Srinivasa Ramanujan was another person whose cross modal associative memory is worth noting. Photographic or eidetic memory, synesthesia, are other kinds of mnemonic memory arising out a brains capacity for association. We know that paradigmatic or semantic meaning, the fact that one thing is a kind of another, is fundamental to understanding sentences in natural language. It is likely there is a 'wiring' genetic variation going on that allows one thing to be a specific variant on another cross modal thing, and thus extremely memorable. Ramanujan knew every number and every equation as an individual and could immediately recall its unique characteristics (such as prime factors). Computational neuroscience still doesn't have a good grasp of how the brain, which so often has poor memory for such episodic associations can have such great memory in some people.

What seems to be interesting with Funes is that somehow the association interfered with a normal understanding of a number or how it could normally be associated with other numbers. The brain is a discrimination engine so it could simply be that for him every number was an individual, like Ramanujan, but it was actually a person, not seen as part of a counting or math system. It is possible he just had never figured out how one number mathmatically related to another. He's dead now, but it would be wonderful if he could count sequentially using these people words, not the number words.

Anyway, thanks Frank for bringing us another unique person from the past.