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Augmenting Long-term Memory

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One day in the mid-1920s, a Moscow newspaper reporter named Solomon Shereshevsky entered the laboratory of the psychologist Alexander Luria. Shereshevsky's boss at the newspaper had noticed that Shereshevsky never needed to take any notes, but somehow still remembered all he was told, and had suggested he get his memory checked by an expert. Luria began testing Shereshevsky's memory. He began with simple tests, short strings of words and of numbers. Shereshevsky remembered these with ease, and so Luria gradually increased the length of the strings. But no matter how long they got, Shereshevsky could recite them back. Fascinated, Luria went on to study Shereshevsky's memory for the next 30 years. In a book summing up his research ("The Mind of a Mnemonist", 1968), Luria reported that: Such stories are fascinating. Memory is fundamental to our thinking, and the notion of having a perfect memory is seductive. At the same time, many people feel ambivalent about their own memory. I've often

One day in the mid-1920s, a Moscow newspaper reporter named Solomon Shereshevsky entered the laboratory of the psychologist Alexander Luria. Shereshevsky's boss at the newspaper had noticed that Shereshevsky never needed to take any notes, but somehow still remembered all he was told, and had suggested he get his memory checked by an expert. Luria began testing Shereshevsky's memory. He began with simple tests, short strings of words and of numbers. Shereshevsky remembered these with ease, and so Luria gradually increased the length of the strings. But no matter how long they got,…

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