photographic memory

Beyond Dreaming
1

I’m not sure if this belongs here or not but here goes…

I’ve resently became intrested in photographic memory, I searched on the net for site on how to develope this memory, I found a lot of good meterial and it seems that more people think that this memory is possible to echieve rather then not.

A good link that I found is:
ebicom.net/~rsf1/fun/phot-mem.htm

Does anyone here have photographic memory?
Do you think its real?
Do you think its possible to devope it?
Do you know how to develope it?

Mystery

2

Despite many claims, it’s never been proven. So I don’t believe in it.

3

some of my teachers back at high school said they’ve had students who didn’t take notes at all. other teachers said there are students who are put in special schools because of their abilities

I believe it is real, just like others who get to specialize in a field have superb abilities, such as athletes, monks, artists etc. That’s not to say we should undervalue anyone below that, since everyone is essential and equally important.

I don’t think it is possible to develop it, unless you already have the potential for it.

4

I have done this with my bedlight. I just lie in bed and let my eyes adjust to the dark, then I flick the lightswitch really fast and I can still see my room a few sec after the light goes out. But for this to work the room have to be dark and your eyes have to be used to the dark too.

I have also done this in a different way the last few months. When I drive or walk on a street I just look at someone or something really fast and then I sort of retain the image in my mind instead of really seeing the image as I do when the room is dark. I can usually hold on to the image for maybe 5 sec before it starts fading out. Faces are quite easy to hold on to but text is usually much harder. If it’s short I can hold on to a few word, but I think the limit for me is about 10-15 letters. If it’s a totally unknown word the limit is lower.

I don’t really think that this is photographic memory because there’s no way I could look at a page in a book and still have it in memory. To do this one would have to focus on every part of the page at the same time and I’m not sure that this could be done. It might work in a dark room but the image lasts such a short time and one would still have to read the entire page. But I’m going to try it tonight when I go to bed and see what happens.

5

I don’t believe in “special” abilities, yes, some people are of course born with some ability, but only because they start using it first before anything els not because it genetic or anything like that, you can take me as an example:
People say that to be a true artist you have start drawing from a young age, I haven’t been intrested in art untill now, and even though I am lacking in the knowlege of certain drawing techiniques I am sure I can be as good as people who have drawn all their life. To me they just had a head start, it doesn’t mean I can’t catch up.

I think photographic memory can be developed, you just have to train your brain to do it, just like lucid dreaming :smile:
You weren’t born with the ability to lucid dream, right? and some people can do it at will and yet it doesn’t mean (oviously) that we can’t do it either, just takes some practice.
same with everything els (and if you want to be born with 5 arms…too bad :tongue: but i guess there are ways around that too :wink: )

If anyone has come across a website that contains information on how to develope this memory, then post it here.

Mystery

6

Well school teaches you to improve your memory, I took a course to help me improve mine it works. So yes i believe with hard work and patience it would be possible to improve your memory to the point you have a photographic memory.

Remember we all have this ability and we tend to notice it in our dreams, the subconscious mind can recall perfect details from our memory, which in it’s self says we all have a “photographic” memory. How many times have you thought back to when you were in school and tried to remember someone only to see a fague likeness but later have a dream with that person in perfect detail?

It’s just a matter of tapping into that already exsisting ability to use it in a conscious environment.

So to answer the questions;

Does anyone here have photographic memory? - We all do we just don’t use it consciously (or at least most of us don’t)
Do you think its real? yes. we use it in dreams quite often.
Do you think its possible to devope it? yes i believe it is possible to develope it to use consciously and not just during sleep.
Do you know how to develope it? hard work and patience. Other than that. No.

IMHO wrong. I think we are born with it and from the point we start remembering dreams can LD. I first had my LD at 4yrs but i didn’t know anything about LDing. Only looking back do i realise it was an LD. The child mind is innocent and doesn’t think that controling dreams is not just a Normal dream. I think it’s something we all have from the start but most of us lose as we age - then some people just find it easier to tap back into.

7

I doubt anyone have 100% accurate memory, but some few people do have highly developed memory, compared to a normal person… Some people can actually memorize a whole phone book, even though they have only read it once… My mom knew of one such a person btw…

This has nothing to do with memory, but it has more to do with image being burned into your retina or something. This eyetrick plays on a similar effect: https://www.eyetricks.com/jesus.htm

8

Even if a person can read a whole phonebook and remember it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he has photographic memory. Photographic memory is, as the name implies, the ability to remember things in the form of vivid images. I’m sure it’s possible, because there has been so many claims of it in the past, but my guess is that it’s genetical.

