We all have photographic memories, it's just that some of us don't have any film.
Hey Guys Julia here for DNews.
One of my favorite book series as a kid was about kid detective Cam Jansen, who by saying
“click” could snap a picture in her head and be able to remember the scene like she
was looking at a photograph.
Just like Cam Jansen, though, photographic memory seems to be a work of fiction.
There’s a limit to the kind of information we can take it at once.
We remember certain details of a scene, but not EVERY detail.
Like if I try to think of the painting of the Girl with the Pearl Earring, I can kind
of remember what her earring looks like, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what
color her eyes are.
Little kids often have something close, though, called eidetic memory.
This is when kids can recall an image in extreme detail for a few minutes after they’ve seen
it.
But because most people lose this ability as they grow up some scientists think it’s
an immature version of memory.
As kids grow up and learn to read and write and think abstractly, memory becomes more
abstract too.
Yeah there are some examples of people with REALLY good memory.
Stephen Wiltshire comes about as close as possible to being a human camera.
After just a short helicopter ride, he was able to recreate the skyline of New York to
almost near accuracy.
Of course, he is an artist, so he took some creative liberties.
But no serious scientific research confirms his abilities.
While that’s just one maybe example, there are other cases of people will really good
memories.
Like really good.
One famous case, the story of Jill Price who remembers nearly everyday of her life was
published in the journal Neurocase.
She remembers everything about her life, down to what shirt she wore to Target to buy groceries
on a certain day.
Although her abilities might be the result of a kind of OCD where she obsesses over memories.
Which doesn’t sound all that fun.
Another study published in the journal of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory looked
at the brains of eleven participants who might have similar memories.
Scientists referred to this ability as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM).
While they performed pretty average on some cognitive tests, the researchers found that
their brains were actually unique.
They had stronger white matter connections, which could allow information to be transferred
more efficiently in the brain.
But the participants didn’t use memory palaces or other tricks.
The scientists found that “Instead, they appear to have some inherent ability to retain
and retrieve vast amounts of public and autobiographical events, well beyond what one may expect from
simple rehearsal.”
What kind of rehearsal you ask?
Well, mind palaces seem to be the best way to boost your memory.
If you’ve ever seen BBC’s Sherlock Holmes, you know what this looks like.
Pick a scene you’re familiar with like walking down your street or walking around your house
and put things you want to remember in a certain spot.
Like if I wanted to remember pi i could put the 3 on my front door, I could put the .14
on the wall in my foyer.
I could put the 15 on my banister I could put the 92 at the top of stairs.
you get the idea, as I mentally walk through my house, I would associate those numbers
with those locations.
A lot of memory champions use this trick.
While photographic memory doesn’t seem real and most of us don’t have special memories,
thank God because I would really hate to re-live every embarrassing day of middle school, there
are ways to improve your memory.
Like the mind-palace trick or Trace says to sniff some rosemary or maybe make a fist!
No really, check it out in this video here or check out why we forget things at all,
check out this video here.
Alright guys, what tricks do you use to remember things?
Let us know in the comments below…