Corner

•A human’s attention span is about 20 minutes. In the past decade, the average attention span has decreased by 12 minutes due to technology and a faster-paced lifestyle.

•An adult’s short-term memory can hold about seven pieces of information at the same time, but only for about 20 seconds.

•Left-handed people tend to have better memories than right-handed people.

•About 60% of an older adult’s memories are from when the person was between the ages of 15-25 years old.

•Scientists have found that beta-blocker medications can block and sometimes even erase negative memories.

•Despite the old adage that, “An elephant never forgets,” dolphins have the longest memories in the animal kingdom next to humans. Bottlenose dolphins can remember whistles of other dolphins, even after 20 years of separation.

•Ingesting alcohol disrupts the ability to form new long-term memories.

•In 1985, an English musician suffered a brain infection that rendered him unable to form new memories. It also destroyed most of his old memories, too. He has a memory span of only seconds.

•Scientists consider smell to be the strongest and fastest memory inducer. Smell bypasses the thalamus and goes directly to the olfactory bulb, which is connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, the primary memory-making parts of the brain.

•Hyperthymesia is the ability to remember almost every event of a person’s life with nearly perfect precision. As of 2021, only 61 people worldwide have been diagnosed with hyperthymesia.