HHave you ever experienced a smell or taste pulling you into a world of memories? One bite of a cookie similar to the ones in your old school cafeteria and suddenly you can practically see the linoleum floor and hear the squeak of the plastic chairs. Most people can have such sudden reveries – I can’t.

When I’ve read descriptions of this phenomenon – Proust’s Madeleine scene, for example, or the memory bubbles in the film Inside Out – I’ve always assumed it was some kind of metaphorical device. I had no idea that most people actually relive moments from their past in some sensory detail, even if they’re a little blurry or faint.

I’ve realized that my own way of reminiscing isn’t nearly as rich. I was just listening to a song I once played in my high school orchestra, and it reminded me of the time a (not so good) violinist named Barbara almost hit me after I corrected her bowing.

But I don’t remember what she looked like, what the music room smelled like, or the fear I must have felt when I saw her clenching her fists. I just remember the story – a story that I probably told over and over again afterward until it was burned into my brain.

Sensory memories that you can replay are called episodic memories, while remembered facts and stories are called semantic memories. This may seem like a subtle difference, but these two types of memories are based on different brain networks.

We know this from amnesiacs like Kent Cochrane. Cochrane had a motorcycle accident that destroyed both of his hippocampi – deep brain structures that coordinate the replay of old memories. After his accident, he could still talk about his life, but only in the form of dry facts: his brain did not evoke feelings of warmth when he spoke of his happiest moments with loved ones, or sadness over past losses. It was as if he had simply read a biography about himself.

I’m a science writer, so when I suspected my memory was a little odd, I dove into research and found descriptions of a condition known as severely impaired autobiographical memory. That’s not a disorder: it just describes people at one extreme of the human memory spectrum. Those with SDAM rely heavily on their semantic memory, while people with HSAM – severely superior autobiographical memory – put all their cards on the episodic side, and neurotypical people land somewhere in the middle. I wanted to know if I was an outlier.

It took almost a year to confirm my self-diagnosis, but that’s lightning fast in relative terms. For more than a century, serious scientists have largely ignored the subject of inner experience, arguing that it was impossible to verify or disprove what people claimed was going on in their heads.

But in recent years, that has changed. Researchers recently found a method to test whether people can visualize with their “mind’s eye”: A cool study found that most people’s pupils constrict in response to presented Light, but that did not apply to people who cannot visualize.

I wasn’t able to participate in that study, but I signed up for a few others. In a high-tech version of the pupil constriction study, I was put in an fMRI machine and asked to imagine places and faces. My brain just sat there and did nothing, just like the pupils of the non-visualizers.

I also participated in a study that used a method called descriptive experience sampling, in which I wore a pager that randomly interrupted me several times a day so that I could report exactly what my inner experience was at that moment.

The verdict? Almost everyone has a much more animated inner life than I do. When other people are talking quietly to themselves, reflecting on past moments or thinking about the future, I am simply existing. I spend about 46% of my time simply taking in sensory input. The rest of my waking hours are mostly spent tuning out – an activity that scientists charitably refer to as “unsymbolized thinking.”

I was shocked to discover that my consciousness was so different from that of most people, and began to question friends and family about their own consciousness. Their answers shocked me: the inner lives of the people closest to me were completely different from mine.

I once asked my friend Miriam why she seemed so absent-minded, and it turned out she was mentally replaying and analyzing a recent conversation she’d had with her sister, trying to turn down “No Scrubs” on her internal radio station, and wondering what to wear to the party we were late for.

At that moment everything happened in My There was a feeling of impatience in my head, but this feeling quickly faded when I understood why Miriam was moving so slowly.

I used to think that my ability to focus, my quick recovery from setbacks, and my inability to hold grudges were positive character traits—reflections and results of my work ethic and generosity. But now I see them as the result of my unusual brain architecture. Most people are haunted by their past in ways I can’t quite understand, and that’s not something you choose. It’s simply a function of how neurotypical memory works.

Am I missing out on a meaningful part of the human experience? Maybe. Sometimes I wish I could remember dancing with my husband at our wedding, or the milky smell when I held my newborn niece for the first time.

When I began this journey, part of me hoped I could retrain my memory and learn to relive happy moments from my life. But the more I learned about the neurotypical experience of remembering, the more I learned to appreciate how my brain keeps me in the present.

From what I’ve heard, negative memories crop up as often as wedding dances. Ultimately, all the research taught me nothing about my memory: it was a sense of wonder at the vast range of human experience, in which many of us are perfectly happy and largely functional despite our strange brains. And I gave up meditating. As it turns out, I’m a certifiably Zen person.

• Sadie Dingfelder is the author of “Do I Know You?: A Face-Blind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Vision, Memory, and Imagination”