66 | April• 2018
SECRETS TO A SMARTER YOU
I
nanagewhenyourrefrig-
erator can help you manage
your shopping list and your
phone can answer almost
any question, you don’t
really need to remember
anything anymore. Which makes the
featsofmemorychampions–who
can recall hundreds of names and
faces,stringsofnumbersorwordsor
the order of multiple decks of cards
–seemmoresuperhumanthanever.
Buthere’saniftylittlesecretabout
people with phenomenal recall: in a
studyrecentlypublishedinthesci-
entific journalNeuron, researchers
foundthatsupermemorisersdon’t
have unusually large cerebral regions
thatallowthemtoabsorbandretain
prodigious amounts of information.
heirbrainstructuresareessentially
thesameasthoseoftherestofus.
Comparing brain scans of 23 mem-
ory champions (all placed in the top
50 at the World Memory Champion-
ship) with those of 23 average people
ofthesameage,genderandIQ,the
scientists found only one diference:
in the memory champs’ brains, the
regions associated with visual and
spatiallearningandtheregionsas-
sociatedwithmemorylitupinaspe-
ciic pattern.Inthenormalpeople’s
brains,thesesameregionswereac-
tivated diferently.
Whyisthisimportant?Becausewe
learnbyseeing,andthemorewesee,
thebetterwerememberthings.hese
supermemorisershaveperfecteda
method to convert items they want
to remember (numbers, faces, cards,
even abstract shapes) into pictures
they‘see’intheirminds.It’saprocess
calledbuildingamemorypalace.
Here’showitworks:first,you
transform your target items into an
image – anything you’ll remember.
For instance, to remember card se-
quences, Ed Cooke (recognised as
a Grandmaster of Memory by the
World Memory Sports Council) told
American author Tim Ferriss that he
assignseachcardaspecificceleb-
rity,anactionandanobject;each
three-card combination then forms a
uniqueimagewiththecelebfromthe
irst card, the action from the second
and the object from the third.
Inhissystem,thejackofspades,
sixofspades,andaceofdiamonds
becomestheDalaiLamawearing
Lady Gaga’s meat dress and holding
Michael Jordan’s basketball. Cooke’s
system is built on the idea that your
memory hangs on to unusual cues
better than mundane ones.
Then, mentally place that picture
somewhere familiar to you: in your
MEMORY CHAMPIONS’
BRAIN STRUCTURES
ARE ESSENTIALLY
THE SAMEAS THOSE
OF THE REST OF US
