Amazing memory man never forgets

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin (AP) — For as long as he can remember, Brad Williams has been able to recall the most trifling dates and details about his life.

For example, he can tell you it was August 18, 1965, when his family stopped at Red Barn Hamburger during a road trip through Michigan. He was 8 years old at the time. And he had a burger, of course.

“It was a Wednesday,” recalled Williams, now 51. “We stayed at a motel that night in Clare, Michigan. It seemed more like a cabin.”

To Williams and his family, his ability to recall events — and especially dates — is a regular source of amusement. But according to one expert, Williams’ skill might rank his memory among the best in the world. Doctors are now studying him, and a woman with similar talents, hoping to achieve a deeper understanding of memory.

Williams, a radio anchor in La Crosse, Wisconsin, seems to enjoy having his memory tested. Name a date from the last 40 years and, after a few moments, he can typically tell you what he did that day and what was in the news.

How about November 7, 1991?

“Let’s see,” he mused, gazing into the distance for about five seconds. “That would be around when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. Yes, a Thursday. There was a big snowstorm here the week before.”

He went on to identify correctly some 20 other events, including the birth of the first test-tube baby in 1978, the toxic-gas leak in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in tennis’s “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973.

“I’ve always been this way,” Williams said. “Growing up, I never really had reason to think I wasn’t like everyone else.”

So how does he do it?

“You want the Nobel Prize right now? Tell me that answer and I’ll publish it,” said Dr. James McGaugh, who has studied Williams since last summer. “We don’t know. We do know that he carries this information with him, that it’s detailed, that it’s just there. That’s what we want to know — why is it there?”

Williams’ brother first contacted McGaugh, a research professor at the University of California, Irvine, after the neurobiologist published a case study of a similar person in the journal Neurocase in 2006.

That woman is in her mid-40s and was identified only by the initials A.J. She told McGaugh that whenever she hears a date, memories from that date in previous years flood her mind like a running movie. The phenomenon, she laments, is “nonstop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting.”

“Most have called it a gift, but I call it a burden,” she wrote. “I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!!!”

McGaugh and his colleagues subjected A.J. to a battery of psychological tests. Given a date at random, she was nearly flawless in recalling the day of the week and what she did that day. The details she provided invariably matched what she had written in diaries decades earlier.

Scientific literature documents people who could memorize a series of 50 to 100 random letters or digits. Another person read a 330-word story twice, then reproduced it nearly verbatim a year later.

But those research subjects remembered meaningless information. What distinguishes Williams and A.J. is their “superior autobiographical memory” — an above-average ability to remember dates and details from their distant past, McGaugh said.

“In subjects we regard as having this ability, they do better than 90 percent on the tests we provide,” McGaugh said.

The tests typically involve reproducing personal information that can be corroborated with old scrapbooks, yearbooks and diaries, sources that McGaugh often tries to obtain from family members without the subjects’ knowledge.

Other tests involve naming a notable public event and asking for its date, or vice versa.

Williams and A.J. both performed better on topics that interested them. Williams excels at pop-culture trivia such as Academy Award winners, but he stumbles on sports.

A lifelong bachelor and self-described Scrabble addict, he finished second when he appeared on “Jeopardy!” in 1990. He says he went 5-for-5 on “1984 movies” but tripped up on categories including “snakes” and “words that begin with ‘kh’.”

Because a person’s interest in the information is a key factor in recall ability, some researchers doubt that Williams and A.J. are unique.

“If it’s a truly amazing memory that just sucks things up, it shouldn’t be based on how interesting something was to you,” said Stephen Christman, a neuropsychologist at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Christman, who wasn’t involved in the research, pointed to baseball fanatics who remember obscure statistics because of their passion for the game. Perhaps, he speculated, A.J. obsesses so much over past events and relives them so frequently in her mind that it’s now effortless for her to recall countless dates and events.

The number of people with comparable memory skills has been hard to pin down. After publishing his research with A.J., McGaugh heard from about 50 people claiming they had the same skill or, like Williams’ brother, knew someone who might.

Of them, McGaugh and his colleagues have identified a third person — a 50-year-old Ohio man — who shows similar promise.

