Your Perception Can Help Or Deceive Your Memory

Our perception of things depends on our experiences.  If we have not already stored something in our memory, the brain might store some new information in the wrong way; sometimes deceiving us.

Has this ever happened to you” You are waiting at a bus stop, you look around and someone has caught your attention.  You do a double take – you know this face from somewhere.  You realize that this man looks like an old high school buddy from many years ago.  You’re unsure, because you’ve just moved into this area and your old school is hundreds of miles away. You decide to walk up to the person.  Half way, he turns around looks at you for 2 seconds and checks his watch.  Then he flags down a cab and rides off without looking in your direction again.    No, this cannot be your old friend, definitely not.  Time and time again, we encounter a situation where the brain plays tricks on us, simply because our grey cells respond automatically to experiences and expectations.  For example, if you never expect to meet your old friend at a bus stop, you will find another more appropriate explanation for what you have seen.  Such interpretations often lead us into traps, tricking or fooling our sense of perception. 

We all know about mirages; It’s an optical illusion, which can lure those lost in the deserted and badly dehydrated, to their doom.  Mirages seem like vast expenses of water like a lake or they make remote parts of a landscape seem much closer than they really are.  You might see mirages appear on the highway, making us think that the road ahead is flooded with water.  Such sightings can be explained through references to conditions in the atmosphere.

The brain has an innate ability to make sense of what the other senses perceives. Even though the information may be incomplete.  This can be the basis of a good memory recall. But how do we use this ability of the brain to form other meaningful associations.  Memory experts and mentalists have long used such abilities to achieve astonishing mental feats.  Like memorizing a long chain of numbers, a long list of items.  More pragmatic users have used this ability of the brain to memorize complicated mathematical formulas, scientific equations, memorized biblical verses, learn a foreign language or even teach young children the multiplication tables.   It’s about turning something abstract like numbers or a foreign word into more meaningful pictures or stories that helps the human mind achieve phenomenal feats of memory.

Have trouble remembering faces and names?  Let your senses do the work to improve your memory and recall.  Take a close look at the person you are introduced to and without staring, see if you can find any distinguishing feature like color of hair, eyes or shape of nose.  What about the clothes or jewellery they are wearing.  A quick sweep of the eyes will transfer most of your observation into your brain to be processed.   Then associate these observations with the person’s name.  By making an interesting picture or story you find you can remember your new friend or colleague better.  Use your perception wisely, it is the basis of a strong dependable memory.