3 Quick Facts About Our Ability to Remember

Many of us can easily recount events and conversations from several decades ago in great detail. At the same time, it can be hard to remember what we had for breakfast yesterday or where we put the car keys. In short, our ability to form and keep new memories is both fascinating and puzzling. Here are 3 “memory facts” worth committing to memory.

1. Our first memories form before we turn 3

Most people name something that happened when they were three or four years old as their first memory. But new research shows that most people, if given enough time to think, can actually remember events from as early as around two and a half years old. That’s the finding of a new study in the scientific journal Memory. The researchers behind the study explain that we often have earlier memories than we think because it’s possible, so to speak, to “forget” memories we once had. This is called childhood amnesia, and it’s very common. So with the right kind of effort, many people can learn to recover these memories and remember things from further back in time.

Further reading: What is your earliest memory? It depends (Memory 2021) Earliest memories can start from the age of two-and-a-half (Science Daily) Childhood amnesia kicks in around age 7 (The British Psychological Society)

2. It’s possible to lose the ability to form new memories

Many of us can be forgetful or absent-minded from time to time, especially as we get older. A more serious form of “forgetfulness” is anterograde amnesia, which means that from a certain point or event onward, you stop remembering anything that happens. The condition occurs in people who have misused alcohol or certain drugs (for example, benzodiazepines such as Rohypnol). In those cases, it’s usually temporary.

A much rarer form of anterograde amnesia is the more or less permanent kind, where the ability to form new memories is lost entirely. One such case is described in the classic 1985 essay collection The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The author, neurologist Oliver Sacks, describes a patient with Korsakoff’s syndrome, a type of dementia caused by a lack of vitamin B1. The patient can’t remember anything that has happened since the end of the Second World War. Several decades later, he still believes the year is 1945.

3. The most digits of pi

In school, we learn that the number pi (π) is roughly equal to 3.14 and represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Precise calculations naturally need more decimal places than that. So that they don’t have to memorize long strings of digits, engineers and mathematicians use computer programs and calculators that have pi’s decimal values built in.

Even so, there are competitions to see who can memorize the most digits of pi. Who holds the current record is disputed, but the question tends to come up on International Pi Day, March 14 (a date written as 3.14). Several people have reportedly recited tens of thousands of digits from memory, and Suresh Kumar Sharma from India is said to be a strong contender. In 2015, he reportedly recited more than 70,000 digits from memory, a feat that took 17 hours. Talk about a good memory for numbers!