There are people out there who can remember almost every detail of what they did on a random day ten year ago . But is it potential to have an existent photographic memory , whether developed by nature or nurture ? Here ’s the truth .
A case study of one — or possibly none
The list of people claim to have photographic memory is a long one , but when you look at the leaning of document scientific studies , that list nail down quite considerably , to one : a single paper published in 1970 in Nature . And some scientists , suggest that the issue might be whittled down even further , to zero .
Image : An representative of a random dot stereogram , this one testify a shark . /Fred Hsu
In Nature , Charles Stromeyer , a visual sensation research worker at Harvard , detailed the case of a woman , Elizabeth , whose computer storage was so exceeding that she could consider a 10,000 Department of Transportation - image stereogram with one eye one day , consider a second Elvis - figure with the other middle the next day , and then layer those two dot - prototype over top of each other in her storage so accurately that she could see the full , 3 - d image they would create . Otherresearchers started to become skeptical , however , when she did n’t endeavor to replicate the tests with any investigator besides Stromeyer — and became even more skeptical afterward on when Elizabeth and Stromeyer finally splice .
Scientific lit is riddled with other example of “ higher-ranking rememberers , ” some with surpassing skills . But , the kind of entire , instantaneous recall — unite visual , spatial , audio , and verbal memories — that defines a photographic retentivity is noticeably scatty . So , if real - biography photographic memories ( the strange case of Elizabeth notwithstanding ) do n’t exist , what about those multitude who just seem to have really , really unspoiled memories ? There , with these superior rememberers , the scientific ground gets much more substantial .
“Like a movie that never stops.”
In 2000 , Jill Price netmail scientist at the University of California , Los Angeles to describe the singular , and unusual , personal memory she had apparently been carry with . “ Most have call it a natural endowment but I call it a burden,”she wrote . “ I track down my entire life through my mind every day and it drives me crazy ! ! ! ”
At first , the researcher were sceptical , but over five years of tests that gradually became confident that the woman who call herself a “ human calendar ” was for real , describing her retentivity in the paper theypublished in 2006 inNeurocaseas “ nonstop , uncontrollable , and automatic . ” What it also was was , though , was modified .
Price did , indeed , seem to have near perfect recall , at one item dazzle researcher by dashing off a complete list of her last 20 age of Easters in 10 minutes . But that recall was only focussed on herself and the day - to - day consequence that had made up her life sentence . In demarcation to other superior rememberers , she did not practice to develop her memory . In fact , if anything , she seems to have found it rather unpleasant . Here ’s how Price described her condition :
It ’s like a running moving-picture show that never stops . It ’s like a split silver screen . I ’ll be babble to someone and seeing something else … Like we ’re sitting here talk and I ’m talking to you and in my head I ’m thinking about something that happened to me in December 1982 , December 17 , 1982 , it was a Friday , I bulge to form at Gs ( a storage ) … . It ’s all about dates … . I just know these things about dates …
In most tests of retentivity — for instance con a long string of digit or recalling information read in a rule book — she did no better than average . She also note that her memory skills were no help to her in schooltime , not even in chronicle . Her knowledge of date is limited strictly to the days that she herself has have , and even then it was not infallible . research worker point out that Price did , on occasion , either misremember a appointment or not recall a previously secernate story .
To call Mary Leontyne Price ’s control over her memory photographic , therefore , seems not quite accurate , rather researchers strike the term “ hyperthymestic syndrome ” as a manner to delineate Price and a handful of other people whose special store seem to be purely confined to their own experience .
But , if a photographic memory is n’t a talent that can be accord by nature , then perhaps it is alternatively a goal that can be happen upon by other methods — as some other far-famed “ superior remembers ” adjudicate .
Can you develop a super-memory?
Chao Lucurrently holds the macrocosm recordfor recite Pi to the most decimal places from memory board . In 2005 , Lu — who was studying Chemistry at the time in China — rattled off Pi to the 67,890th place . It convey him more than 24 hours of uninterrupted speech . Surely this seems on the control surface to be an extraordinary bit of memory — and it dead was , but it was also just as much an act of creativity .
