What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/07/18/what_is_it_like_to_have_a_photographic_memory.html

by erinbryce • 13 years ago

80 52 13 years ago

ekianjo2• 13 years ago

Two follow up questions: 1) Would it then be safe to conclude that Mozart probably had photographic memory, since he could remember a whole song just by listening to it once ? 2) Do people with photographic memory feel isolated, and if yes, do they suffer from it ? The author hinted at that, but I wonder if there is any kind of general trait there.

stygianguest• 13 years ago

The ability to remember music is more like chessmasters being able to remember configurations of the chess board who can remember any chess board configuration but suddenly become like any of us when trying to memorize an impossible configuration. It is, for example, unlikely that Mozard would have had instant recall for Indian music that has many rhythms, 22 tones in an octave and some very different harmonic constructions. Essentially a well trained ear can remember the music, but not the sound.

marcofucci• 13 years ago

I agree. I have a really bad memory but I can easily "listen" to a song I have heard a few times and I can hear several instruments, not only one. I think that this is just because I'm a musician.

mechanical_fish2• 13 years ago

I suspect Mozart would have been helped by the fact that he grew up in the heart of the classical era and the concert music of the day was quite formalized. There were certain things that always happened in a piece of concert music, and certain things that never happened.

It may go without saying, but part of the reason why such relatively strict musical forms were popular in the 18th century is that they made the music easier for amateurs to memorize and perform. There was a big boom in middle-class amateur musicianship at the time.

Modern musicians operate at a handicap relative to Mozart because modern music, even if we restrict ourselves to Western concert music, is stylistically and formally all over the place.

eperturk• 13 years ago

Not sure I sympathize. But I didn't know photographic memories included sounds. Are smells included?

AndrewKemendo3• 13 years ago

At least for me I would say yes. I know I can think of my grandmother's house and immediately smell it.

nrmn• 13 years ago

Isnt this normal? Being able to recall smells/sounds/etc from places you've been?

patio112• 13 years ago

I had a somewhat atypical memory through early high school. Long story short: I was really, really good at memorizing books without trying to, and could recall them word-for-word, with essentially random access inside the book if you spotted me two sentences to work off of.

This also extended to remembering events/conversations/etc in my own life, and they often became "intrusive thoughts." Was anybody hear ever picked on in 3rd grade? Imagine reliving that incident, in photographic detail, for no darned good reason during an 8th grade field trip.

I was honestly happy/sad when I "grew out of it." Happy for the obvious reason, a little sad that I can no longer recite the entire Hobbit as a party trick. (It took me longer than you would think to figure out that this was not actually as effective as a party trick as I thought it was.)

My understanding is that there's many, many flavors of atypical memories. I have a friend from high school who also has one, also (like myself) in solution with a few other issues which will get you referred to a school counselor. He can still quote my drivers license number, which he saw for five seconds 15 years ago.

eshvk• 13 years ago

This also extended to remembering events/conversations/etc in my own life, and they often became "intrusive thoughts." Was anybody hear ever picked on in 3rd grade? Imagine reliving that incident, in photographic detail, for no darned good reason during an 8th grade field trip.

God, that sounds awful. Proustian memory [1] forever would drive me insane. Imagine every breakup you have had over the years, vividly reliving them forever. Sometimes being forgetful is nice.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory

tfb• 13 years ago

Yeah it isn't fun at all, especially when you seem to have more bad memories than good. It can become a bit of a hindrance; but with a strong will, it can be turned around into something good.

My first few memories are of the fight my parents had the defining night of their separation; then of my grandfather carrying me away from the courthouse as I wondered why I couldn't see my father (he wouldn't pay child support); and then my mother pushing a couch against our apartment door to prevent someone from breaking in, as we couldn't afford to live in a decent neighborhood. These are my first few memories, and while they might sound pretty terrible, they've easily shaped me into the person I am today, for the better. Nearly every one of my actions is driven by my determination to live freely financially and to procreate only when I'm certain I'll be able to provide a good life for my wife and children.

I have a feeling most people here have the same outlook, and may have possibly been led to it by similar events and memories of their own.

Having a photographic memory (to any extent) can have it's drawbacks, sure, but when put to the right use, the drawbacks become incredibly insignificant, as most people would imagine. For example, if I didn't have the memory that I do, I wouldn't be able to instantly know exactly which line of code needs to be changed (and to what) to fix an obscure bug described to me by a user.

And honestly, the same could be said about any situation that isn't completely debilitating. For instance, I'm also fairly OCD with occasional Tourette's (depending on my level of anxiety), and if I wasn't, it's pretty unlikely that I'd have accomplished as many things as I have. I've accepted my obsessive nature and use it to get things done. It's how you look at things that determines their usefulness.

mbell• 13 years ago

Sounds very familiar.

