science

From The Archives: The Art of Memory @ AMSA 2018

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The Q&A following my talk at AMSA 2018

Late last year I had the privilege of delivering a plenary talk to the 1000 or so attendees of the AMSA National Convention.

From the techniques of modern memory athletes, to the painted mnemonic walls of Campanella’s fictional ‘Città del Sole’, to the encyclopedic memories and mnemonic systems of indigenous cultures around the world, we managed to cover a lot of ground in 20 minutes. I even had time to teach them some mnemonics to remember some bits of the brain! There was also a Q&A at the end.

There is lots of content that I haven’t covered here on the blog before so I thought I’d share. The full talk can be viewed below.

Smart drugs I The Feed Forum feat. Daniel Kilov

Should we take a drug that improves our memory, makes us more alert, or actually smarter? Australian researchers are trying to find out just how many students and workers are using prescription ADHD pills, sleep drugs and beta blockers for purposes other than prescribed.

Meet a young professional who faked ADHD symptoms to get a Ritalin prescription (and, she says, two promotions), a philosopher who once took narcolepsy drugs, a former Mr Universe who admits to steroid use, and a “mental athlete” who hated the ADD prescription he was forced to take as a teen but now sees enormous potential in the drugs.