Thus Have We Heard

LiveScience just published a very fascinating article about the extent of human memory. It seems that people can remember much more for far longer than was previously thought. The article begins by saying:

If human memory were truly digital, it would have just received an upgrade from something like the capacity of a floppy disk to that of a flash drive. A new study found the brain can remember a lot more than previously believed.

In a recent experiment, people who viewed pictures of thousands of objects over five hours were able to remember astonishing details afterward about most of the objects.

Though previous studies have never measured such astounding feats of memory, it may be simply because no one really tried.

"People had never tested whether people could remember this much detail about this many objects," said researcher Timothy Brady, a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT. "Nobody actually pushed it this far."

When they did push the human brain to its limits, the scientists found that under the right circumstances, it can store minute visual details far beyond what had been imagined.

Seems like Ānanda was on to something...