6. Visual memories and photographic memories

you're listening to memory booster, aHimalaya learning audio course. Be sure to check out all of the other exclusivecourses in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com.

[00:00:24] Hi, I'm ed Allard and this is memorybooster. In this show, you'll hear from memory experts at leading universities,from Harvard to Columbia and many more. I'll talk to them about different kindsof memory, along with some other fascinating topics. I'm curious about at theend of every episode, we'll review a trick technique or exercise you can use tomake your memory work for you.

[00:00:50] Like a lot of millennials, I'mconstantly taking photographs, but it's only because I have a terrible visualmemory. I'm not kidding. One of the reasons why I wanted to pursue this show isbecause they struggle so much to remember how some of the most importantmoments of my life actually looked. So you can probably imagine why I'm sofascinated with the idea of a photographic memory.

[00:01:12] The idea that after only a brieflook at something, a select number of people can have it memorized to photoperfection. It seems almost mythical, but today we're setting out to learn allabout visual memory. How does visual memory work and can we train it? Isphotographic memory even real, or at least it's something like it.

[00:01:29] Real. I sat down again withMiriam Ali of the Columbia university psychology department to learn more aboutvisual memory as a whole. Remember her from the episode about working memory tostart, what is visual memory? Yeah. So the term is used in many different ways,but most of the time we were simply talking about memory for information that,that you were presented with visually and later asked to remember visually,either by saying that you recognize that you've seen something before.

[00:02:00] Or by having to recall it insome way. So for example, if you have to draw it, most of the time visualmemory refers to visual long-term memory. So, um, for example, if you see a buildingand then minutes, uh, weeks or years later, you're asked to recognize it, butvisual memory can also apply to visual short-term memory or visual workingmemory in which you're only asked to maintain information for a few seconds.

[00:02:28] Can semantic memory alsoencompass visual memory. Yeah, semantic memories can include a visualcomponent, but you don't have to have vision to have semantic memory. Sosemantic memory, um, just refers to our general world knowledge. So facts aboutthe world concepts and so on. And for people who are sighted, that certainlyincludes a lot of visual aspects.

[00:02:52] So if you're trying to think ofyour knowledge of a bird, you know, what a bird looks like. But you also knowwhat a bird sounds like, you know, facts about the bird, you know, where birdsare typically found and that information may or may not include a visualcomponent. So if you were blind, you would still have lost MOTS of richsemantic memory about a bird, but it might not include it visual component.

[00:03:15] So all of these different typesof memory working episodic and semantic can include visual components, but theydon't have to. I also asked Miriam if the term visual memory is a meaningfulway of categorizing things, that's actually used by scientists. She said forthe most part, yes. Thing that we do sometimes is use memory more generallywhen we're talking about visual memory, just because a lot of people in thefield are biased towards studying visual things.

[00:03:44] Because it's easy. And becausevision is one of the predominant ways that humans explore the world. So a lotof studies that talk about memory generally are often still studying some formof visual memory. There's also studies of auditory memory and things like that.But many, many studies of memory in humans often use visual stimuli.

[00:04:06] What parts of the brain areinvolved when we're like recalling a visual memory? Is it. Is it the same partevolved when we're actually seeing things in the moment? Yep. That's exactly right.Yeah. We use the same parts of the brain to perceive and remember visualinformation. So when you're looking at a particular type of visual stimulusset, we'll recruit areas of your visual cortex, both lower level and higherlevel of regions.

[00:04:32] And then you recruit at leastsome of those systems later on when you're remembering it. And it seems like wemore consistently recruit the higher order of visual illusions when we'reremembering. So in your visual cortex, you have very early visions, like a V1or a visual area. One that typically responds to relatively simple shapes.

[00:04:56] So things like oriented lines.And then you have higher ordered regions that respond to things like scenes orobjects. So it's thought that when you're later remembering visual information,you mostly rely on those higher order visual areas. You reactivate those higherorder visual areas, but you might not reactivate the earliest parts of yourvisual system that are involved in more simple types of representations.

[00:05:21] So why are some people betterthan others at remembering things visually. There's uh, at least two differentthings that I could think of. So one is whether or not somebody has imagery inthe first place. There's some group of people. I don't know the percentage isoffhand, but there's some part of the population that doesn't have visualimagery.

