Monday, January 31, 2005

Remember anything?

I always had a knack for forgetting stuff. Classically I can be holding a lot of stuff and then put my keys in my right pocket(its usually on the left), and 5 minutes later, spend another half an hour looking for my 'missing' keys.

Most of you might know that I have little or no recollection of much of my childhood stories. Its mostly a smattering of memories, but that is about it. I don't remember names, I hardly remember faces. I just remember the strangest things...like something someone said, or something someone did. I have excellent recent-event memory, perhaps things from 3 years ago. Which is interesting because it becomes relevant most of the times.

Today I did an interesting Face memory test which can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/tmt/, what this test does is they will show you 24 photos in 2 sets, these are photos of people, and then in the last set they will show you 48 photos, some are in the earlier sets, some aren't, and you have to remember from which set the face appeared in. Its fairly simple, and my results were quite surprising.

My recognition score was 100% (avg: 92%), and Temporal memory score was 91%(avg:68%). What I didn't remember correctly was just 2 faces in the wrong sets, that was all. Which meant that I actually remembered if I saw a face, and if I didn't see a face.

So I do remember stuff, I just need to put in a little more effort I guess. Which probably explains why sometimes I remember every single detail and sometimes I don't even remember if I'd been someplace at all. Another explanation is that my memory loss could be alcohol induced, in which case...I don't think its a bad thing after all since its not a physical defect on my part, its just substance abuse. Yay!