Memory Training Is Not Just For The

Memory Training Is Not Just For The Sake Of Performing Party Tricks; It's About Nurturing Something Profoundly And Essentially Human.

I Met With Amnesiacs And Savants, Educators And Scientists, To Try To Understand What Memory Is, Why It Works, Why It Sometimes Doesn't, And What Its Potential Might Be.

Truman Capote Famously Claimed To Have Nearly Absolute Recall Of Dialogue And Used His Prodigious Memory As An Excuse Never To Take Notes Or Use A Tape Recorder, But I Suspect His Memory Claims Were Just A Useful Cover To Invent Dialogue Whole Cloth.

If You Were A Medieval Scholar Reading A Book, You Knew That There Was A Reasonable Likelihood You'd Never See That Particular Text Again, And So A High Premium Was Placed On Remembering What You Read. You Couldn't Just Pull A Book Off The Shelf To Consult It For A Quote Or An Idea.

Once Upon A Time, This Idea Of Having A Trained, Disciplined, Cultivated Memory Was Not Nearly So Alien As It Would Seem To Us To Be Today.