[00:05:42] So, um, if you ask them, if theyclose their eyes, if they could imagine, say their childhood home or even theircurrent home, they might tell you that they're not able to generate any imagesat all. Um, this is sometimes referred to as a Fantasia. It's an absence of theability to generate visual images.

[00:05:59] And for these people, that lackvisual imagery. There can also be concomitant decreases in autobiographicalepisodic memory, and maybe some other aspects of memory or spatial navigationas well. So some people that have very poor visual imagery also have poormemory for events in their life. And that's thought to be because visualimagery can be a really important way for us to encode and retrieve memories.

[00:06:27] And the other reason why theremight be variability is related to something we talked about with workingmemory, which is the idea that you can try to structure information in such away as to increase the functional capacity of your memory. So, for example,there's the signings of trust players that I talked about for working memorythat, um, they can be shown a chess board for a brief amount of time and thenbe able to regenerate or recall, okay.

[00:06:55] The positions of all of thedifferent pieces and the idea there is that they're using their long-termmemory or structured knowledge of how chess, how chess games typically playout, which are a possible versus impossible moves and so on. And they use thatto scaffold their memory. So to the extent that you can use your past knowledgeto organize new information, that will also increase the amount that you canstore in memory to summarize Miriam named two possibilities for why people mayhave different aptitude for visual memory, like the experienced chess players.

[00:07:34] We also talked about in episodetwo, if you have a lot of prior knowledge or life experiences, it can help youcontextualize your memories and remember things more effectively. Then there'sthe matter of a Fantasia. I was surprised to learn that some people actuallycan't visualize things at all. And I also kind of personally, related to thatproblem.

[00:07:53] In fact, aptitude forvisualization is a bit of a spectrum that runs all the way up type or Fantasiaor the ability to picture things with perfect clarity as if you're seeing thepicture for real. These terms have to do with imagination, not memory, but theconnection between the two is pretty clear. If you have a Fantasia, you may notbe able to remember things so well because of the difficulty you have picturingand imagining things.

[00:08:19] Merriam talked a bit about blindpeople earlier, which made me wonder if people with a Fantasia report, troubleremembering things. What about people who are blind? Yeah, that's reallyinteresting question. I'm not sure. I know of literature that comparesautobiographical memories of blind versus sighted people.

[00:08:37] Um, and I think it would alsodepend, um, obviously on the age at which the blind has happened because insome cases blind individuals can still generate. Some kinds of visual imagerymight not be exactly the same kind of sighted people, but efficient was lostlater in life. They might still have at least some ability to generate mentalimages.

[00:08:59] So I think you'd have toconsider both when the blindness happened, whether or not the person has. Um,some ability to generate mental images or not, and then compare those to peoplewho are not blind. The other thing is that there's different kinds of imagery.So even though we usually talk about visual imagery, you can also have auditoryimagery, for example.

[00:09:22] So it could be because of, um,the brain's ability to be, uh, plastic that people who are blind can comethrough, rely more on auditory imagery to support that memory. So it seems likethis may be an area for future research, even though many of us rely a lot onvisual memory, there are plenty of other ways we can also experience ourmemories.

[00:09:44] There's no reason why you can'tmentally imagine information and other modalities. So for example, you canprobably generate an auditory image of your mom's voice, for example, like,Hmm. That would be something that also varies substantially across individuals,but you can think of what your mom's voice sounds like.

[00:10:05] Or you can think of what a sirensounds like. You can also imagine what a certain food tastes like, like astrawberry, or imagine a scent like, um, a Rose, those things varysubstantially across people. So some people can't generate olfactory or smellimagery. Some people don't have much of an ability to imagine tastes, but forany sensory modality for touch, I skipped touch.

[00:10:31] But you can also, like, you canimagine what it feels like if somebody past your shoulder. So we mostly talkabout imagining the visual images, but you could also imagine sensations thatcome from other modalities and this also huge variability in people's abilityto imagine those other sensory modalities.

[00:10:50] So all of these, w would theyalso go under the umbrella of visual memory that we're talking about here? Orare those like different forms of memories under different categories? Yeah,those would be considered different forms of memory. They're much less studiedthan visual memory, visual memory memories.

