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  • This episode of DNews is brought you by the TOYOTA COROLLA. Let's lead the way.

  • 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 a kid detective Cam Jansen, who by saying

  • clickcould snap a picture in her head and be able to remember the scene like she was looking at a photograph.

  • But 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.

  • But yet there are some examples of people with REALLY good memory, like Stephen Wiltshire, he 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 with really good memories, like really good.

  • One famous case, the story of Jill Price who remembers nearly every day 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 use any memory tricks.

  • The scientists found that quoteInstead, 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 right here. All right guys, what tricks do you use to remember things?

  • Let us know down in the comments below. While you're adding, don't forget to click like and subscribe buttons and keep coming back here!

  • We've got new episode everyday of the week.

This episode of DNews is brought you by the TOYOTA COROLLA. Let's lead the way.

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