This video shows a guy who supposedly have a photographic memory. He was flown across the city of Rome in a helicopter for 45 minutes and he was challenged to draw the entire city's aerial view within the following three days. He managed to draw out every single street, building (including the number of doors and windows); even though there were a few minor mistakes, his drawing was still fairly accurate.
It seems that he really does have a photographic memory, yet psychologists have evidence which suggest that it's impossible for a human to remember every single detail of an image. a psychology professor at St. Lawrence University says that some people may have phenomenal memories, yet their reports were never 100% accurate. He also states that children are more likely to have this ability, yet they lose it as they grow older.
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://www.springerlink.com/content/231gge95h5wf2qk6/
Photographic memory, also known as eidetic memory is an interesting part of the human brain. After watching this video and reading up on the topic a bit I began to wonder just how many people are born with this unique gift. I was not very surprised that I was unable to find any sort of evidence as to how many people had such a talent. However thinking about the different levels of memorization that people are born with got me to thinking. How is it that people born with photographic memory are able to use their abilities in school while others who do not have this gift are left stumped? Would it not make more sense to even the playing field by giving each student a computer? In this scenario, each student would be judged then on their ability to do research and find the best answer. So what if another person can remember every presidents name when all of us can find the same answer.
As early as 1970, research was being conducted to test the validity of photographic memory, but I think the best proof in this case would be the man painting all of a city after only viewing it for an hour. I found an article from 1973 which says very much the same thing as your does (here), noting that children are more prone to be able to remember more details of "snapshots" of life.
With the recent advent of brain-mapping devices and the promise of being able to visually represent brain activity, I'd hope that scientists will soon be able to determine once and for all the truth behind photographic memory. Sure, it's not going to be 100% accurate, but nothing in memory ever really is...
I became interested in finding out some more examples of photographic or generally phenomenal memory. I was curious if there was maybe a link or pattern among what these people are remembering, if perhaps certain information has the ability to be stored more successfully in the brain.
While I didn't necessarily find what I was looking for, I found this website instead:
http://www.mymemoryfix.com/phenomenal_memory.html
The website explains that sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet are the tricks to creating phenomenal memory, and while this is obviously a scam, I think the website's presence is poignant, considering what we have been reading in "The Most Human Human." Seeing as phenomenal memory is not necessarily a general human trait, would improving one's memory to the point of near perfection (if this was possibile) make us more "human" or less so?
This article speaks of another interesting case of surprising memory skill that would suggest photographic memory is a possibility. However, the relationship between test subject and researcher made the whole thing an unreliable/possibly biased case study.
The article also discusses cases of eidetic memory and speaks about it as though it is a separate phenomenon, though I am fairly certain the terms are interchangeable.
Flaws aside, it is nevertheless an interesting read.
Although they call it Photographic memory, There were still some parts of the landscape drawing that wasn't accurate. Its pretty impressive that someone can glance at something for a moment, and can give you a detailed description of what they saw. This made me think about Daniel Kahnemans "The Riddle of experience vs. memory". We go to vacations and we can probably remember about 20 mins of that vacation, if u have a file with 600 hundred pictures, then maybe ull remember an hour of your vacation, If those pictures were to delete, and you get your memory wiped, did you really have a vacation? I started wondering, hey if that person had photographic memory, he would not need any pictures, and your memory would be more then just 20 mins.
After reading through this and a few of the comments I was reminded of a brain exercise I do to help with memorization tests. I read back in high school that if you keep your head still and look back and forth 30 times, your ability to recall will increase. I found an article that talks about this technique and has some experiments to back it up. The testers who moved their eyes were able to recall 25% more information than those who didn't but it seems to only effect people who are right handed. The article goes on to explain why they think this is but regardless its a helpful strategy if your cramming the night before for an art history test.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/04/a_quick_eye-exercise_can_impro.php
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