Today I have been reading up for some memory training. I was just reading in my kindle the book "Moon walking with Eisenstein", and I must say, it is uber interesting. This book is about a man (Josh Foer), a journalist, who journeys into the world of memory athletes and the memory championships. He gets coached by one of the leading "masters of memory", while studying it through visits to scientists who study memory and isolated cases.

Some of my favorite take aways so far have been in the chapter called "The men with the worst memory".  In this chapter some very interesting study of human nature and memory are dropped. Among them being the study of a man who isolated himself to a cave for 2 months with no clocks, sun, talking to other people or anything that would indicate the time. Sometimes he would stay awake for 36 hours, sometimes he would sleep every few hours. Time slowed and blended together. He only had but a few things to do-so in time he couldn't tell the days apart. He could simply not remember what he did the day before. When his team retrieved him at the appointed time, in his journal it seemed that only a month had passed.

This lead to a more interesting somewhat philosophical question of what is better: living a seemingly slow life as if you had a lot of time-or create lots of memories and new experiences that upon recalling, which seems to show a much "longer" life. One such example was when doctors were posed the question in the 50's of, "does the anesthesia really make patients go to sleep, or just freeze their muscles and then make them forget about the surgery afterward?"Then the question, "does the memory not remembered really even matter or count?" Worth thought and consideration in life. If this rule is true, than one could live many years yet a very short and blended life with bland repeated experiences.

I also found interesting the look into expertise. How do master chess players come into existence? Believe it or not it is not that the cognitive-game known as chess requires one to be a genius. Interestingly, a lot of it has to do with memory. Let me try to illustrate. Do you know a professional or elite of some skill? Have you ever asked them how they do something in their area of expertise, and they can't really tell ya? They seem to just "know"? Well most will agree that countless hours of practice are vital to becoming an expert. The reason is, is the situations become relatable. A expert looks at something and it is not some big show of strategy, his mind recalls similar games played and the right move just becomes obvious, this is done in the frontal cortical of the brain: long term memory. Amateurs use the mid cortical, as if looking at new information. When we hear of a "genius" in the teens for say, guitar or bowling we assume they started off above average. Often the case is that they already have their 10,000 hours of experience build up from a young age, sometimes ages 6 or younger. They probably started out no better, maybe even a little worse, than the man who starts the same hobby in his later teens or 20's.