Out of curiousity, since I've never actually met someone with the same type of experience, do you ever have trouble "shutting your brain off"? e.g. sleep issues, etc.

seivan• 13 years ago

I have.

saraid216• 13 years ago

Yes.

throwaway1979• 13 years ago

I had an amazing memory as a high school kid too. I couldn't do the hobbit word for word, but definitely reproduce long texts of Economics essays, which was my thing. I find it very sad that I grew out of it in college. It feels like a part of me is no more.

My memory ended up getting very bad through college. I developed a coping mechanism ... I realized instead of having to remember formulas or algorithms, I could just derive them on tests.

While my memory deteriorated, my ability to visualize complex stuff kept at it for quite a bit longer. I can still do that part but it doesn't feel as crisp as it used to. Another weird thing I could do when I was a teenager was step through code with an exactness that my classmates thought was freaky. They joked I was a human compiler. Ahh ... youth.

fsck--off• 13 years ago

I was really, really good at memorizing books without trying to, and could recall them word-for-word, with essentially random access inside the book if you spotted me two sentences to work off of.

That's interesting. When you recite a book passage, do you remember where the text was on the page, the dimensions of the book, how the book felt in your hand, where you read the book, and how good the lighting was? When I have strong recall of a text passage, I find that I'm usually able to recall those little extraneous contextual details. For this reason, I find that I remember things I read on physical paper better than things I read on a computer monitor.

patio112• 13 years ago

Where the text was on the page, certainly. I'd know that I was "a subjectively short space from the bottom of the page, left hand side of the book, somewhere in the middle." I never had any external associations with books -- probably because a bomb could have gone off when I was reading and I wouldn't have noticed. (Something which my wife reliably reports has not changed.)

dougk7• 13 years ago

Fascinating read, my memory wasn't as vivid as this person's but I didn't need much effort to recall anything. Like you, it all changed with age.

It was really wonderful sometimes because I didn't need to read textbooks, take extensive notes or do homework. The down side was, as a kid, it got me into a lot of trouble when people lied and I would re-tell them something they had said before that contradicted what they're saying now.

One day in my last year of high school, toward the end of the first semester, the math teachers was shocked when he opened my exercise book to find that I stopped taking notes on the 3rd week of school and the rest of the book was filled with doodles. I was one of his best students though :)

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

I met an amazing young woman at USC, she was 12 and taking the same Physics class I was as a sophmore EE. She could recite any formula in the textbook, call up any worked problem in the handouts or previous exams, she was getting the highest grade in the class. She didn't understand physics.

I wonder if her abilities moderated as she went through puberty and into young adulthood. I felt sad for her, as her life to that point had been nothing but academic achievement brought about by memorization. I've always had a selective memory (for some reasons I can remember a lot of lyrics from songs in the 70's and pretty much every science fiction book I ever read, at least its structure) but I've never been satisfied with rote learning. Did not seem to bother her though so I guess it balances out.

mechanical_fish2• 13 years ago

She didn't understand physics.

Yeah, her and nearly every other teenage physicist I ever knew, certainly including myself. ;)

My experience of physics is that it takes time on the order of a decade to learn, mostly because you have to approach it from so many different directions before you finally grasp it. I'm not sure it matters which angle of attack you pursue first, provided you can remain interested enough to eventually come back from a different angle.

There were bits of physics that I could handle algebraically but which I didn't intuitively understand, and there were bits that I intuitively understood but where I didn't have the formalism so I would kind of flail around. And the knowledge of the landscape, of how a particular problem fits into the universe of known problems, is yet another level.

adamconroy• 13 years ago

Strangely enough, you can't remember how to spell 'here'. Sorry, couldn't resist.

btilly• 13 years ago

My memory was never like yours. But I remember it came as a shock to me when I realized that I was now able to re-read a book and enjoy it again without being flooded by my memory of what happened next.

I've done a lot of re-reading since. :-)

tptacek2• 13 years ago

Yeah, that's interesting; I have a weird memory, and even when I was in high school, I'd often enjoy rereading a book more than reading a new one.

Brains are weird.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

I went to Jesuit high school in Chicago and was in detention on >70% of school days (usually, dress code). Detentions were meant to last an hour and were typically managed by handing out poems that the detainees had to memorize and recite. My detentions lasted ~4 minutes. At one point they started giving me extra poems to memorize, which didn't work for them; no poem could hold me.

I have no idea if I've grown out of it. For specific, focused things, I still have a freaky weird memory. It's handy for API documentation and suchlike.

bane• 13 years ago

My memory these days is terrible. But I have very high recall of certain events from when I was very very young. I remember describing my earliest memory to my family a few years ago, and they commented that it was impossible that I remember that as I wasn't even walking or even out of a crib at that time. It's not a continuous set of memories, just small snips here and there.

