For those who have not heard about the incredible feats of mnemonists, this book will impart a new perspective on the human brain and how it functions. If techniques such as the mind palace and the Major System are not new, the most you will get is some interesting history of memorising and a cliche Karate Kid story of a novice quickly accelerating to triumph over the professionals. To the credit of the author, the book is weaved with scientific references supporting the statistics and stories accompanying the dialogue. But, there are probably more appropriate books one could read to learn about these exact scientific cases but from the more insightful perspective of a neuroscientist ¹. There are some proverbial moments to be garnered from the book and overall the story stands as a monument to the powers one can achieve through hard, disciplined work. Joshua Foer provides some insightful lessons on how to become an expert in a task. The most impactful lesson was how to overcome the “OK Plateau”; a hypothetical plateau which everyone reaches after a long enough period of learning a task. Eventually your brain ceases cognitive concious control of the task to your subconcious control system. At this point, improvement stops. The adage that 10,000 hours breeds success is deceitful - 10,000 hours of failure, hardship, and corrections breeds success. Overcoming this plateau requires using concious effort to push yourself beyond what you can do. Pick the weak parts in your guitar playing, type faster on the keyboard, or read a page faster. “Put yourself in the mind of someone far more competent at the task you’re trying to master, and try to figure out ow that person works through problems.” What is most important is that this is not sustainable unless a feedback loop is given to your brain, showing that the hard work has resulted in improvement. Incredibly, the brain self-corrects and manages to adapt to the fast typing speed, or whatever the plateau-pushing task is.

A few quotes from the book resonated with me, and I will reproduce them here, elaborating on their meaning.

“Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.” (p. 209) This piece recalled in me a theory I had once read about how memories form like crystals. When water is turning to ice, imperfections in the water such as the presence of particulates, gives the cold water molecules something to latch onto. Once this process begins, an entire structure builds around the particle and hence we get beautiful structures like a snowflake. The imperfection in our memories is some a priori idea or concept in which new concepts swirling in the brain collide with and latch onto. As this memory structure expands, a web of knowledge is formed. In this theory of mind, memorising is binding knowledge to this crystal web. The source of this theory escapes me, but should I encounter it again, I will provide it in this piece. Until then, take this description more as fantastical.

“Without time, there would be no need for memory. But without a memory, would there be such a thing as time?” (p. 75) As I am currently learning about the theory of relativity, I found this quote quite relevant. We take time for granted. Our existence in our dark skulls is a feeble attempt at a hallucination of what is happening around us. In moments of extreme danger, time seems to slow down because our brain processes every frame meticulously so that we can make a quick decision to save our lives. Inversely, “monotony collapses time” (p. 76) and as our days become repetitive, time seems to meld into a single indistinguishable event. It is clear we are victims to our brains biology and memories are key to our perceptions of time. To us, time has no origin, but is relative to other time points we have remembered. We know our age because it is the distance in time our memory - or arguably other’s memory - of our birth is from what we are currently experiencing. The day has passed because you recall waking up this morning, getting out of bed, and seeing the sun in the sky, and now the sun has set. Joshua Foer makes us see that time is very much a bi-product of intelligence.

Savants usually have problems with the left hemisphere of their brain. The right hemisphere is more prominent. (not a quote, but a summary of a section) This seques nicely from my recent reading of the book Elastic by Leonard Mlodinow. The gist of the book is how the right hemisphere or our brains is a strange, suppressed creature with incredible capabilities. Unlike our logical left, the right makes us creative and think abstract thoughts. To able to see objects like a chair not for what they are (a four legs and a base), but for what else it could be (three legs? an inclined surface? two legs?). What is colloquially called thinking outside the box. The reason we do not have access to this power is because of the anterior cingulate cortex or ACC, which moniregionsstors our two brain hemispheres and adjusts the strength to which each hemisphere can contribute. Fascinatingly, when struggling with a solution to a problem, the ACC will shut down the visual input to your right hemisphere to allow it to generate new ideas. It is interesting that savants, who lack a memorisation filter, should have such strong right hemispheres. Future work in this field will be insightful.

Overall, the book did not withhold on entertainment and Joshua’s journalistic-style writing of capturing your attention is done well. Read it if you have not treated yourself to much neuroscience readings and you are fascinated about the mind. But to satisfy a hungry appetite for brain science I recommend looking elsewhere.

1: For those interested in books of a similar ilk, take a look at The Other Brain by R. Douglas Fields, In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel, or Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. There are certainly many others, but these are merely the ones I am familiar with.

The graphic at the top of this post: “The Book Moonwalking With Einstein By Joshua Foer” via VQGAN+CLIP.