. In addition to his radio job, Williams performs with an improv comedy group. He said he has had super-detailed life memories "for as long as I can remember" and thinks it helps with reporting.

The third subject, an Ohio resident, has chosen to remain anonymous, McGaugh said. Another one to two dozen people are potential candidates, awaiting the time and money for full workups.

All three who have been certified "are collectors — big time," McGaugh said, which might yield clues to their memory feats. Though what they collect differs — Price has hundreds of dolls, among other things, and Williams collects hats — they all feel compelled to gather things.

The differences between Price and Williams point up how memory doesn't stand as an isolated quality in life.

"It's always interacting with personality," said Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter, author of "The Seven Sins of Memory": "How the Mind Forgets and Remembers." "Your personality, your environment can affect how you handle aspects of memory."

Price is philosophical about how things turned out. "I so didn't have the life I wanted, but God had a different plan for me. I believe this happened for a reason. It's bigger than me — it's science, it could help other people."

What's learned from Price's condition "absolutely" could do that, Goldstein said. "Any rare phenomenon can provide important clues about memory function."

And if they consider how Price's memories torment her, baby boomers worried about the hits their memories take from normal aging might see "it's certainly a blessing to forget certain things," Levine said.

Selective forgetting promotes human survival because without it, many would be paralyzed by past traumas. "Some believe the whole purpose of memory is future-oriented because you can't change the past," he said.