Our Perfect Memory

Many of us wish we had perfect memory. Here, we'll talk about where it comes from and how we can help our children develop it, the accelerated learning way!

There are many methods in the marketplace for finding this "holy grail." Also known as "photographic memory", it's one of the senses of our right brain. Let's see if the following clues move us closer to our the prize.

Instant News Flash!

Children already have perfect memory! Did I write that correctly? Let me explain.... Experts in brain development tell us our brain is like a camera and, through right brain function, we are continually recording everything we see, hear, smell, taste and touch - as images. It's the right brain's mass-memory, automatic processing capability that allows our brain to file, organize and store all these memory images instantly. Pretty neat!

But, the fact that our memory has this capacity doesn't mean we can bring any memory we choose to our outer awareness at will. That's because, as mentioned earlier, our left brain processes conscious memories and our right brain processes subconscious memories. And, according to science, the lion's share of our memory is stored at subconscious levels, which is not so easily moved to our left brain's conscious awareness unless we have the right pathways developed between these two hemispheres (in others words, a super-highway for perfect memory!)

The Rise of the Synapses

So, to find our "grail", we need to learn a few unique accelerated learning methods which can strengthen the pathways between the right (subconscious) brain to the left (conscious) brain. The connections that make it happen are called "synapses." And, the more synapses we have and the stronger those connections are, the more conscious memory we can produce and the faster we can bring those memories forward as useful information.

We've heard that musical greats like Wagner were almost tormented by the music they heard flowing through their minds to such a degree that they could scarcely write it down fast enough! Have you ever had a brilliant idea come to you so fast that you couldn't write down in time? We all get a flash of genius from time to time - great ideas that come to our awareness then seem to fade back into the mist. Creating more connections between the conscious left brain and massive perfect memory capacity of the right brain can make these flashes of genius more dynamic and useful in our daily lives - especially when it comes to cognitive learning.

With very young children, creating these connections isn't a problem. Between the ages of about 0-6, it's estimated that children have about 10 quadrillion synapses. This number declines with age simply due to lack of use (what we don't use, we loose). Estimates vary but, as adults, we may have anywhere from 1 - 5 quadrillion synapses (roughly half those of a child). How our brain connections were wired when young depended on how we were or weren't stimulated in our early years.

Anyone Can Build a Perfect Memory Super-Highway

So, if your memory isn't what it used to be, take heart. Recent research found that our brain never stops growing and learning. In fact, at any age we can develop a super-highway of pathways between our right brain left brain functions giving us greater insight, creativity, concentration and memory, faster thought processes and a lot more. Thankfully, we have great right and left brain accelerated learning methods on this site for young children (they work for adults too!) And, they're designed just for this right brain left brain super-highway perfect memory construction. (See at right for a great accelerated learning games CD for children for building that super-highway: Memory Magic!

What is Photographic Memory?

As mentioned earlier, the right brain is referred to as the "image brain". It stores everything as images. To our right brain, all thoughts, feelings, etc. are images. When we start developing right brain function more and more, we'll find many memories appearing in our mind as images that our left brain can interpret and put into an understandable logical sequence for our outer conscious mind to understand. This is really what perfect memory, or photographic memory is.

The Power of the Right Brain Mind in Action

To illustrate the power of the "image brain", let me tell you a true story told to me by a mother who attended an elementary school fair with her young daughter (Note: this story comes from a teacher trainer in the Montessori Method and has been using the same types of accelerated learning methods available on this site with her daughter):

"At her yearly elementary school fair, Lisa and I walked up to a table that had a jar filled with jelly beans. 'To win the prize', the person at the booth said, 'you need to guess closest to the number of jelly beans that are in the jar.' Lisa paused for a moment and then wrote down a number. Later, when time came to announce the winner, Lisa had won! In fact, to everyone's amazement, she was only one jelly bean off the exact number in the jar. I asked her how she did it. 'It was easy,' she said. 'I saw a funnel in my mind with the beans pouring through. When they plopped out one by one, a little counter counted them. When the last one came through, I just wrote down the number I saw on the counter.'" This whole process happened in microseconds. So, we can see that, when our right brain instant memory is properly wired with our left brain outer awareness, miracles can happen!

The Role Our Environment Plays in Brain Development

As you may have guessed, training young children in ways that strengthens the right left brain pathways is very easy because they have many quadrillions of synapses to work with and few "logical" left brain functions getting in the way. Maria Montessori, one of the greatest educators of our time, said children have an "absorbent mind"; they literally soak in, like a sponge, everything around them. She even wrote an entire book on this topic.

So, what we allow our young children to be exposed to at home and in the world plays a large role in how many pathways are formed between the right brain's vast potential and the left brain's logic-based functions, which is how accelerated learning can take place. More importantly, all sense stimulations, both bad and good, are stored in the subconscious and play a role in how brain connections are made. Remember, the right brain learns best in a relaxed, harmonious environment. Click here to see a chart comparing our various right and left brain functions.

So, as long as I mentioned environment, let's ask ourselves these questions: Is our home environment loving and free from discordant sounds, visual, tactile, aromatic stimulation? Do we know what types of stimulation can have negative effects on children? How about placing our young children in front of violent movies as opposed to, say, pure unaltered beautiful scenes of nature? Which of those would be more calming and conducive to learning and building strong positive memory links between the right and left brain? Which types of stimulation are best for growing brain pathways and which closes them down?

We answer these questions in this section.

In Conclusion...

So, in concluding this section on Perfect Memory: It's most important to start young children with proper types of right and left brain stimulation and if you're not so young, use the accelerated learning methods on this site to build that super-highway to perfect memory again. The "grail" is still within your reach!

Explore your other right brain senses:

Perfect Memory • Rapid Math Calculation • Language Acquisition
Perfect Pitch (Musical Aptitude) • Subconscious Intuition • Back to Intro

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