If you look at this from a computer technician’s point of view, it seems like a tremendous waste of brain capacity. If you want to remember a page in a book, you really don’t want to fill up your brain with what the actual paper looked like etc. In the computer world, an image of a book page would occupy at least 1000 times more storage than the actual text on that page.

9

I never said so, i only said that some gifted people have highly advanced memory compared to the average person. What i meant was that some people can remember extreme details, after just seeing a thing once, while a “normal” person would rarely remember much…

Like me for example, would never be able to remember even 5 pages in a phone book, even if i put some effort into it…

10

I know that, but that’s how I understood that they did in the article posted at the top.

11

since lding … since say… april…

i’ve become better at visualization… photographic memory can be developed.

mine is not very good, but I mean, I crammed a study session of art slides in… and by gum… I knew those slides, knew them like the back of my hand, it took a few seconds to retrive them, but even now…

I can see “Wild Turkey” by Autobahn… (sp?) and… I can see a few of the slides in my head… not for very long, no more than 2-3 seconds at a time, then they mutate because of my analyzing them and my subconscious reacting to the analysis, and adjusting the images to fit what… I’m thinking about… whatever that is.

But yeah… I can still kind of see them.

For a week or so after going to Six Flags Fiesta Texas, I could see, very well, the layout to Superman: Krypton Coaster, in my mind… in fact I think it was even ACCURATE in my dreams… something that is pretty rare for me.

so…

it can be done.

just sit in bed try and visualize things, try to hold them for as long as possible, it slowly builds up the tools necessary for photographic memory and … just, general visualzation.

12

The method in the article that I found also states that peripheral vision improves, I’ve been trying the method stated since the time I started this topic and I can say that the images that I’m “remembering” are getting more detailed each day, you should try it :content:

Mystery

13

i don’t get that excercise, are you supposed to very rapidly open and close your eyes ONCE and then, try and retain an after image?

it worked by keeping them closed 20 seconds, opening and closing really quick looking at the article, I could see blurry pupleness and the text remained for a split second when they were closed…

is that what you are supposed to do?

oh yeah and on a similar note, you can read things ultra fast… without knowing it… this one time I went to see Harry Potter, some strobe lights went off, then some sort of alarm… I didn’t know what the hell was going on… my first thought was “hurricane!” and, they told us to go out the emergency exits…well, that’s when I realized that the stupid movie ads popped up when they turned the movie off… and one of the words on it was “hurricane” but i never consciously read it.

14

Your suppost to let your eyes adjust to the dark, then open and close them quickly and keep them closed and try to retain the image, then do it again.

I don’t know about the “reading really fast method” I think you just noticed the word but never really thought about it, like I said somewhere before the subconcious picks up on things you don’t concerntrate on rather then what you do.

I had an experence at reading fast once but not like you describe. I was reading this book, was really concerntrating on it, and trying to understand everything and suddenly I read a line in the book in less then a second, my eyes just went from the start of the line to the end very fast and yet I still read it like I would everything els, never happened to me again unfortunately.

Mystery

PS: Now sometimes when I close my eyes without them being adjusted to the dark I can still see very faint images…I think this is a good sign :smile:

15

Cool experiment, Mystery! Hope you keep us posted if you continue your quest.

16

Thanx for the reply :smile:

I was thinking no one cared about this topic anymore, anyway, so far I tried using this technique on writing, and I can kinda see it, but its very blury and unreadable, I’ll keep trying and see what happens.

Mystery

17

Hi folks,

I am happy that i stumbled across this topic, i know a lot about this photographic memory, it has been something that i have been into for a long time now.

Do you remember the movie Rain Man, well Tom Cruise plays this guy who never knew he had a brother which is played by Dustin Hoffman and Dustin has a few problems, i am not sure what the name of his problem was, he never liked water and got very scared, but what he had was a photographic memory. There is a scene where Tom drops a box of matches and quickly Dustin says how many are left in the box. That’s because his brain can pick up the number of matches out of the box and then divide it from the number which is in the box, and he gets his answer. When Tom finds out about this rare talent, he gets happy and they go to a casino and he is able to win every time on the blackjack table, because every card that is dealt on the table, Dustin’s eyes very quicly picks up on it, and to Dustin it is second nature, it is like his eye absorbs the whole table.