[00:11:06] Very easy to study. You justshow people things on a screen. It's much harder to administer focal smells tosomebody, for example. So there's just. Fewer studies on taste and smell atleast in humans. So we know less about those forms of memory and imagerycompared to, to visual memory. Okay. We've learned enough about visual memory,imagery and imagination.

[00:11:29] It's time to ask the bigquestion, that cultural concept of photographic memory. What exactly does thatmean? Are our preconceptions about this idea going to end up smashed? Thephotographic memory is, um, thought to be cases where people can view a compleximage for a very short period of time, and then be able to remember that imageessentially perfectly.

[00:11:52] So someone might show you aphotograph of a, uh, complex scene. And then after a few seconds, you're askedto like draw it or recall it and describe it verbally. And the idea is that ifyou have a photographic memory, you can do that essentially perfectly. So, isthat, is that a thing? Is that true? Um, I think it's one of those things thathas gotten a lot of attention, but there's very little scientific evidence thatit actually exists.

[00:12:24] Um, that's not to say that somepeople have very, very good visual memory. There's definitely people that haveexcellent visual memory, but it's probably not. Perfect photographic memory.They'll still be errors. They'll still be imperfections. Um, so there's stillquite a bit of variability in how good people are at being able to remembervisual images.

[00:12:46] Um, but there's very fewdocumented cases where somebody seems to have something like a photographicmemory. Those cases have been hard to replicate, or haven't been studied foryou rigorously. And then there's. Other cases where somebody might seem to havea photographic memory, but they're actually using strategies.

[00:13:06] Like what I talked about with thetrust players, as disappointed as I am to admit it, the phenomenon that we callphotographic memory, probably isn't real. But if I've learned one thing overthe course of this podcast journey, it's that the brain is capable ofincredible things. So it is scientifically accurate to say that some peoplehave highly above average aptitude for visual memory, even if it isn't snapshotperfection.

[00:13:28] Right? Yeah. I think it's fairto say that there's a lot of variability across people and how good theirvisual memory is. And some people are very, very good. There have been somestudies that explore individual differences in people's autobiographical memoryabilities, which I mentioned earlier are related to people's visual imageryabilities.

[00:13:48] So we mentioned that people whohave a, um, a Fantasia who are unable to generate visual imagery often tend tohave. Poor autobiographical memory. Um, there's also some subset of people thathave incredibly good autobiographical memory they're referred to as havinghighly superior autobiographical memory or H Sam.

[00:14:09] Um, there are several of thosepeople worldwide and they seem to have an ability to remember pretty much. Youknow, anything that happened over the course of their lifetimes. So if you picka date, they might be able to tell you what they wore, what they had forbreakfast, what they read in the paper. And if you test them multiple times,they're very consistent.

[00:14:27] So, you know, they're not justmaking things up because they have the same memory for the same date. Um, ifyou ask them over and over and you can also corroborate what they said bychecking, for example, what was actually reported in the news. That day. Idon't know if that runs in families. I don't think it does.

[00:14:45] And I don't know if there'sstudies that have thoroughly investigated the genetic components. There's somestudies that have investigated whether the brains of these people are justdifferent than the brains of people that don't have really good memory. Andthat there do seem to be some changes. For example, in the striatum, somestudies find maybe some changes in the hippocampus, but they're not as.

[00:15:10] Large of a brain change then asyou would have expected. So the brain changes are relatively subtle. Well, sothere is something just as impressive as photographic memories out there in theworld. Tell me about your day on the 3rd of April, 2005. The 3rd of April, 2005being a Sunday. That's when I heard that Pope John Paul, the second died.

[00:15:36] What's the date that, that storyfirst aired.

[00:15:43] What day of the week was it? Howdo you do that? Louis? How do you remember those days and what happened onthose days? Instant. I mean, for me, it's as automatic as if I were filling outa form with, you know, name, address, social security number birthday, it'sjust there. Yes. As a small, but fairly well studied group of people that havelike exceptional autobiographical memory abilities.

[00:16:08] And some of them, at least, Iknow one case study with the person also has exceptional semantic memoryabilities. So they have really, really, really good knowledge and memory ofworld events in general, even if they're not personally relevant to that personat all. So even though photographic memory probably doesn't really exist.