Those memories are also rather weird since I have them from a time in my life when I had almost no life to reference them against...hard to explain.

mwc• 13 years ago

If you follow through to the Quora link, there's a link to one Marilu Henner who, apparently, can remember each day of her life as if it happened yesterday.[1] Fascinating.

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20026088-10391709.htm...

XenithShade• 13 years ago

There's a higher level of photographic memory that very few people are capable of. Those that can call on demand images of the past at will. I've met one, and knew of a teacher who knew one. Like the author of this article stated. It can be a curse, nightmares and things they don't want to remember stick with them. Forever.

Although a lot of people also have really great memory, which can arguably said to be "somewhat photographic" as the author said. In which case, I do as well. I cannot agree that being able to walk through a previous scene with a bird's eye view is part of being photographic memory though. I think that as just powerful spatial visualization combined with good memory.

regal• 13 years ago

Agreed. I'm 30 years old and I can still visualize everything about my grade school schoolyard from a "bird's eye view" quite easily (can even do this with the apartment I moved out of and never saw again after 3.5 years old, and the grounds outside it) - never been accused of having photographic memory.

The author seems to be discussing more a "very good" memory mixed with a fixation on the past - e.g., feeling hurt that others don't remember what you remember means the past has some special importance for him/her. I recall plenty of things that happen that other people soon forget, but it never bothers me. I realized as a child I had to pretend to forget things, otherwise people would think it was bizarre I remembered so much about them that they'd forgotten ever telling me.

As I've gotten older and had less free time to think / worked crazier hours and ruminated on people and the past less, this tendency to remember lots of small details has receded (though still much stronger than other people's I meet). I'm pretty sure if I started thinking about the past often enough again though, it'd make a quick return to being as proficient at recalling numerous tiny details from the deep past as it was before.

skarayan• 13 years ago

It is interesting. He is intelligent and has a very good grasp on reality, but does not seem to know himself very well. (e.g. not being able to control his thoughts and visualizations/memories)

It would be tremendous to master the self as well as reality -- then one could control his emotions and visuals, as well as channel it according to their will.

AndrewKemendo3• 13 years ago

Like the author, I have the same, scattered detailed images of places/things/people from all over - but it is not sequential and it is not a searchable database.

I would definitely echo the: "Now here's a random very specific memory to take up all your working memory and distract you from your actual task" type of daily interruption such a memory has.

I would trade this "skill" any day for the ability to remember people's names the first time.

celias• 13 years ago

reminds me of this RadioLab episode about Mr. S http://www.radiolab.org/2010/apr/05/limits-of-the-mind/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky

idaniboy• 13 years ago

While having a good memory is important for cognition, it is just as important to be able to forget memories. There are probably limits to how efficiently our brains can scan memories for information relevant to a given situation and having more memories decreases the efficiency of this process. Also, when you can find almost all knowledge about anything on Google in just a heartbeat, it's inefficient to try to memorize most things. As Einstein said, "Never memorize what you can look up in books."

lotharbot• 13 years ago

This reminds me a bit of the way telepathy was presented on the TV show "Babylon 5". Untrained telepaths found themselves awash in a sea of confusing, poorly organized thoughts that they couldn't control (the "broadcast" thoughts of others.) With training, they could block out others' thoughts, or focus and read specific thoughts from specific people. Star Trek:TNG showed a similar contrast in the episode "Tin Man", between normal Betazoids and Tam Elbrun, who couldn't shut off his mind-reading ability and therefore found being near people excessively stressful.

The same ability could be either a curse or a blessing, depending on how well it was organized and controlled.

zobzu• 13 years ago

I've a photographic memory and it's not like that.

This person is a super hero :)

Having an ultra detailed memory of every 5min event of all your life (which is what TFA basically says) sounds like a super hero, or well, you know, just plain lies and heavy embellishment... whichever.. that's ok if its a genius, too :)

(same thing for persons knowing all words of all the books they read, by earth. And that's also probably not photographic memory, unless you picture the words, anyways)

A photographic memory simply mean its easier for you to remember images than, say, sounds, text, etc.

The author suggests that photographic memory is about remembering something with the upmost perfection (like a "picture" represents details with the upmost perfection), regardless of this being a sound, image, text, etc...

I generally ask those ego-driven people to tell me what I showed on the screen 5min ago and they've no idea. "oh i was distracted this time" or "it doesn't work like that".

I still have to meet a true memory-genius. I'm sure they exist, but its not a very high % of the population, contrarily to what story tellers seems to say.

