How to remember everything

Various types of memory, each serving unique functions, create a complex brain system

These forms of memory, which can overlap in daily life, have been sorted into broad categories, such as short-term and long-term memory, and subtypes such as implicit memory, which uses saved information without conscious awareness that it’s being recalled.

How to remember names

Journalist Lisa Kanarek sought to become a “super-recognizer,” someone with exceptional face recognition abilities who never forgot a name. She enlisted the help of a neurosurgeon and a world record holder in memory. The experts suggested a few tips and tricks to connect names and faces and erase the need to say, "Hey, you!" again.

Sensory memory is information collected from your senses

Lasting seconds before moving into short-term memory or being forgotten, sensory memory aids in environmental awareness and navigation. Key brain regions involved include auditory, somatosensory, gustatory, visual, and olfactory cortices.

Short-term memory is a temporary space for limited, newly learned information

Short-term memory stores info for 15 to 30 seconds and is managed by the prefrontal cortex. Though they're often confused, short-term memory stores information, while working memory actively uses it to help you reason, learn, and solve problems, such as a math equation.

ADHD impairs working memory and limits the ability to form long-term memories

While ADHD is most often recognized for producing struggles with attention and organization, these executive functions are critical for capturing the data that creates memories in the brain. Breaking data into pieces, or chunking, helps address these struggles.

The hippocampus, a structure in the brain, plays a crucial role in memory formation

The seahorse-shaped structure transfers short-term memories to long-term storage during sleep. It is located in the temporal lobes, above each ear, and aids in spatial navigation and remembering directions.

Photographic memory isn’t real, but other rare memory types do exist

While 2% of children can recall sensory experiences with extreme detail (eidetic memory) and some adults can remember life events or dates with high accuracy (hyperthymesia), there is no scientific evidence for the flawless recall popularized in fiction. Most memory feats instead rely on training and memorization techniques.

Consistency and emotional engagement can improve the formation of memories

While sleep lets the brain re-trigger neurons associated with our experiences to cement them in long-term memory, repeating actions, like storing one's keys in the same location, can mimic these benefits. Emotionally charged memories are often ruminated upon, improving their future recall.

Watch a USA Memory Champion answer questions about memory

Six-time USA Memory Champion, Nelson Dellis, answers popular questions about memory, from how sleep, stress, emotion, and attention influence memory to ways techniques like the memory palace, mnemonics, and the PAO system can dramatically improve recall.

See how computer memory really works—from binary bits to modern RAM

The video explains how computers store information as 1s and 0s, how RAM functions as fast working memory, and why systems utilize different types of storage. The video demonstrates how this process enables computers to operate.

Eliminating distractions is essential to improving one's attention span

Setting a baseline, removing distractions, establishing focus rituals, taking breaks, and finding purpose in your task are five science-backed practices that can help address a short attention span. Bestselling author Daniel Pink breaks down how to approach each part of the plan and introduce these habits to your life today.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

When to see a doctor over memory lapses

Memory includes various, distinct functions, like working memory (storing information temporarily) and procedural memory (your body's ability to perform a task unconsciously). Forgetting a word or losing your keys can feel like red flag memory lapses, but they are, in fact, language or attention problems, not memory ones. However, a lapse on top of stress, lack of sleep, chronic dysfunction, or an injury may be a red flag to see your doctor.

How does muscle memory work?

Muscle memory is less about remembering how to ride a bike and more about what's happening in muscle cells. Increasing the cells' size, say by working out, leads to an increase in nuclei, which increases the production of mitochondria. When your fitness regimen falls to the wayside and you decide to re-enter the gym, these gains-based nuclei are already present to quicken muscle cells' adaptation to exercise.

The human brain only uses 5% more energy during active tasks versus resting

Despite only being 2% of the weight of a human body, the average adult brain consumes 20% of its energy, with the majority of it spent on maintaining homeostasis—the stable equilibrium conditions of temperature, acidity, blood sugar, and other properties in the body. For infants, the consumption is closer to 50%.

Roughly one in every 250 has never remembered a single dream

Most people dream for about two hours every night and recall about two dreams per week, and memory encoding is especially fragile upon waking. Alarms can knock dreams right out of one's head, and dream recall may be influenced by personality, interest, and socialization.

The doorway effect is when people forget their task when entering a new space

The "why did I come in here?" feeling after walking into a room comes from the brain creating event boundaries to organize memories. Mentally revisiting a previous room can help recall tasks and reverse memory loss. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Blindfolded people could identify objects by touch alone a week after encountering them

These touch memories are more complex and durable than previously thought. In research published in 2018, blindfolded volunteers touched over 150 household objects for about 10 seconds each, and afterward correctly identified the objects more than 90 percent of the time when presented with the object and a similar one. Participants still knew most of the objects a week later with about 85 percent accuracy. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

How do brain scans work?

There’s only one thing in our solar system sophisticated enough to study itself: the human brain. But this self-investigation is challenging because a living brain is shielded by skull, swaddled in tissue, and made up of billions of tiny cells. How do we study living brains without harming their owners? Two experts explain how the various techniques like EEGs, fMRIs, and PETs work in this TedEd talk.

Understanding the stages of sleep

Do you have trouble keeping the different stages of sleep straight and organized in your mind? Us too. Sometimes it helps to have a straightforward listing of what each stage is and why it’s important. Look no further than this resource from Lumen. It is a basic outline of the four stages of the sleep cycle, along with the brainwaves and attributes that characterize each. If you’re brave enough, test yourself on the built-in quiz!

How the brain processes a calendar year

When most of us picture a calendar year, we have a foggy image in our minds of the months, in rough, calendar-like grids. But for some folks, that picture is a whole lot more clear. Around 1 percent of the population has a strange ability known as "calendar synaesthesia," which means they're able to visualize in crisp detail an elaborate calendar of the months of the year. Learn how it works here.

To get that song out of your head, try distracting yourself or playing a new song

Around 90% of people experience getting a snippet of a song stuck in their head, also known as an earworm. Researchers think they are linked to memory, repetition, and inner rehearsal. Before written language, music was used alongside rhyming in many cultures to help people preserve oral histories.

Take a quiz to discover your brain care score

Each year, nearly 800,000 Americans have a stroke. With such a high occurrence rate, you may be asking yourself what you could do now to prevent a future stroke. Researchers at Harvard collaborated to answer this question by coming up with a "Brain Care" scoring system. Take the quiz to learn the quality of your brain health today and pick up helpful insights to lower your risk of stroke and dementia well into the future.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Studies show AI tools can result in passive learning with less retention

Although ChatGPT, Google's AI overviews, and other similar software can save time, a study of more than 10,000 adults showed that reliance on them yielded work products that were more generic and included fewer facts than those produced solely by Google search. Weaker brain connectivity has also been observed when users write using AI.

Humans may be able to distinguish more than one trillion scents

That's according to one estimate published in 2014. This figure far exceeds earlier estimates of a human smelling ceiling around 10,000 odors. The newer figure is derived from experiments in which volunteers agreed to sniff varying scents. Researchers mixed odor components and had volunteers sniff the brews to detect subtle scent differences. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

How big brands keep your loyalty

We perceive ourselves as rational decision-makers—but research about our consumption habits suggest we are easily played by clever marketing. Here's how big brands design their branding to keep you coming back.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

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