Eidetic or photographic memory combines the ability to recall images, names, words and numbers with detailed accuracy. Having a strong memory is based on the brain's neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself over time through compartments and the formation of new connections. While some lucky people are born with extremely sharp memories, others have trouble remembering what they ate for lunch the day before. While the likelihood of developing absolute photographic memory is low, there are certain things you can do to significantly improve your ability to recall information. Keep reading to find out how.

Steps

Part 1

Lifestyle changes

    Fight depression. Many people who suffer from depression describe memory loss and difficulty concentrating as one of their main symptoms. Anxiety, depression, anger and other stress-inducing conditions increase cortisol levels in the brain, which can damage cells in the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for storing memory.

    Keep your brain active. Just like your muscles, your brain works better the more you exercise it. Unfortunately, many people are so overwhelmed by everyday problems that they spend days on end using their brains on autopilot mode. Try incorporating some of the following brain-activating activities into your week:

    • Solve crosswords,
    • Read books (preferably non-fiction),
    • Read the newspapers
    • Play board games
    • Learn a new language or instrument,
    • Sign up for a course at your local college.

  1. Exercise more. Physical activity increases blood flow to every part of your body, including your brain. This can give your brain more oxygen and essential nutrients promoting better brain function. Aim for at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise five days a week.

    • It's important to space your exercise throughout the week to ensure a regular increase in blood flow to the brain. Even if you don't have time for a formal warm-up, everyone has time for a ten-minute relaxed walk.
    • To increase your mobility, make small changes to your lifestyle, such as using the stairs instead of the elevator.

  2. Drink alcohol in moderation. Excessive alcohol consumption can block key brain receptors that are needed for memory retention, and can also release steroids, which affects learning and memory. However, there is some evidence that drinking alcohol in moderation may actually protect your memory in the long term. One French study found that people over 65 who drank moderately (1 to 2 glasses of wine per day) were less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

    Part 2

    Memory Improvement Strategies

    1. Minimize distractions. For many people, forgetting is not a memory problem, but the result of an inability to remember information initially due to excessive distraction. Whenever possible, try not to multitask and instead focus all your attention on completing one task at a time. While it's tempting from a time-saving perspective to do multiple things at once, you're more likely to remember information if you do each task individually, which will save you time in the long run.

    2. Use visual associations. One way to help you remember something, be it the name of a book or the place where you left your keys, is to spend a few seconds visualizing it. For example, if the object is a book titled "A Thousand Splendid Suns," take a minute to visualize the image of a thousand splendid suns. Saving the image in your memory can help you remember the title of the book later.

      • Likewise, if you place your car keys on the kitchen table, try to imagine your keys doing something silly in the kitchen, like cooking or eating fruit from a fruit bowl. When it comes time to look for your keys later, you are unlikely to forget the stupid scene you created in your head.

    3. Repeat names. Even after only 30 seconds, many people find it difficult to remember the names of people they just met. This is likely because we tend to focus so much on ourselves (how we look, whether we are polite, etc.) that we ignore the perception of the other person's name. This can be especially difficult if you are introducing yourself to multiple people at once.

      • One way to combat this phenomenon is to repeat the person's name right after the meeting: "It was nice to meet you, and the name." If you didn't hear the name properly or didn't understand how to pronounce it, be sure to clarify that right away to avoid having to ask again later.
      • Another way to remember names is to associate a new name with someone you know who has the same name. If by this time you don't know anyone with the same name, try to remember a character from a book or movie with the same name. Making such associations can help you remember the name later.

    4. Use "chunking". Chunking is a psychological term for a memory retention technique, the meaning of which is to group numbers, words or objects contained in a sheet for the purpose of remembering them.

      • If you are trying to remember items on a grocery list, then try to group them into different categories like fruits, vegetables, frozen goods, condiments, meats, and so on. Alternatively, divide the grocery list with a potential dish in mind; for example, you could group lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, goat cheese, and vinegar into one category called "salad ingredients."
      • The same can be done by dividing sets of numbers into smaller sections; This will come in handy when trying to remember your credit card number, social security number, or phone number. For example, instead of trying to remember the following sequence: 77896526, you could break it down into 77-896-526. Repeating a number to yourself will be much easier if you do it in small sections.
    • Many people are concerned about memory loss when, in fact, they did not properly absorb the original information because they were too distracted while studying. Remember that just because you saw or heard something once does not necessarily mean that you focused well enough to permanently retain that information in your memory. The best way to combat this is to be completely focused when learning new information.
    • If you suffer from severe anxiety or depression, talk to your doctor before attempting to self-diagnose or self-medicate.

