Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

rdanfort's picture

Other senses?

We talked briefly about having "perfect pitch" as an apparent eidetic memory phenomenon, can something similar be said of touch?  I wouldn't ask about smell, conventional wisdom strongly associates smell wtih memory already, but as I write this I also realize that recall of smells is different from recalling memory based on a smell.  So, perhapsi it is also reasonable to ask if there are people with a grasp of touch or smell analogous to perfect pitch or photographic memory.

I could think of a reason why not - we talked about the loss of eidetic memory as part of a process of maturing and interpreting sensory data differently.  Touch and/or smell might be present in a typical person's life in such a way that there is no tendency to recall detail in the way that one might for vision or sound.  It's very difficult, as a sighted and hearing person, to go about thinking of the differences in attention and use between those senses and touch, smell, etc.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
9 + 2 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.