Ever since pointing his elder brother in McGaugh’s direction, Eric Williams, 45, has been recording Brad’s adventures for an upcoming documentary. The movie, to be titled “Unforgettable,” is scheduled to be completed later this year.

“The human brain is the most complicated and important machinery in the known universe,” McGaugh said. “My aim with this research isn’t to cure Alzheimer’s. It’s to decrease the mystery of this marvelous machinery.

(source)

I want to let you in on a great creativity exercise that will get your creative juices flowing to the extreme. The secret I’ve just discovered is a creativity exercise called Image Streaming.

It comes courtesy of Win Wenger, Ph.D, and the effects on intellect and creativity are truly startling. You can see results in a few hours.

I’m sure you’re wondering . . .

Creativity Exercises: What is Image Streaming?

“Image Streaming is a technique that facilitates access to the deep subconscious by accessing the constantly arising stream of visual images that we have.” – source

 

Creativity Exercises: How to Image-Stream?

What you need is an external focus to describe your images to. A tape recorder with blank tape, or a simple Dictaphone like every office used to have, provides you a potential listener for that all-essential focus. Call in a friend, or phone to call up a friend and keep him or her on the line, and you have, even better, a live listener to serve as that external focus.

Of that half of you who did get an image, some found a strong, clear, definite image or set of images, while others just got a glimpse, a faint impression which you might think was hardly worth describing, or weren’t certain whether you were just making up the idea rather than seeing an image —

— Yet whatever you got, the key is to examine and describe it aloud, in as rich detail as possible even if you feel at first as if you are “forcing” it and “making up” some of it to fill your description to your external focus listener.

More, though, and more, will come as you describe — be alert to this happening, and describe the new impressions when they come. Your images will become rich and vivid and even their meanings — as Image-Stream contents are often symbolic or metaphoric — will start to become apparent.

That is Image-Streaming. Each full-flow Image-Streaming session should run from 10 to 30 minutes. Examine whatever images happen to be playing in your mind’s eye at the time, while describing them in rich detail to a live or potential listener (person or tape recorder).

Even minimum, trivial-seeming impressions or whatever: describe them in such richly textured detail as to force anyone listening to experience and see what you are describing. 10 to 20 minutes at a time, practice several hours of Image-Streaming and you will have mastered the basic skills needed to make other forms of visual thinking work for you. — And you will also have experienced some of the other benefits of Image-Streaming as well, including improved intellectual performance and creativity.

Even if your imagery is already clear and vivid, you will be astonished at how much more so it quickly becomes when you describe it in this way, while continuing to examine it.

Creativity Exercises: 3 Ways this improvement is even stronger!

1)You describe in as sensory-textured detail as possible.

The major part of your brain that we want to bring on line, works with sensory images even in profoundly intellectual matters. Explanation takes you away from that sensory immediacy. Instead of saying, “I’m at the beach” or “This is Virginia Beach,” detail instead the warmth of sand under your toes, the sound of surf, the smell of salt, the wheeling of the gulls above you in the almost-white sky, black and white of the gulls on that paler white far above you ….

2)Describe as rapidly as you can, to get more and more detail in.

Describe faster than you can stop to judge whether or not something is worth mentioning, just go ahead and flow it through (and see what comes with it). This is a kind of “brainstorm” only with description instead of ideas or answers, and has a similar rule to brainstorming’s “if it occurs to you, express it!” Really rapid-flow describing exerts almost a Venturi force or suction pulling other perceptions into focus.

3) All this is done most easily with eyes shut. . .

 so that your inner visual circuits aren’t distracted away from these initially subtler signals, and so they can operate at full sensitivity. In other words, please keep eyes closed during such processing, in order to see more freely.

Read more on the Image Streaming Creativity Exercise

Jose Silva also conducted creativity exercises with many of the kids in his hometown of Laredo. Why not read more on Enhancing Creativity through Gaining Inspiration From Within.

Mind Mapping Tips Video

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Stephen Pierce by now; in this great video he gives mind mapping tips that identify the best ways to retain information, maybe from books, magazines, articles, journals – whatever it may be.

Here’s a scenario for you . . .