Developing photographic memory will significantly increase productivity in school and at work. This type of memory can be trained, but for this you need to systematically practice and continue to develop your skills. The ability to quickly perceive and accurately remember the information you see will be very useful in the future. First, let's find out what photographic memory is.

Photographic memory or eidetism- this is the ability to remember a visual image, which is then reproduced using words or a picture.


People with photographic memory are able to remember drawings or paintings in the finest detail, then describe them in detail. The interesting thing is that people with similar abilities can quickly memorize entire pages of text, then retell it verbatim. In their memory, a page of text is stored in the form of a scanned document or photograph.

How to develop photographic memory?

Developing such a gift in yourself will be extremely useful. This will help you achieve success in various aspects of life. And those who have short-term photographic memory are recommended to further develop it. At the same time, you do not need to devote a lot of time and effort to training. You can engage in self-development on the way home, waiting for your transport at the bus stop.

Train photographic memory You can, while traveling on the subway, carefully examine the passenger opposite you, then look away and try to restore his image as much as possible. You can also do this on advertisements or posters.

For improvement long-term memorization you need to try to reproduce in the smallest detail objects seen earlier.

There are many trainings that will help you learn how to develop photographic memory.

Exercises with Schulte tables

The most popular are Schulte tables sized 5x5 cells, inside which numbers are drawn. The purpose of the exercise is to quickly find numbers in the desired sequence. For better results You can go through the same table twice, the first time in ascending numbers, and the second time in descending order. If regular tables are easy to complete, you can look for a more complex version, where the numbers are written in different shapes of different sizes.

With the help of such training, peripheral vision and memorization of small details are improved.

To complete this task you need a box of matches and a flat, smooth floor. First of all you need to take from three to five matches and throw them on the floor, examine them for a short period of time and remember the location. Then turn in the other direction and place the other five matches in the same position. At first glance, the task seems simple, but if you try to lay out matches taking into account all the details, the first attempts may be unsuccessful. If this exercise is too easy, you should gradually increase the number of matches.

Exercise “Roman Room”

Used by the ancient Romans for better remembering of the to-do list. They remembered the most striking and outstanding things in their house or room, and assigned them a certain image associated with any matter. For example, if he needed to go to the bathhouse with a friend, the Roman imagined him in a puddle near his fountain or pond in the yard; if he needed to buy something, he could imagine this item in the hands of his favorite statue.

This method will be very useful for developing photographic memory. With its help, images of future affairs can be tied to various details of an object (its shape, color, pattern), and not to the thing as a whole. Thus, each time you need to remember something you need, you can return to your imaginary room, remembering not only the objects themselves, but also their details.

This technique is named after famous artist, who also developed the gift of eidetism.


According to the stories, Aivazovsky came to the seashore, where he carefully peered at the waves, trying to capture them in his memory in as much detail as possible. He reproduced the picture of the waves in his mind many times, and then transferred them to the canvas.

Using Aivazovsky's method, you can develop photographic memory while leading a normal lifestyle. So, if given the opportunity, you should consider an object, a statue, a person, a poster. Then, looking away, reproduce the memorable image in the smallest detail. At first it may seem ineffective and boring, but systematic daily training will eventually show impressive results.

Such exercises are well suited for children. After all, at their age, any information is better perceived and remembered in a playful form.

The most popular games are:

  • "What's missing". To carry it out you need to collect several items. Place them on the floor and ask the child to remember all the toys. Then, when the baby turns away, hide one toy and ask him to name what is missing. To complicate the task, you can change the sequence of objects and increase their number.
  • "What's in the box". For this game you need several small toys and an opaque container. Place all items in a container and cover with a cloth or lid. Then momentarily show the child what is inside and ask him to name all the remembered items. As memory improves, the number of items increases.
  • "Identical cards". This game requires a deck of regular or children's cards. Lay out 3-5 cards, and as you memorize, the child must turn them face down. Then give him the same cards from another deck and ask him to put them on the corresponding ones. In this way, long-term photographic memory is trained.

