Memory Skills

Of course you won't rememer this now, but one of your memory's first achievements was the look of recognition which you gave your mother when you were just a few months old. There are a number of people, like the Spanish painter, Salvador Dali, who claim that they can remember life before they were born.

Sometimes when people are questioned under hypnosis they can also remember life in the womb. Hypnosis is a special way of relaxing the brain so people can remember from deeper parts of their mind.

The brain has very complicated memory skills. Remembering faces seems very easy, but think about how different the same face can look when seen from a particular angle, in different light or simply after a sleepless night.

For many years people have tried a program a computer to recognise faces, a simple skill a small child has already mastered, but the machine is far less successful.

Memory is not just used to store information. Intelligence and memory are closely linked, and therefore the invention of writing and later of printing, memory was extremely valuable. If someone forgot something important, it could not be looked up anywhere.