Page 14 - Use Your Memory

Introduction

Like so many children, as a youth I was mystified by this wonder-
ful and exasperating thing called memory. In casual and relaxed
situations it worked so smoothly that I hardly ever noticed it; in
examinations it only occasionally performed well, to my surprise,
but was more often associated with 'bad memory', the fearful area
of forgetting. Since I spent much of my childhood in the country
with animals, I began to realise that the misnamed 'dumb' crea-
tures seemed to have extraordinary memories, often superior to
my own. Why, then, was human memory apparently so faulty?
I began to study in earnest, eagerly devouring information about
how the early Greeks had devised specific memory systems for
various tasks; and how, later, the Romans applied these techniques to
enable themselves to remember whole books of mythology and to
impress their audiences during senatorial speeches and debates. My
interest became more focused while I was in college, when the
realisation slowly dawned on me that such basic systems need not be
used only for 'rote' or parrotlike memory, but could be used as
gigantic filing systems for the mind, enabling extraordinarily fast and
efficient access, and enormously enhancing general understanding. I
applied the techniques in taking examinations, in playing games with
my imagination in order to improve my memory, and in helping other
students, who were supposedly on the road to academic failure,
achieve first-class successes.
The explosion of brain research during the last decade has
confirmed what the memory theorists, gamesters, mnemonic
technicians and magicians have always known: that the holding
capacity of our brains and the ability to recall what is stored there
are far and deliciously beyond normal expectations.
Use Your Memory, a major new development from the memory
sections of Use Your Head, is an initial tour through what should
have been included as first among the seven wonders of the world:
the 'hanging gardens' of limitless memory and imagination.
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