Jill has a condition called Hyperthymesia in which her brain has (for currently unknown reasons) developed in such a way that allows for almost obsessive recall of personal experience. Her ability to remember does not extend to lists or sets of items she is asked to recall as are often used to demonstrate memorization skills.

Reading through various reports it would be easy to conjecture that an early childhood trauma may have let her to obsess about the details of her life at an early age. This may have caused, been caused by, or contributed to the unusual way that her brain developed. You could also conjecture that the brain has combined and enlarged the sections of the brain commonly associated with memory recall and Obsessive Compulsive disorder to create a much more powerful method of indexing/accessing her memories than is common.

This is conjecture though and no conclusive information is available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price
http://today.uci.edu/pdf/AJ_2006.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Cant-Forget-Extraordinary-Science/dp/1416561765/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1233180874&sr;=11-1
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