The contestants as well as a set of control participants were placed inside an MRI scanner and instructed to complete a series of memory tasks simultaneously their brains were just being scanned. The gap between both the memory challengers as well as the control individuals was enormous when it comes to memorising three-digit numeric codes. The champions, on the other hand, performed no better than the traditional when shown photos of enlarged snowflakes, which they would have never attempted to remember before.
Whenever the researchers reviewed the brain scans, they discovered that the memory champions were engaging different brain regions than the control participants. Visual memory, as well as spatial navigation, are believed to be engaged in these areas, which include the right posterior hippocampus.
It may seem strange that the memory competition would employ visual images and spatial navigation to recall numbers, however, once their methods are explained, the activity makes sense. Ed Cooke took me to the Lamb and Flag, a legendary five-century-old tavern where he spent many evenings as an Oxford undergraduate, the night before the World Memory Championships.
Cooke is a tremendous master of brain storage, a 23-year-old cognitive-science PhD student with such a shoulder-length mop of curly hair. In less than one hour, he can memorise the sequence of ten decks of playing cards or one deck in less than one minute. He’s getting close to the 30-second deck.
Cooke took a deck of cards from the Lamb and Flag as well as shuffled it. The 7 of spades, the queen of clubs, as well as the 10 of spades were the three cards he held up. “Destiny’s Child is whacking Franz Schubert with handbags,” he remarked, pointing to a fireplace. The king of hearts, the king of spades, as well as the jack of clubs, were always the following three cards.
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