After reading a 200 or even 2000 page book, somebody asks you questions about the novel say, or the lessons learnt from a book of advice, sure it’s fresh in your mind . . . but HOW MUCH OF THE INFORMATION HAVE YOU TRULY TAKEN IN?

Apparently these mind mapping tips can make you retain double, triple, or quadruple the amount of information that you would otherwise.

 Stephen Pierce’s Great Mind Mapping Tips

Mind mapping is a technique that is so simple and effective and in actual fact it’s quite fun at the same time. There’s a lot more than just mind mapping tips to be learnt from Stephen Pierce. Why not check out our previous post on the Attraction Accelerator.

‘The ESP Affair’ is an upcoming feature film that is set to make you think so far out of the box that it will blow your mind. The ESP Affair is about Connie, an ordinary woman who’s dreams are invaded, causing her to stumble onto a top-secret government conspiracy involving psychics and mind control. 

“Imagine a world where . . .

Government has lost the nation’s trust, Democracy is compromised, Ordinary people suspect everyone and there is no privacy . . .

you can’t trust your neighbor, your family, your lover, you cannot even trust your own dreams”

The ESP Affair

The ESP Affair story is rooted in a TRUE, cold-war era U.S. military project involving trained “psychic spies” known as Remote Viewers. While the evidence suggests that the U.S. government’s Remote Viewing program was eventually disbanded, The ESP Affair supposes that it was merely taken underground, and continued to develop in secrecy.

Led by a corrupt politician with delusions of grandeur, the underground program in the movie is turned inward at America’s own populous. When a dissenting agent within the underground begins to use his powers for his own insidious purposes, he inadvertently awakens psychic abilities within one of his victims (Connie), and unleashes a series of “blowback” events that lead to the his own exposure, along with the subversion of the psychic conspiracy at large.

This film is set to be truly cutting edge – many of the contributors are pioneers in the field of this remarkable phenomenon – namely Major Ed Dames ( retired US Army) and the inspirational psychic and renowned parapsychologist Lloyd Auerbach consulting with the makers.

You can Learn Remote Viewing . . .

When investigating this thought provoking and engulfing practice I stumbled across a great website that has such a comprehensive catalogue of information on Remote Viewing.

Did you know the CIA, the US Army and the British Army have all used Remote Viewing???

Find out more about this amazing practice by clicking the link below. . .

Learn Remote Viewing

I found an article on a very alternative approach to learning which after racking my brains for ages makes perfect sense. I’m sure after you read this article it will make sense to you as well. Just think about it – there are so many pitfalls we fall into if we can’t grasp a hard topic – for example, reading and reading and READING over the same material.

Let’s get the scientific aspect out the way:

The Physiology of Learning

Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values and wisdom. It is the goal of education, and the product of experience.

Thinking can be thought of as a network of neurons firing in a very specific pattern. As neurons are used, they become thicker and more permanent. It follows then, that the stronger the stimulation, and the more common the stimulation, the more likely the stimulus is to be remembered. More so, memory comes easier when multiple parts of the brain (such as hearing, seeing, smelling, motor skills, touch sense, and logical thinking lobes; informal names given) are stimulated.

There’s the technical side – let’s look at the alternative learning methods article:

Six steps for learning difficult subjects quickly

Here’s a strategy I’ve found useful for learning dry and difficult material quickly. At various times, I’ve used it to build up my knowledge of subjects like economics, investing, writing and computer programming languages. Some people have been surprised at how fast I can learn these kinds of skills, but I think anyone can do it with the right plan. Of course, you can use this to teach yourself interesting things as well, but most people don’t have any problem learning stuff that’s fun.
Okay, here are the steps…

Step 1: Bombard yourself with information

Many people try to slowly and methodically digest difficult material. They underline things and re-read paragraphs ten times to try and understand. This approach might eventually work, but most people get fed up with it and give up before finishing. Our brains hate this way of learning.

Instead, try to get through the material as quickly as possible. Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything, just keep reading on. Push yourself to get the damn textbook finished, and don’t worry too much about how much you take in.

Skip any exercises or quizzes and just keep ploughing through.

Some people can read an entire textbook in a couple of sittings, but not me. I like to digest 10-20 page chunks, then go and do something else for a while to give my brain a rest. If you do this three or four times a day, you can finish a 600 page textbook in about two weeks.