Now photographic memorys are possible and there are poeple out there that have them, and i am sure it has been proved and that it is nothing new.

Now there is 2 kinds of photographic memory there is one in which your mind takes photos of everything and holds it somewhere in the mind which nobody really knows as of yet where this information is being held.

Then there is something called photoreading where you can take a book and look at one page in a second and go through it, like for example a 300 page book in 20 mins and then you can recall the book, not word for word, but you will know it pretty well and will understand the story.

There are home study photo reading courses that you can take which costs between 200-300 dollars. Also there is a 2 weekend lecture where they teach you how to learn it and in one of these lectures that i have read about they basically won’t let you leave until it really works for you or its your money back.

Now this is different to speed reading or mega speed reading, thats where you can read 25000 words per minute but your actually not picking up a mental picture of the book. In speed reading your reading part of the book very fast, its like your letting your eyes wander across the page really quickly.

Now having a pohotographic memory is possible. The CIA for years have been training their spys to have them. Like for instance, what the top spys from around the world have to be good at is absorbing information on a very high level. I know this, as there was a documentary on it, on the discovery channel a few years ago. Also you would also see it in the occassional hollywood movie, any way in the documnetary the ex spy said we would be trained by opening up a fridge for 10 secs and see exactly what kind of fruit and vegetables were in it and then recall everything back and they would keep on repeating this until they could recall everything in the fridge. What they do is by looking at this briefly then a image is held in the mind where you can recall it.

Now back to speed reading, i bought a course a while ago called mega speed reading and it says on the course box that you can achieve 25000 words per minute. I of course was not sure if i was doing it correctly, but i could scan the pages quite fast but it did not mean that i understood the book. So i think it varies upon peron to person but the guy who made this book was the worlds fastest reader i cannot remeber the guys name but he could read even faster than 25000 words per minute and he showed it to the wolrd on live tv and he has been in the news all over the world. He is also in the Guiness Book of Records. So i do believe it is possible but i think i would of learnt better not from a home study course but from going to a seminar or lecture.

Now one of the reasons i am into all this and know so much is because a few years ago i was very much into magic and illusion and mind reading these days i am more into hynotherapy. But anyway in that time frame i was blown away by the abilitys of this pyschological mind reader in my home country and in one of his tv shows he visited a libary and asked the libarian to pick out any book and he then read it for 20 mins by scanning each page in his mind for a few seconds and then he aksed the libarian to name a page in the book and then any line. Then the mind reader demonstrated photo reading and said the words on the sentence after just scanning the book for 20 mins and this was a random choice, that just shows photreading is real, and it is all part of having a photographic memory.

Also when i was a kid my teacher said to me. How do i think? i cannot remember what i replied back, but i remember her saying that you should think in cartoons it makes everything easier to remember, and by thinking in cartoons you can remeber things like a movie reel. Then from that day on i was developing a sort of movie reel in my mind and then it went from a cartoon like to the every day looking images that my eyes pick up.

Now i do not know if this next bit means i have a photographic memory but i will tell you, sometimes i am able to see something for a while on TV. Like today it happend and i was watching the Tennis and as i am writing this i can see the image still in my mind even though i only saw it for 30 seconds i believe because on the tv it looks big it is easier to remember. I was watching the womens final in tennis on the olympics and there was mauresmo playing this belgium women i cannot remeber her name, but i do remember this image in my mind, which was telling me how many aces and doble faults had happend in their game, and the total percentag between the two, and i can tell you that just by me thinking about the room i was in.

Anyway when i was at school many years ago, there was this sweedish boy sitting next to me just before the Geography exam and he told me to test him on this table to do with the exam and he handed me the table and he faced the other way and started reading what was off the table and i was saying if it was correct or not and constanty he was getting everything word perfect in that chart and i was blown away and said what is it, do you have a photographic memory? but he would not tell me his secret but it was amazing and i believe it was a photographic memory.

This topic has brought a lot of info on what the human mind is capable of
I also have a few questions, i would like to know if this is normal, i always wanted to ask becasue i believe that sometimes the way my mind operates is a bit above normal and that is why maybe i feel depleted of energy because my brain has to process so much more. Okay what i am trying to say is this.
When i think about something i see it with perfect clarity in my mind but it feels projected infront of me, it’s hard to describe. I also can get lost in my thought because i have incredible visualisation skills but the problem is when i put it towards obe or lucid dream development it becomes a lot harder, but in general i can basically be somewhere and during that moment in my mind, during that basic day dream it feels just as real as when i am in the late part of my dream you know the part when it has been about 6-7 hours of sleep and you are in your final really long REM stage where it feels so real, well that is the exact feeling i get when i get lost in my thoughts and also when i just think about something.

