Unprecedented insight into a memory champion’s brain reveals his tricks

Nelson Delis Is a six-time American memory champion, who once memorized a sequence of cards in 40.7 seconds and knew the first 10,000 digits of pi. Now, scientists have studied their brains in unprecedented detail, revealing how they achieved such feats and how we can acquire some of the same skills.

Delis claims his memory was average until about age 25, when his grandmother’s decline from Alzheimer’s disease prompted him to begin memory training for hours every day, including memorizing numbers, names, and words. “I still train my memory regularly,” he says. “It’s like a muscle; if you don’t use it, it fades away.”

While memory impairment – ​​such as occurs with dementia – has been widely studied, less is known about people with extraordinary memory. To address this gap, researchers – including scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri – have turned to Delis.

Delis underwent large-scale scanning of his brain for approximately 13 hours in 2015 and 2021 while at rest and his memory was tested. In one test, Delis was asked to repeatedly recall a set of four to seven words, with each word flashing on a screen for just over 1 second. They were asked to use cramming techniques, which involves repeating things over and over to remember them.

“You’re lying in a scanner and trying to remember things, which isn’t exactly how I usually train, but it was really cool to be a part of something that’s trying to bridge the gap between what memory athletes do and what science can measure,” says Dellis. Their brain activity was then compared with the brain activity of two scientists who served as controls and were assumed to have very good – but not exceptional – memories.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have now analyzed this data, and found that Delis and controls had similar brain activity during the task. In all three individuals, electrical signaling increased in their retrosplenial, extrastriate visual and dorsal frontal cortices, which are associated with navigation, visual information and working memory, respectively. But Delius does not generally use rote memorization. “Memorization is a terrible way to remember, but it’s the only way most people know how to do it,” he says.

To take things further, another task – performed only by Delius – involved remembering the order of a shuffled deck of cards while scanning his brain. This time, Delius employed the method of loci, also known as the memory palace. This involves associating information with specific locations, such as within your home, and then mentally walking through it in order to recall the information. “That simple shift from the abstract to the visual is the foundation of almost every memory technique I use,” says Delis.

This increased activity in the same three cortices, but changed activity in their hippocampus, a curved structure deep in the brain that is important for memory. In the first task, their hippocampal activity was greater during encoding – the process of taking in new information and connecting it to existing knowledge – than during recall. But this was reversed in the second task, which also activated the caudate nuclei of Delis – C-shaped structures involved not only in memory, but also learning. The researchers, who declined to be interviewed, speculated that the involvement of the caudate nucleus makes memory a “consolidated skill”.

Finally, they compared Delis’s brain activity to that of 887 participants in the Human Connectome Project. The team found that the memory champions had much higher functional connectivity, which explains how different brain regions coordinate their activity, indicating that these regions are working together efficiently.

Delius and others think that Loki’s method should be more widely used. “Given the very clear behavioral benefits, it is somewhat surprising that techniques like the method of loci are not more widely used in educational and clinical settings,” says martin dressler At Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

Dressler says this technique may be particularly effective because It uses our developed powers. “The reason the method of loci works so well is probably because it translates abstract information into visual-spatial information,” he says. “Our brains haven’t evolved to remember something abstract like numbers or playing cards or dates or even language, but we’ve evolved to find our way through nature to the next food source and know where to avoid predators. So we’re very good at visual-spatial settings and finding our way through nature, and the method of loci does exactly that.”

But craig stark The University of California, Irvine says it is unclear to what extent other people can use this technique to reach Delius’ level of extraordinary memory. “We don’t have a good handle on which aspects are derived from training and which are just hers. They’re not looking at training (effects) or strength. They’re looking at that.”

If memory training seems too intense to incorporate into your daily routine, Delis also attributes his skills to a healthy lifestyle. exercising regularly. “For better everyday memory, do what your mom told you — pay attention, eat well, sleep well, and exercise,” he adds. Morris Moscovitch At the University of Toronto in Canada.