Photographic memory will only improve with constant daily training. There is no need to hope for quick results; it is best to be patient and continue to improve the performance of your brain.

Greetings, my dear readers! Do you easily remember new information, can you now remember what happened in your chemistry lesson in the ninth grade, can you describe in detail what your kindergarten teacher looked like? Memory is one of the most important human abilities. And today I want to talk about how to develop photographic memory quickly. After all, many are sure that this is just a myth.

What is photographic memory

If you are interested in various memorization techniques and want to collect a whole database of exercises, then Stanislav Matveev’s book “ Phenomenal memory" From it you will learn what prevents a person from remembering quickly and easily; in addition, the author reveals several myths and offers tasks that will be useful to you in various areas of life.

As we have already understood, memory is the most important human ability to store and reproduce information. How does it all work? There are several ways of perception: visual, tactile, olfactory and others. This is how a person perceives the world around him and remembers.

For example, when I remember my childhood, vivid visual images of my parents appear in my head, the smell of my grandmother’s pie reaches me, and I hear the rumble of my neighbor’s moped.

When a person sees something new for himself, he perceives it through one of his senses, the information is recorded in memory, which later forms a whole network in the nervous tissue of our brain. It is not surprising that some memories are brighter and others are dimmer. So, old memories are much more faded. And there is an explanation for this.

For example, you forgot where you put your passport and are trying to remember. So, if all the memories with a passport were equally vivid and fresh, then this would significantly complicate the search at the moment. If you compare the work of the brain with a computer, then you would simply enter the query “lost passport” and you would be given all the cases from which you would have to look for the last one. To remember new information, we have to forget something from the past.

Photographic memory, or as it is also called eidetic, is the memorization of a picture, a page of text, a number series with precision down to every detail. This is unmistakable memorization. You can really compare it with a camera. But it is impossible to become the owner of such a memory.

If you and I take photographic memory as the last point on the horizontal graph, then at the other end there will be complete amnesia. Whereas in the middle lies the usual human memory.

Is it possible to develop your memory, learn to quickly store and reproduce information? Can. For this, there are a huge number of mnemonics, special exercises and tasks.

If you find it difficult to develop an exercise schedule on your own, then this resource will help you a lot - brainapps.ru. This is an application that is designed to help people develop and improve memory, thinking and attention. In it you will find simple and fun exercises that will not be difficult to cope with. Don't be discouraged if you get a low score, because you're just at the beginning of your journey to achieving phenomenal memory!

Work for results

The first thing you must do is secure your inner . Otherwise, you will do several exercises, three days will pass and you will give up this activity, like many other things, for example, morning jogging or morning exercises. Find your motivation to complete the task every day.

After all, in order to achieve the desired result, you really will have to practice every day, even for fifteen minutes, but without fail. What will a good memory give you, why did you decide to do this, what will you reward yourself with when you get a good result?

Next, you create a schedule. Every day you should have between fifteen and sixty minutes allocated for a task. Think about it, if force majeure happens and you fail to complete the task on time, how can you fix it? For example, do the exercise at home an hour before bed. I will offer you several techniques, exercises and tasks from which you can compose your schedule.

Mnemonic techniques

What are such assignments based on? On creating bright, grotesque and simple images that will help you quickly and easily remember unrelated information (phone number or bank card, shopping list, customer names, and so on).

Perhaps we should start with a more everyday and simple example. You are going to the store to do some shopping. Here is a list in front of you: socks, sugar, chicken, napkins and bread. Now you have to imagine your way from home to work or your bedroom. Choose a place that is very familiar to you. And now place all the items on your shopping list along the way from home to work.

So you come out of the entrance and there are bright red socks on the bench. And the path to your car is strewn with sugar white as snow. You get into the car, and a laughing chicken sits next to you in the passenger seat and wipes the windows with napkins. When you arrive at work, you are greeted with a red carpet and bread.

Here are all the necessary purchases, which are now connected with bright images. It is very important that you really know the way from home to work.

If you need to remember the names of the clients with whom you are meeting tomorrow and their sequence, then here you can resort to creating vivid, grotesque images.