So is all this energy power depleting me and is this normal or is the way in which i think is ultra amazing or the same as anyone else?

Well this draws to the end of this very interesting topic, i hope i have given some very valuable information and i hope that someone could answer my question.

Thank you and all the best regards.

Honeyjigga

18

I have photographic memory.

My chemistry teacher would flip on me as would my anatomy teacher. I’d never take notes in class and when I’d take test I’d ace them.

My teachers would always say “Matt why aren’t you taking notes” I’d tell them “I don’t need to.” They’d then be like “you’re going to regret it on the test.” Well, I’d usually just look at the material, fall asleep. Then when the test came around I’d get anywere from a 90% to 100% and my teachers would be shocked.

It’s also a reason I’m so great at math.

I also remember all my class mates since kindergarden but I only remember there first and last name after seeing their face.

Like in my freshman year I had Earth Space Science. I sat next to my friend from Kindergarden named Joeseph. I asked him, “hey did you have miss Singarelli for kindergarden?” He then asked me how the hell I knew that. I then told him that I was in his class and that my cubby hole was right next to me.

He didn’t believe me but brought in his kindergarden year book the next day, sure enough, there I was, right next to his picture.

It’s very weird to say the least but I enjoy it. Also, it was never affected during my Marijuana smoking stint from 8th to 10th grade which is pretty cool.

It’s also awesome knowing the answer to everything when my teachers ask.

The only thing I do not understand is why it doesn’t work for English. I can’t seem to get A’s in english/foreign language. It’s the weirdest thing in the world and most frusturating.

19

i ve photographic memory.
eveyone has some kind of memory. ppl ve general memory, hearing memory, and photographic memory. i ve both - photo and hearing memory.
its like i take notes and c the photo of my notes in my eyes. i know what i wrote and where, where i put sth. some times at school i forgot the date (in history lesson) and i just told my teacher " i dont remeber the date, but its in the 3rd paragraph, on the right side at page blahblahblah… i can recall ppl that i met for one time only, and when i c them again after long time, i wont remeber their name, but i remember that i met them somewhere.
to some extense everyone can develope their photo memory. but u need the skill itself. if u just dont c that u dont ve the skill of good photo memory, u probalby wont succeed to much… i ve been aware of haveing photo memory since i was a kid, so i could use it all the time - doing only homeworks, not repeating, coz i remebere all stuff that i took notes for the first time, and i remeber what sb had said - i can recall somebody’s voice, and the whole conversation - or the whole lesson that i participated… there is one exercice to develope ur memory . u should do this :
when u want to learn sth or just remeber it, 1. repeat it (read it) the very next day (24 hours a man forgets 60% of stuff that he learnt by hard)2. repeat it next week.3. repeat it next month. 4. repeat it in next 3 months…
it works, but if u ve problems with concentration ur lost… and be self confident and aware that u r a skilled person. if u learn different stuff, from various parts of knowledge etc ur brain develops and creates new paths and connections betweet neurons. the more u learn and gain knowledge, the more connectins between neurons r built = u r more skilled, u can remeber them better, and ur brain works :->>
about fast reading… ill write sth about that next time after ill be back from shop. i attended special classes how to read fast… i succeeded… but u need lots of time to achieve for ex 3000 words per min… if anybody is interested how to do that… heh… write a post.

20

True photographic or “eidetic” memory as demonstrated in controlled (laboratory) settings has been demonstrated only a few times, always by children, and cannot be learned.

In the experiments, the child is shown a piece of paper with dozens of tiny little dots in a (seeming) random configuration. Much later, the child is shown another piece of paper with the random dots on it. Sometimes there is a third paper.

The child is then told to call up the memory of the first and second series of dots and mentally put the images on top of each other. If the child can literally see the images in front of him/her and it is a perfect memorization of all of the dots, they will see a letter or letters of the alphabet vaguely formed by all of the dots together.

There are also a few individuals in the world who can memorize lists of thousands of numbers. However, even these individuals are unable to perform the dot test because their memory (impressive though it is) is not photographic.