[00:16:27] There are some people that haveexceptional memory for other parts of their life, or even exceptional memoryfor, for semantic facts that they might've just read once or twice. Is thereany other research about what could be the underlying causes behind visibilityor. This is the jury is still kind of out.

[00:16:46] I think it's still a new enougharea of research where there's still lots of work to be done. There's stillsome studies that are trying to better understand the neural changes to brainchanges between these people and people that don't have exceptional memory. Onething that they sometimes find is that people with highly superiorautobiographic.

[00:17:04] Well memory sometimes also haveobsessive compulsive disorder and that might go in line with, um, the tendencyto sometimes I'm sad, dwell on certain events in one's life or a document, lotsof things that are happening, for example, through notes. So on, but these aresome, just some of the changes that have I've been found.

[00:17:23] And I think it's still an areawhere there's lots of research to be done and lots of research. That's stillongoing. The reason I wanted to learn about visual memory in the first placewas in hopes I could improve mine. So is there any way at all, we can trainthese skills. Can I get within a mile of the folks that have a naturally strongvisual memory that you can engage in imagery, active imagery that might helpyou remember things a bit better.

[00:17:50] So, um, if someone shows you aphotograph and you just kind of like passively look at it, your memory mightnot be as good as if you tried to. Say from links between the things thatyou're looking at or deeply encoded. So rather than just kind of glance at a photographand then move it away, you might try to think of associations between thingsthat you're seeing.

[00:18:13] So maybe, I don't know, maybeyou notice that there's some dark spots on the ground and the sky is a littlebit cloudy. Maybe you think that it just stopped raining or something likethat. So to the extent that you can think about the image deeply, maybe try to.Test yourself on it. Occasionally like, you know, try to remember a certainpart of it, moves your eyes away, then try to go back and see how good you arethat can help you a little bit more.

[00:18:39] And that goes back to the ideathat the way that you direct your attention and that extent that you can focusyour attention on what you're trying to encode will help your memory. So tryingto engage actively with the material will probably help you maintain memory forit longer. It seems obvious, but people often skip past the looking part.

[00:19:02] Many of us skim through lifewithout consciously paying attention or noting what our surroundings look like.So actually being a more active Looker can help us remember things better. Butit seems like this can only take people so far. Are those of us with poorvisual memories stuck with what we have?

[00:19:20] Will we get better over time?Good question. I don't know if studies that have tried to train people thathave very poor imagery to have better imagery. I think it's always worth. Ashot and also worth trying to capitalize on the types of memory that you know,are strong suits for you. So maybe your visual imagery isn't so good, but anyvisual image will not any, but most visual images can also be.

[00:19:45] Transformed into like a verbaldescription. So if you know that your, her visual memory is bad, you can alwaystry to turn a visual image into some kind of verbal description. And maybe thatin combination with the visual imagery that you have can help you better.Remember those things. But in general, it's always a good idea to try to trainyourself and try to train your memory.

[00:20:08] Just being mentally active. It'salways a good thing that has thought to help compensate for the decline inmemory that occurs even over the course of healthy aging. So it's always goodto practice whether or not it ends up having a big, big effect on your memoryand definitely try to, um, make use of the forms of memory that you think youdo have.

[00:20:29] So if your verbal memory is. Oneof your strong suits, try to rely more heavily on that thinking deeply andattentively to the things that you're trying to remember are going to be goodways to help you remember those things later on. So, um, a lot of us will justkind of look at something or read something and think that's enough to rememberit later on.

[00:20:49] Um, and it's not. So you haveto. You know, really think deeply about what you're looking at, whether it's animage or text, um, try to generate it to yourself. So rather than just lookingat it passively, um, maybe generate descriptions of what you're looking at. Um,maybe try to rephrase things or reading in your own words then after a delay,cut a test yourself on it again, and then wait a little bit longer or testyourself on it again.

[00:21:15] And so on, you know, rehearsaland just deeply engaging with the material is going to. Um, help you rememberthings better. So what have we learned? And so far visual memory is our abilityto remember visual imagery. It encompasses the majority of memory for mostsighted people. And it's the most often studied form of memory.

[00:21:37] Since it's easier to describeand test, there are actually different forms of imagery when it comes to memoryto smells and touches in every sense imaginable visual memory deals with onlythe pictures. Your visual cortex is the part of your brain largely responsiblefor both proceeding and remembering visual stimuli, though.