The only time I stop to go back is if there’s some key concept that’s being repeated a lot and I don’t know what it means. Then, I might allow myself to read a key paragraph or two on that topic, but no more. Otherwise I just challenge myself to get through the book as quickly as possible.

Step 2: Identify the key concepts and make them yours

Once you’ve finished the text, think about what the key concepts were. Don’t concentrate on the details at this stage, just identify the core ten or so ideas that form the basis of the subject. Look them up again and try to define them as simply as you can. Putting them in your own words, with an example, rather than learning by rote is important.

For example, The Economist defines the concept of Opportunity Cost as: “The true cost of something is what you give up to get it. This includes not only the money spent in buying (or doing) the something, but also the economic benefits that you did without because you bought (or did) that particular something and thus can no longer buy (or do) something else. “

So you could say to yourself: “Opportunity cost means not being able to spend your resources on one thing because you’ve already spent them on something else. I can spend my Saturday night doing homework, which means the opportunity cost is that I can’t spend that time going to the movies.”

Step 3: Only memorize what absolutely has to be memorized

Most facts and figures can be looked up. Don’t fill your mind with junk trivia that’s only a mouse-click away. Instead of the raw data, concentrate on understanding the ideas of a subject.

However, in any topic, there are some things that simply must be memorized. Cut the list of these down as much as possible, so you’re only remembering that which absolutely and definitely has to be remembered.

There are all sorts of memory tricks around, but the one I find most useful is pretty simple. I just repeat out loud the thing that has to be remembered ten times or so. Then, I wait until later in the day and try to remember it again. If I can’t, I look it up and repeat it out loud again. Then I wait for later and try to remember it again – and so on. Usually, you can burn a fact into your brain pretty quickly using this method.

Step 4: Get some feedback on your understanding

Now that you’ve filled your head with stuff, it’s time to get some feedback on how well you’ve understood it. A good way is by doing some kind of mock-exam. You can find these for various subjects on-line, or you might want to try some of the exercises in the textbook.

Again, break this dull task up into chunks if necessary, doing a few different tests over a few days.

You’ll probably find that you did pretty badly when you mark yourself. After all, you raced your way through the text. But if you look up the questions that you got wrong, you should amaze yourself at how quickly you start getting a detailed knowledge of the material.

What you’re trying to do is build up a framework of the subject in your mind and then fill in the details. This will probably be pretty fuzzy at first, but clarity usually comes quickly as you teach your brain how the concepts are related.

The important thing is not getting the answers right, but looking up what you got wrong and learning it. Do this as quickly as possible. Try to avoid reading whole chapters unless you feel you absolutely need to.

Step 5: Bombard yourself with some more information, but from another source

Now is the time to get some information from other sources. Often, hearing something in a different way helps me to understand it better. It also gives some flexibility to my comprehension.

I’m not suggesting reading another whole textbook. Instead read a few short articles on the subject in magazines and on websites.

Step 6: Get some real-world feedback

Now’s the time to get some real-world feedback. If you’ve learnt a language, try speaking to a native in it. If you’ve taught yourself anatomy, try having a discussion on the subject with a doctor.

 The best real world feedback of all is if you attempt to use your knowledge for fame or fortune (on a small scale of course). Throw yourself in the deep end, in other words. Join a discussion board on the subject and pick an argument with one of the participants. Or try to get paid employment using your new knowledge.

So there they are, my six steps for learning a difficult subject quickly. Of course, the actual amount of time it takes depends on how much work you put in, but this is the most efficient method I’ve found in terms of understanding achieved compared to time and effort spent. Usually, I can get a good broad understanding of a topic in a month or two using this method.

check out more from Paul>>

How Do You Learn Difficult Subject Matter?

Share Your Views

Sir Ken Robinson, knighted by the Queen in 2003 for achievements in creativity, education and the arts, is an English gentleman with a charming wit and repartee that has an amazing vision to harvest creativity and create an amazing future for the world. He believes that CREATIVITY is as important as LITERACY and should be treated with the same status.

Ken Robinson, who lived in Stratford Upon Avon the home of Shakespeare for many years, begins by demonstrating the amazing creativity of children with numerous funny quips.

