Photographic memory, or total recall is the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme accuracy and in seemingly abundant volume. The word eidetic means extraordinarily detailed or vivid. Eidetic memory can have a very different meaning for memory experts who use the picture elicitation method to detect it. Eidetic memory as observed in children is typified by the ability of an individual to study an image for approximately 30 seconds, and maintain a nearly perfect photographic memory of that image for a short time once it has been removed--indeed such eidetikers claim to "see" the image on the blank canvas as vividly and in as perfect detail as if it were still there.
While many people demonstrate extraordinary memory abilities, it is unlikely that true eidetic memory, if it exists at all, is found in adults. While many famous artists and composers (Claude, Monet and Mozart) are commonly thought to have had eidetic memory, it is possible that their memories simply became highly trained in their respective fields of art, as they each devoted large portions of their waking hours towards the improvement of their abilities. Such a focus on their individual arts most likely improved the relevant parts of their memory, which may account for their surprising abilities.
Guinness World Records lists people with extraordinary memories. For example, on July 2, 2005, Akira Haraguchi managed to recite pi's first 83,431 decimal places from memory and more recently to 100,000 decimal places in 16 hours (October 4, 2006). The 2004 World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore memorized the order of cards in a randomly shuffled 52-card deck in 31.03 seconds.
Loci is a methord of memory learning in which you remember a place to remember an piece of information. Here is a walkthrough quick guide to the methord of loci and it is explained in nice detail from a segmet of a c4 TV program. The information is pulled from here http://www.ba.infn.it/~zito/loci.html.
To use the method of loci bring to mind a familiar building, such as your house. Take a moment to conduct a mental walk through the rooms in your house. Pay particular attention to the details , noticing any imperfections, like scratches: anything that makes your mental images more vivid. Make sure you can move easily from one room to another.
Along your route create a list of "loci" :i.e. well defined parts of the room that you can use later to memorize things.A locus can be a door, a bed, an oven, etc. Be sure that you can easily go from locus to locus as you visit the house.
Now, when you are faced with a list of words or ideas to be memorized, you must form visual images for each of the words and place them, in order, on the loci in your route. To recall the words or ideas now you take a mental walk throughout your house, asking yourself , "What is on the living-room door? What's on the sleeping room bed. What's in the oven?" And so on.
Associating the words or ideas to remember with the loci, you should create surprising images. More striking is the created image, more easily you will remember the thing.
To help better show what is meant by photographic memory and / or amazing feats of remembering large amounts of data accuratly, here are some videos from youtube.
Derren Brown Photographic Memory
Derron Brown -- "Trick of the Mind" Card/Memory
Derren Brown - Winning at Blackjack memory tricks black jack
Derren Brown applies the psychology of memory
Stephen Wiltshire draws Rome from memory
Stephen Wiltshire draws Tokyo from memory
http://www.slate.com/id/2140685/ Here I found an artical which is written in a way as to suggest that the human mind is limitless but that there is no such thing as photographic memory, mearly strongminded dedication to something in life in which you build an amazing memory, Stephen Wiltshire is referanced in the artical but is seen as not having true photographic memory.
Stephen Wiltshire, has been called the "human camera" for his ability to create sketches of a scene after looking at it for just a few seconds. But even he doesn't have a truly photographic memory. His mind doesn't work like a Xerox. He takes liberties.
I also found this quite striking so I followed the link to learn more about his person.
Earlier this year, a group of memory researchers at the University of California-Irvine published an astonishing article about a woman called AJ who can apparently remember every day of her life since childhood.
Taken from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1738881&page=1
Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.
McGaugh has spent decades studying how such things as stress hormones and emotions affect memory, and at first he thought AJ's memories were of such emotional power that she couldn't forget them.
That level of recall suggests another hypothesis. Some people are able to recall past events by categorizing them. Certain events, or facts, are associated with others, and filed away together so that they may be easier to access. That's a trick that is often used by entertainers who use feats of memory to wow their audience.
It's possible that AJ's brain has some "disconnections" that help her recall past events from her memory bank without interference from the parts of her brain that act as general processors. But the problem is that even if they find some interesting wiring through brain scans, the researchers will be limited in their conclusions by the fact that AJ seems to be unique.
The scientists working with AJ have given the phnomonen a name called 'hyperthymestic syndrome'. It seams that AJ is very organised person possiably with OCD (obsesive-compulsive dissorder) which enables her to remember information with amazing accuracy. Information similar to the artical I just read can be found here http://nootropics.com/hyperthymestic/index.html but scanning through the text is seams relativly the same.
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