Long Article (7 min)

Is Your Memory Limitless

The following facts show that there is no apparent limit to the capabilities of memory.
For all practical purposes the human memory seems to be infinite.

Dreams

Many people have dreamt about friends and relatives whom they have not met for 20
or 30 years. In the dreams, the images are perfect with all colors and details. This
shows that there is a huge memory storage somewhere in the brain.

Hypnosis and memory

We seem to remember everything that we see, hear, or feel. For example, a person
in an accident did not remember the car's license-plate number. But under hypnosis,
he could tell the correct number. This shows that he indeed had the number stored
somewhere in his brain.

Surprise recalls

Everyone has the experience of suddenly remembering some long forgotten

memory. For example, some very old incident or some friend.

Scientific experiment of connecting wires to patient's

 brain for memory recall

When scientists connect electrodes (wires) to certain parts of the brain, the patients
re-experience certain events from their past. They experience those events as if the
events were happening now. This is not just memory recall. This is like re-living the
experience. In one experiment, these experiences were as old as 40 years. This
shows that the information is stored somewhere in the brain.

Near-death experiences

Many people who were very close to death have this experience. They say that their
whole life flashed before them. They mean entire, total life, everything in their life.
Even things they had forgotten.

Photographic memory

Photographic memory means people can, usually for a short time, remember exactly
and perfectly, everything they see. This memory fades with time. It can be so
accurate that a person can even remember 1,000 separate random dots on a paper.
This shows that our short term memory can be perfect.

Scientists now believe that most children have this ability when they are young. But
we force them to concentrate too much on logic and language and mathematics and
too little on imagination and other mental skills. And as a result, children lose this
photographic memory.
 Rajan Mahadevan: modern Indian famous for memory

Rajan Mahadevan set a new world record by memorizing 32,811 digits for the value
of PI (a mathematical function) on 5th July 1981. Rajan is one of the world's few
people alive with such a memory. He again set a new world record in 1982 by
memorizing 35,000 digits for the value of PI.

According to Rajan, he is able to remember numbers by associating them with real-

life situations.

Though Rajan has a wonderful memory for numbers, he is less than average when it
comes to remembering faces. He sometimes forgets where he put his keys.

Most famous memorizer: Russian S

The most famous memorizer was a Russian called "S". His memory was so good
that if you asked him what happened on a specific day 14 years ago, he would think
for a moment and then ask "At what time?" This Russian "S" was studied for 30
years by the most famous Russian psychologist of that time. The psychologist found
that "S" was just like any normal person but his memory was really perfect. It was
found that "S" had by chance discovered the basic "mnemonic technique" as a child
and it became natural part of his memorizing.

The Conclusion for Us

The human memory is huge and practically limitless. This understanding and belief
will help you memorize better because you can expect to remember / memorize
better.

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