He shares a story of a 6 year old little girl who pays no attention in class except when she can draw. The Teacher asks what she is drawing and she claims to be drawing God:

The teacher asks: “BUT nobody knows what God looks like”

The girl replies “They will do in a minute”

This quip literally illustrates how children have no limits to their levels of creativity. Most kids are fearless and are never ever frightened to make mistakes. This leads to out of this world creativity. HOWEVER, our current education systems worldwide are making children lose this capacity to be creative.

You will literally be glued to the screen in this riveting 20 minute video

After you have viewed this clip I invite you to just imagine how much wonderful change we could bring to this world if we truly embraced these teachings!

I’m sure you’ll agree that Ken delivers a highly entertaining, and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.

Picasso once said:

All children are born artists, the problem is remaining an artist as we grow up.

This is the problem that Ken outlines quite brilliantly in his speech. We don’t grow into creativity, We grow out of it. In fact Ken argues we are educated out of creativity.

Comments? Share Your thoughts

1. Money is the root of all evil

Money isn’t good or evil. It’s a tool like a hammer or a saw. You can create with it or destroy with it. People use it to build infrastructure, to build research facilities, to find cleaner sources of energy, and to create timeless art and literature. If you use your money to create value for yourself and others, your money will grow – and you will have all the money you’ll ever need. However, if you hoard money selfishly or spend it frivolously, you will never have enough. Don’t you think you could contribute more to society, the world, and other people if you had great wealth? So what’s wrong with intending to be wealthy? Do you believe you have the capacity to create value in other people’s lives? Those that think and act create wealth, so if you intend to become wealthy, don’t wait around for a government grant or the winning lotto numbers, get out there and start creating value for other people today.

2. Getting a good job is the best way to earn money

Ask any entrepreneur if she’d like to quit and get a job. Then ask most people with a job if they’d like to quit and work for themselves. Most wealthy people will tell you a job is the worst way to make money.

3. Emotional people are weak, vulnerable, and easily manipulated

It’s the exact opposite. Strong emotions are a source of strength and power. The stronger your emotions and the better your ability to focus your emotion, the more creative and powerful you are. Denying your emotions creates weakness and vulnerability.

4. Admitting a mistake is a sign of weakness

If you aren’t making mistakes you aren’t learning anything. Fearing mistakes is the real weakness. Denying your mistakes, repeating them, and expecting different results is insane. See President Bush. See the Republican Party. See the Iraq war.

5. You can’t be successful without a college degree

This one was drilled into my head for years and I believed it. The results of this belief were devastating. I didn’t earn a decent living until I was able to squash the belief. 85% 76% of Americans do not have a degree. I want to be very clear about this – I know I am on dangerous ground – so here goes – All of you with college educations are valuable and you have tremendous ability to create value in the world. This is not a criticism of your achievements. But I also must say – if you are one of the 85% 76% that do not have a degree, you are equally valuable and you are not inferior. You have equal potential to create value in the world, even if you never get a degree. People with and without degrees create amazing results everyday. If you hate flipping burgers or ringing orders at Wal-Mart don’t continue just because our culture tells you it’s your lot in life. Don’t listen to the voice in your head that tells you what you can’t do. Tell it to shut-up. Then start to visualize what you desire to be and you will slowly become what you visualize.

For The Rest of the List, Visit Steve’s Blog >>

Thinking about intelligence as changeable and malleable, rather than stable and fixed, results in greater academic achievement, especially for people whose groups bear the burden of negative stereotypes about their intelligence.

Can people get smarter? Are some racial or social groups smarter than others? Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, many people believe that intelligence is fixed, and, moreover, that some racial and social groups are inherently smarter than others. Merely evoking these stereotypes about the intellectual inferiority of these groups (such as women and Blacks) is enough to harm the academic perfomance of members of these groups. Social psychologist Claude Steele and his collaborators (2002) have called this phenomenon “stereotype threat.”

Yet social psychologists Aronson, Fried, and Good (2001) have developed a possible antidote to stereotype threat. They taught African American and European American college students to think of intelligence as changeable, rather than fixed — a lesson that many psychological studies suggests is true. Students in a control group did not receive this message. Those students who learned about IQ’s malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.

Read the Complete Article >>