Brain Science - Myth Number Two

I have a terrible memory...

No you don't!

This equally widely held belief is just as false as the first myth. Your brain has the capacity to hold billions of items of information, and research has shown that the millions of facts acquired from infancy and then apparently forgotten are actually indelibly imprinted on the mind.

Any problems which occur when you try to recall something you have just seen or heard arise not from an inability to retain information, but from difficulties of retrieval.

Photographic memory

Child psychologists have estimated that as many as 20 percent of young children possess what is termed an eidetic memory (more popularly known as a photographic memory) that allows them to retain anything they have seen with the precision of a mental snapshot.

The harder your brain is obliged to work, the greater will be its capacity for work.

These youngsters are able to describe every feature of the scene held in their minds, down to the smallest and most trivial detail. Most children gradually lose the skills as they enter their teens, and it is found in very few adults. However, brain ageing, does not necessarily mean this ability has been lost forever.

As psychologist Neil Walker has demonstrated, this memory lies dormant in every adult who possessed it in childhood. By means of hypnotism he was able to regress his adult subjects to the age of seven, a time in life when the photographic memory is at its most powerful. He found that a significant percentage of his subjects regained their skill while under hypnosis, although they lost it as soon as they were taken out of their trances.

Improve memory

We clearly all possess a much better memory than most people realise, or are usually able to access. Research has shown how to improve memory by using a simple technique, which will be described in the Memory Jogging Module.

By using this procedure, anyone can enhance their ability to remember any type of information. You will find your recall actually increases over time, rather than experiencing the normal pattern of decline and decay.