To get to the head where he was able to grab a world record , Lu spent more than 4 years memorize the digits comprising Pi . But he was n’t learn the number , rather he was memorize a story . Lu excuse that he had broken down duo of digits into like simulacrum , whichhe then used to frame a serial of stories . In essence , Lu had pass those four years composing and learn an larger-than-life novel , which he then narrate for onlookers much in the same room that a locomote storyteller would con and then enumerate a best-loved tale .
paradigm : A pi pie /Paul Smith
What ’s more , Lu , only get a little more than 3/4 of the manner through that tale on the daytime that he broke the disk — he can in reality , he says , make it all the way through 100,000 digits :
I ’ve make 100,000 digits of pi , and I was go to recite 91,300 digits of them . But I made a mistake at the 67,891th digit . It was “ 0 ” but I sound out “ 5 ” in my recitation . Then after a few while the challenge stopped .
Inside the Mind Palace
Once a yr , a cautiously - curated group of some of the most exceptional memories in the public can be find all tuck together at the World Memory Championship . There , they contend at besting each other in tricks such as speed - come back the ordering of cards in a deck , learn strings of binary numbers , and matching faces with names . In 2002 , Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire decided to do a series of magnetic resonance imaging on the memory champions , fora study that she would eventually publish inNature , to see what difference she could encounter in their brains that might explicate their remarkable facility for memory .
What she found was nothing .
The memory champions showed no differences in brain structure , no strange levels of cognitive activity , no exceptional skills in either verbal or non - verbal area . The only difference Maguire was capable to find oneself was that , curiously , when the retention champions performed a exploit of computer storage there was brain natural action in region that were unremarkably associated with think of physical locations or come back direction .
In interviews with the memory champions , almost all of them tell Maguire that they had been using what a memory proficiency pop in Ancient Greece , “ the method - of - locus , ” what you may know better as the mind castle proficiency .
“ It ’s based on navigation,”Maguire explains , “ they imagine going down a street they know well , plaza item at certain position along the street , then mentally retrace their road to find the particular . ”
A pharmaceutical solution?
So , it seems as though — through a large deal of work and genial training — it is potential to train your brainiac to become , if not photographic , then sure still very sound at recall . But what if there was a way to skip the hours of practice , the trick , and the year of training ? What if the trouble of improving your memory was as simple as taking a pill ? There ’s a numeral of researcher operate on just that .
In a recent work print inNature Neuroscience , researcher at Johns Hopkins University found that a caffein pill could cause a impermanent encouragement in memory performance over a 24 60 minutes period . alas , they also receive that either have caffein regularly or having more than might be present in a single , small cup of coffee bean quick negated all the benefits .
In the world of memory research , though , the most sought after prize is unremarkably much longer than a 24 - minute hump . The material end is finding a way to boost recall to superior levels over the longterm — and some researcher have done just that , with mice . In 2009 , research published inScienceshowed that mice could be given anear stark visual memoryfor a span of two months by advance product of a protein find in their optical cortex . afterward research put out from Baylor College inCellfound that by surpressing levels PKR , a molecule involved in sense viruses , researchers couldboost spatial memoryin mouse to exchangeable level .
http://io9.com/5306489/a-drug-that-could-give-you-perfect-visual-memory
In both instances , researchers thought that the research could eventually lead to standardised results in humans . But , though the studies might be good enough understanding for shiner to throw out their day planners and pile up post it note , no such anovulant exists for lacking - minded humans — not yet , anyway .
The wrong primate?
So , is the beingness of an existent photographic remembering just a myth ? For world it seems to be — but perhaps that stand for we ’ve just been looking at the incorrect primate . A study from Kyoto University pit humans , adult chimps , and young chimpsagainst each other in a test to see who could best think the location of a remembered succession of Book of Numbers on a touch screen . Adult Pan troglodytes and humans perform roughly evenly , but the consequence of the youthful chimp blew both out of the water system . What ’s more , researchers point out that the young chimps times were really showing response times that were faster than their center ’s ability to scan the projection screen — lay down research worker believe that some new chimps might possess photographic memories .
It ’s not just chimpanzees that have the potential drop to own what might be address a photographic memory , however . The humble fruit fly has also been targeted by researchers as the potential possessor of a photographic memory — but only if it ’s mutate . ACurrent Biologystudy of yield flies with the CREB factor hike up advise that they were able to gain what researchers called a form of photographic memory over the course of their abbreviated life . In turns out that the CREB gene is onethat humans also divvy up with yield flies , but the voltage for a like boost in homo has n’t yet been studied .
Cognitive scienceMindPsychologyScience
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