Remember to remember

As someone who is studying neuroscience, I come across the topic of memory very often. Finding out how memories are formed and stored is after all a major impetus that drives research in neuroscience. This Ted Talk by Josh Foer, a science journalist who writes for a number of publications including National Geographic and The New York Times, gives an interesting perspective on how we make memories. In 2005, Josh went to cover the U.S Memory Championship, a competition of mental sports in which participants have to memorize as much information as possible within a given amount of time. There he met many extraordinary people with extraordinary memories, or so he thought, until he began training with some of the participants and realized the strategies they used basically came down to creating a visual and spatial framework to place memories. Called a 'memory palace', this context within your mind's eye allows you to extract memories more easily. But Josh points out that, this strategy is in fact not novel; before the advent of technological tools, strategies like the 'memory palace' was an effective way to memorize speeches and even academic material for tests. We've just forgotten how to use it because we have other places to store the memory palace besides our brain: our computers, our smartphones, and for the really old school people, photo albums. In other words, we've forgotten how to make memories, and therefore how to remember. What really drives the point home is that, after a year of training with the top European memorizer, Josh entered in the national Memory Championship in New York- and won. Because he remembered to remember. 

Check the talk out at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do.html