Extreme Memory

"You have to begin to lose your memory, of only in bits and  pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives, life without memory is no life at all...our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action, without it, we are nothing..."

____Luis Bunel

What would life be like if you couldn't remember your past or imagine your future?  Clive Wearing is one of the most famous case studies in the field of memory.  He suffered an illness as an adult that destroyed  parts of his brain necessary for processing and storing memories.  

On the opposite end of the spectrum, can you imagine what your life would be like if you could never forget anything that you experienced?  Jill Price can tell you. 

Reflect on the opening quote, and discuss how the two extremes of memory discussed here give insight into how our memories are integral to our sense of self.  Be sure to address both the problems of no memory, and too much memory.

Visual illusions

Here is an interesting visual illusion. Hold your head steady and fix your eyes on the dot in the center of the picture. The colored dots will seem to disappear in a few seconds. The effect is due to retinal fatigue which occurs when the afterimage of an object cancels the stimulus of the object on the retina. The effect is most pronounced when the objects do not have well-defined edges that are detectable by small eye movements. See more interesting visual illusions here: Scientific psychic