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

I was under the impression that 'photographic' meant that each detail was captured, as if it were a photograph (vs say a painting or a drawing)

wmboy• 13 years ago

A photographic memory simply mean its easier for you to remember images than, say, sounds, text, etc.

I think you're mistaken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

vacri• 13 years ago

This is similar to what researchers in memory also say - that claims of photographic-style memory don't hold up under examination.

(minor point of spelling - 'utmost', not 'upmost')

johnvschmitt• 13 years ago

There is no such thing as "Photographic Memory", as we do not even have "Photographic site"

All we have for sight is: A few degrees of focus (~3-5) that we quickly jump around to get an idea of a scene, & then we (very importantly) MAP this data to an internal model.

So, when someone says, they can fill in all the details, they are doing that from an internal model, which was only partially supported by earlier sight. Much of their memory can be wrong.

More importantly, it's a huge misrepresentation to think that the human eye works like a CCD array/sensor/camera.

prostoalex• 13 years ago

"Moonwalking with Einstein" is a great book on memory and memory competitions, and actually featured an overview of people who have "photographic" memory, people who can memorize the longest sequence of numbers, and a person whose temporal memory is only 15 minutes.

shire• 13 years ago

For years I was convinced Photographic Memory was Impossible.

confluence2• 13 years ago

It should be noted that almost all the people that claim to have eidetic memory are full of shit. People who claim that they have eidetic memory, when scientifically tested, are in fact shown to be either lying (simple fraud), using memory techniques (Chess masters can only memorize legal chess boards, they can't chunk random ones) or idiot savants who specialise in specific memory tricks (drawing a skyline/memorizing books).

A number of people claim to have eidetic memory, but only two people have been tested and documented as having a memory that is truly photographic. Most people showing amazing memory abilities use mnemonic strategies.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_claimed_to_posse...

An example of extraordinary memory abilities being ascribed to eidetic memory comes from the popular interpretations of Adriaan de Groot's classic experiments into the ability of chess Grandmasters to memorize complex positions of chess pieces on a chess board. Initially it was found that these experts could recall surprising amounts of information, far more than non-experts, suggesting eidetic skills. However, when the experts were presented with arrangements of chess pieces that could never occur in a game, their recall was no better than the non-experts, suggesting that they had developed an ability to organize certain types of information, rather than possessing innate eidetic ability.

Scientific skepticism about the existence of eidetic memory was fueled around 1970 by Charles Stromeyer who studied his future wife Elizabeth, who claimed that she could recall poetry written in a foreign language that she did not understand years after she had first seen the poem. She also could, apparently, recall random dot patterns with such fidelity as to combine two patterns into a stereoscopic image. She remains the only person documented to have passed such a test. However, the methodology of the testing procedures used is questionable (especially given the extraordinary nature of the claims being made) as is the fact that the researcher married his subject, and that the tests have never been repeated (Elizabeth has consistently refused to repeat them) raises further concerns.

With the questionable exception of Elizabeth (discussed above), as of 2008, no one claiming to have long-term eidetic memory has been able to prove this in scientific tests. There are a number of individuals with extraordinary memory who have been labeled eidetickers, but many use mnemonics and other, non-eidetic memory enhancing exercises.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

Afforess• 13 years ago

If you read the article, in the first line:

I do not think I fall into the "eidetic memory" category, although I have a superb photographic memory.

confluence2• 13 years ago

If you bothered to read my source:

Eidetic memory commonly referred to as photographic memory or total recall, is the ability to recall images, sounds or objects in memory with great precision, and is not acquired through mnemonics.

MortenK• 13 years ago

Only two people have been tested and documented with having a truly photographic memory, yet in this thread alone there is at least 10 people with self proclaimed photographic memory. What a marvelous and gifted community we have!

wallflower• 13 years ago

I remember reading in Reader's Digest a couple decades ago about a gambler who had a photographic memory. He was very successful at this and smart enough to not be black listed by the casino. Unfortunately, one day, he was caught in a casino fire - several people perished, he barely survived. After that, he was unable to ever enter a casino again - because he would be flooded with exact images of the mayhem and carnage and death that he had seen that fateful day.

There is always a flip side to superpowers like photographic memory.

Kiro• 13 years ago

The thing with people claiming to have photographic memory is that they have nothing to compare to. What they describe is a complete normal memory and for some reason they think everyone else remembers things in a different way.

I'm not saying the author doesn't have photographic memory, it's just that it's often simply not the case.

adnam• 13 years ago

Oh dear, Quora is leaking out.

bcgraham• 13 years ago

Borges had a great short story about the logical extreme of this: http://www.srs-pr.com/literature/borges-funes.pdf .

jgeerts• 13 years ago

I think it's horrible, what has been seen cannot be unseen.

What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?

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