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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‐

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