Memory Athletes: Training the Mind to Remember Anything

Memory sport is often described as a form of mental athletics, and competitors treat their training with the same seriousness as any other sport. Competitors design special strategies order to memorise thousands of digits within minutes, together with shuffled packs of cards and lists of random words. Every year, hundreds of these people travel to take part national and international memory championships. In fact, of these memory athletes has ever been born with a naturally exceptional memory; every one of them worked hard to develop the skill through training. Instead, they put their faith techniques that anyone can learn, such as the memory palace method, in which information is linked to familiar locations. Not only do the top competitors train for several hours a day, they also follow strict routines covering sleep and diet to keep their minds sharp. Scientists, have spent years studying these competitors, found that their brains are not structurally different from those of ordinary people. differs is simply the way they organise and retrieve information. This suggests that memory is less a fixed talent a skill that can be trained, much like a muscle.