[00:21:56] Lots of parts of the brain areinvolved. Different things may contribute to your aptitude for visual memory.First, whether things can be related or contextualized with your priorexperiences can help. Then there's how well you can actually imagine orvisualize things in the first place. There are those with a Fantasia that can'tpicture things at all, which can impact visual and autobiographical memory.

[00:22:20] Unfortunately, what pop culturecalls a photographic memory hasn't been proven to exist. But there are peoplewith highly above average visual memory and autobiographical memory abilities.Mariam told us about folks that have what's called highly superior autobiographicalmemory, or H Sam who are capable of remembering details from nearly every dayof their lives.

[00:22:43] You can't just magically getthese skills. But in previous episodes we learned the importance of repetitionfor remembering things later, so that could help try keeping a journal mentallywalk through what happened during the day before you go to bed, you might findyou recall things a bit better, especially if you reread your journalfrequently.

[00:23:03] Practice visualizing things. Andmaybe just, maybe you'll improve. It's not always fun or easy, but all of thesememory tricks so far have taken some work. Okay. I get that. It's not much of atrick. Exactly. So we're going to go through a couple of visualizationexercises. The sort of thing, it may be helpful to practice every day.

[00:23:24] These can also double as a quicktest to see whether you might be hyper Fantasia, Fantasia, or just averagelife. The rest of us get a piece of paper and a pencil. Ready. I'm going to askyou to imagine a series of scenes. Then I'm going to ask you questions aboutthe details of those scenes. I'll have you rate the clarity of those details ona scale of one to five.

[00:23:46] After I ask you to imagine eachscene, Pause the show and spend a few seconds picturing it in your head. When Iask you about the details, write down a score from one to five, measuring howclear those details are. A score of one means that you don't really seeanything at all. You just know that you're thinking about that detail withoutany visual clarity.

[00:24:08] A score of five would mean thatyou can picture every contour in perfect 4k high definition. Ready? Okay. Herewe go. First, imagine a beach, pause the show now and try to picture a beachwith as much clarity as you can. How does it look? Did you picture a particularbeach or an imaginary beach? How detailed is the image?

[00:24:35] First? What time of day is it atthe beach? What color is the sky score? How clearly you can see that detail ona scale from one to five next. What does the ocean look like? Or the water'schoppy or calm green or blue? Score yourself from one to five again. Finally,what does the shore look like? Is it busy or empty or the sands?

[00:25:01] White and fine, or Rocky andgray again, score yourself. Okay. We're moving on to the next visualizationexercise this time, picture a dog. Pause the show and give yourself a fewseconds to imagine a dog, as clearly as you can. How does it look? You may haveimagined a dog you've seen before or a completely new dog either way.

[00:25:26] Let's talk details. First. Whatkind of dog is it a particular breed or a mixed breed? How long is the fur?What color? Score the clarity of those details on a scale of one to five next,how is the dog's behavior? How is it moving around? Is it hyper or calm? Howclearly can you imagine the way it walks score yourself on a scale of one tofive?

[00:25:54] Add up the scores. Yeah, I wrotedown earlier, if you got between five and six points, you might just have aFantasia. If you got 25 points, you may have hyper Fantasia. But how canexercises like this actually help your memory though? The research is stillcoming in, practicing imagining things with greater detail can help train youto have better visual imagination and perception skills.

[00:26:17] The way I asked you to recallmore details, noticing changes or specifics in the visual information, that'sthe kind of stuff you could practice noticing when you're actively looking atsomething. Like Mariam said, the first step to having a better visual memory isactually looking when you start to consciously pay attention, you'll besurprised how much you've been missing or forgetting every so often you canconduct exercises like this independently by actually looking at photographs andquizzing yourself to remember as many details as possible.

[00:26:48] Though, this can increase yourmemory capacity or anything like that. It can probably train your brain to seekmore details. Next time on memory booster. We're going to learn all aboutlanguage and how the heck we can hold so many words in our brain. No problem.Talk to you next week. What you just heard was memory booster, uh, Himalayalearning audio course.

[00:27:14] Be sure to check out all of theother exclusive courses in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com.