Memory varies in quality from person to person - some individuals are so good at recollection they compete in memory championships, others must make constant notes to retain basic information. Long-thought to be an accident of birth, new research suggests it's a matter of technique - and anyone can learn how to improve their powers of reminiscence.
Boris Nikolai Konrad, a memory coach and recollection athlete who holds a world record for remembering (he committed 201 names and faces to memory in a mere quarter of an hour), was as intrigued as the next person as to why some of his "memory athlete" peers can memorize a deck of cards or pages of text within seconds. To unravel the mystery, he teamed up with Professor Martin Dresler, neuroscientist at Radboud University in the Netherlands.
The duo recruited 23 of the top 50 memory competitors in the world, and university scientists then conducted scans of their brains — while they were relaxing, and while memorizing a list of 72 words. The results of the study, published in the journal Neuron, were surprising for the team — memory athletes' brains seemingly aren't constructed any differently from an average person's.
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