Let's imagine that you have four meetings tomorrow: Elena (bank employee), Konstantin (realtor), Svetlana (courier) and Vasily (driver). To begin with, we imagine Elena with a huge spruce tree in her hands, which will help you remember the girl’s name. Elena, holding a spruce tree in her hands, bathes in a pool filled with coins, which refers us to her profession.

Do you often meet a girl with a fir tree in her hands, who is swimming in a pool full of money? That's right, no. This is the creation of a grotesque image.

Next, we create an image for Konstantin, a realtor. We imagine a man wearing a T-shirt with a huge HORSE head on it (a reference to the name), and this man is sitting astride a cottage (his profession). And now we create a connection between the first object and the second. For example, a man in a T-shirt, with a horse’s head, riding on top of a cottage comes to a girl with a spruce tree in her hand, in a pool of money, and drives her out of there.

There are a huge number of mnemonic techniques and they are more aimed at remembering unrelated objects. I agree that coming up with such images is not so easy, but if you practice, you will not only remember information faster, but will also develop your creative abilities.

"Chunking"

A simple trick that will help you retain in your memory unrelated numbers, objects or words. For example, when you go shopping, you divide your list into categories: salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, sour cream), soup (chicken, potatoes, onions, carrots, noodles) and so on.

When you need to remember a combination of numbers, you break the series into smaller ones. You need to remember the following row: 8129090743589. Break it down as follows: 812-9090-743-589. Remembering small sections is much more effective, especially if these numbers have some image behind them: 812 - city code; 9090 - last digits of the phone; 743 - apartment number; 589 - car number.

Visual memory

I bring to your attention two exercises to improve visual memory, and as a result, the development of photographic memory. Of course, at first the result will not be as amazing as we would like. But if you continue to train, study every day and make an effort, you will be able to easily and quickly memorize objects, pictures or even text.

Exercise 1. Choose any item (jar of cream, ruler, pen, coin). Look at the object and try to remember all the little things and details, curves, lines and strokes, color, shape, notches. Close your eyes and mentally imagine the object in all its details.

At first, the image may be vague and unclear. It's OK. Open your eyes and look at the object again. Close your eyes again and remember. Of course, you can’t peek endlessly. You can open your eyes five/six times.

Learn to remember five details first, then seven, nine, and so on. Don't rush and don't try to remember the subject perfectly right away. This task can be completed every day for fifteen minutes.

Exercise 2. While driving home from work, for example, you can train your visual memory. When you are standing at a bus stop, look around and select some object: a lantern, a store sign, a bench, and so on. Close your eyes and try to reproduce this object in your head.

help yourself

Apart from your daily workout routine, there are some factors that you should consider that may hinder your progress. Poor sleep and severe physical or psychological stress negatively affect memory. As well as bad habits (smoking and alcohol). Junk food, oxygen deprivation, nervous breakdowns. Any of these factors could be causing your memory loss.

And here only you yourself can help your body. Add more fish, nuts and honey to your diet. Ventilate the room in which you work for a long time, take a walk at least twice a week, and get a good night's sleep.

Did you use any memory tricks at school or university? What is the hardest thing for you to remember right now?

Good luck and patience!

In fact, most of us, although far from in the brightest manifestations, eidetic memory I already had it - in childhood - but over the years even these “rudiments” go away. According to some scientists, we exchange this ability for the development of verbal skills and exchange photographic images for emotional ones. Unfortunately, develop eidetic memory in the form in which it is characteristic of true eidetics is practically impossible, however, thanks to training you can significantly improve visual memory and the ability to reproduce memorized, which will allow you to get at least a little closer to the owners of “super video memory”.

In order to develop eidetic memory, first of all you need to make efforts (we want to warn you right away - significant efforts) to develop visual memory, and a very important condition is not only see, but also notice, as the great Sherlock Holmes bequeathed to us.

This skill is useful not only for building logical chains, but also for developing memorization skills. Looking at pictures, objects, landscapes outside the window and in general at everything that surrounds you, try to notice every little thing, every detail. At first, this will happen only on a conscious level and require certain mental efforts on your part, but as your skills develop, it will move to the “unconscious” level - it will happen as if automatically (in fact, this is exactly how the legendary detective acquired his skills).

