• Question: @kevin @Fiona Could a human have a photo memory , Like when they look at something they will remember it all life .??

    Asked by to Kevin, Fiona on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Good question, probably a bit more in Fiona’s field, but I’m going to get in first.

      I think it’s all about how you remember things. I imagine there are things that you have really strong memories of, even of events in your life that occurred only once and perhaps very quickly. I have a very clear image of what everything looked life moments before I was in a fairly big car crash a few years ago (an ex-girlfriend drove me under a truck, by accident apparently). There are also songs that trigger very specific memories for me. So I think it’s all about how your brain packages memories. People that win memory competitions use clever ways of thinking about things that seem to improve their ability to remember. At work, if I need to remember something complex (like the complex structure of a gene), I usually find it’s better to remember it as a picture, usually a cartoon.

      We’ve done some experiments with fruit flies investigating their ability to remember, and find that how low they remember something in part depends on how we teach them.

    • Photo: Fiona McLean

      Fiona McLean answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      I really like this question!

      So what your almost touching on is what is called ‘eidetic memory’. This is where someone is able to recall things (such as an object or an image) without purposely trying to learn it. For example when you are learning to spell words you will write it out over and over until you don’t need to think about it-but people with eidetic memory don’t need to do this, they just need to look at it once and they will remember it (that would be handy for tests!). This type of memory is a lot more common in young children and less so in adults.

      However it is very much possible that someone can remember something for all of their life without any sort of special memory. These are likely to be events or objects that mean a lot to someone or where they felt very intense emotions. For example when Kevin had his accident he can remember it in great detail. This is probably because Kevin was very scared and Kevin’s brain will be remembering the situation to learn what happened so Kevin doesn’t end up in a similar situation again (i.e. nearly squished by a truck). Which is very VERY wise of Kevin’s brain!

      What’s really interesting is the older the memory the more the brain seems to preserve it. You see in people who suffer from dementia that they can recall where they grew up as a child and who was in their primary school class from 60 years ago but they can’t remember where they put their glasses 10 minutes before.

      So yes! A human can remember something for all their life. In fact, the earlier they remember it from the longer they are more likely to remember it!

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