If, like me, you're one of those people who can recite lengthy poems and prose passages from memory-- thanks to the rigors of an unreconstructed education--rejoice! A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth, and the key is carefully trained memory.

According to the study, published recently in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, improvement in groups with trained memories was substantially greater than among control groups. Moreover, the longer participants trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement. Here's the abstract:

Fluid intelligence (Gf) refers to the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge. Gf is critical for a wide variety of cognitive tasks, and it is considered one of the most important factors in learning. Moreover, Gf is closely related to professional and educational success, especially in complex and demanding environments. Although performance on tests of Gf can be improved through direct practice on the tests themselves, there is no evidence that training on any other regimen yields increased Gf in adults. Furthermore, there is a long history of research into cognitive training showing that, although performance on trained tasks can increase dramatically, transfer of this learning to other tasks remains poor. Here, we present evidence for transfer from training on a demanding working memory task to measures of Gf. This transfer results even though the trained task is entirely different from the intelligence test itself. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the extent of gain in intelligence critically depends on the amount of training: the more training, the more improvement in Gf. That is, the training effect is dosage-dependent. Thus, in contrast to many previous studies, we conclude that it is possible to improve Gf without practicing the testing tasks themselves, opening a wide range of applications.

emorization, once derided by feel-good educators as a relic of old drill and kill pedagogy, is making something of a comeback with the laptop 'n latte set. The current edition of Wired has a lead feature on Piotr Wozniak, who's developed a highly successful software program, SuperMemo, based on an algorithm that predicts how best to seal information into memory: according to Wired, "there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget."

Among my own favorite memory websites is Tjebbe van Tijen's Imaginary Museum; then there's horrible Hannibal Lecter (lector?) in the Thomas Harris novels who gives Ars Memoria and reading rather a bad name.