Training information reproduction

However, eidetic memory is not only about remembering, but also about recalling what you remember. Therefore, we must learn to recall not only what
what happened an hour ago or the day before, but also “things of days gone by.”

One of the exercises is to cling to some bright event and try to unwind the chain: what happened before, what during, what after. Try to remember the details, restore the picture and sequence of events as if you were there again. The further you continue your training, the less significant the “starting” point may be for you.

Try for yourself various mnemonics (for example, the mnemonics we presented for memorizing numbers) - having moved to the same automatic level, they will help you consolidate this or that information for a long time.

It will also be very useful general memory development(not only visual), as well as general training of brain activity - neurobics, learning languages, solving logic puzzles and even crosswords: don’t let your brain idle, and it will show you what you are capable of.

Eidetism (eidetic memory, photographic memory), can be defined as the ability to reproduce images, sounds or objects with a very high level of detail. You may have met people who, after reading a text just once, can repeat it with amazing accuracy after some time. However, this phenomenon and great mystery of the human brain is observed in only a small percentage of children, and extremely rarely persists in adults. This article explains the essence of this memory phenomenon. At the end of the article you will find a short test that will help you find out if you have a photographic memory!

Eidetism - photographic memory

What is eidetism or photographic memory? A little theory

People with developed eidetic memory remember in detail such things as, where the person sat, what he did, what he looked like, what exact words he said. They can remember every word or character in books up to 500 pages long, or the dates of facts that happened months or even years ago, with minimal effort.

If you show a person who has eidetic memory (or photographic memory) just for a moment an image that he has not seen before, he will be able to mentally remember this is an image down to the smallest detail, such as how many windows there were in the building, how many people were on the street, etc.

Do you know your abilities well? How developed are your memory, attention, concentration and other cognitive skills?

Photographic memory: children and adults with autism and

It was noticed that eideticism or photographic memory is more developed in children than in adults. Children appear to have greater ability to retain information and more accurate eidetic scanning of images than adults.

Several studies have shown that in children, connections between the right hemisphere of the brain (intuitive thinking) and the left hemisphere of the brain (rational thinking) undergo changes around the age of four.

Thus, a child's brain functions differently than an adult's brain.. And it seems that children's photographic memory techniques are lost along with their intuitive thinking skills around the age of four. That is why only 2 to 10% of children at an early age demonstrate the presence of developed eidetic memory.

The conclusion that scientists have come to is this: As children get older, they learn new methods of processing information and develop their memory. This explains the fact that eideticism is so rare in adults.

Most research shows that adults do not have the ability to construct eidetic images. This appears to be because as we age, we develop a tendency to encode information of all types, both visual and verbal. This, in turn, makes it difficult to form an eidetic image. That is, we try to classify information and give it specific meaning in such a way that it is easier to store it in memory, and if necessary, refer to this memory in the future.

As previously mentioned, scientists currently believe that eideticism is more common in children and adolescents, and that as we age, we lose the ability to remember as much detail as we do. There is another interesting fact that should be taken into account. The fact is that researchers have found many cases of photographic memory in people with Asperger's syndrome and autism.

Autistic people with photographic memory

Have you ever seen the movie "Rain Man" starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise? If you haven't yet, we recommend that you watch it. He is truly incredible! And besides, it perfectly illustrates the phenomenon of eidetic memory.

The character, played by Dustin Hoffman, was based on Kim Peek. He is a 53-year-old man who has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Kim Peek memorized every page of the 9,000 books he read.

Peek says it takes him between 9 and 12 seconds to read a page and claims that each of his eyes reads the page independently of the other.

Another interesting case was found in Stephen Wiltshire, who in just ten minutes can commit every detail of his environment to memory, even in places with a lot of visual stimuli, such as Piccadilly Circus in London. He then draws everything he sees in great detail based solely on his memory.

Stephen was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, and from that moment he began to demonstrate his natural talent for painting. Initially he was drawn to images of animals and buses, but later his interest switched to buildings and more complex objects. On his website you can see drawings he made at different periods of his life. They are truly impressive!

Test for eidetic or photographic memory

At the end of the article, we invite you to take a short test. Do you want to know if you have a good photographic memory? Time it 30 seconds and look carefully at the following image: