Proving precognition, programming a screenwriter, and other tales from the field. Scientists share their favorite stories.

Pedro_P

Memory athlete to memory expert.
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"Anyone can learn to improve their memory, but it’s not like they’ll remember everything."
Peter Oumanski
↑Boris Nikolai Konrad, guest researcher at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University, Netherlands
Istarted training my memory to help with college exams. A few years later, in 2003, I became a memory athlete. During one type of event, you stare at a list of digits for an hour, then over the next two hours, you write down every one you can recall, in order. Most pros turn digits into a mental image—a 3 might become a billboard—then stick it in a known location, a method known as a Memory Palace. You might start out with only a few familiar sites, but you can gather more. I have about 80 palaces with 50 locations in each; when I go someplace new, I often explore to make a fresh palace.
When I finished my master’s ­degree, I decided to research the effects of these exercises, ­comparing the brains of memory athletes and noncompetitors. There’s nothing special about an athlete’s brain. Even scans of my own showed me to be exactly ­average, which was a little disappointing. We did find a difference in brain activity: When competitors are trying to remember more effectively, they employ different areas of the brain—such as those for visualization—in unison.
Anyone can learn to improve their memory, but it’s not like they’ll remember everything. For example, we showed test subjects a set of words, and told them to remember some but forget others. Later, the memory athletes could recall the targeted words better than the nonpros. When we asked for the words we had told them to forget, they got angry. They said: ”It’s not fair! If you’d told me to remember them, I could have!” When we finally got them to stop yelling, they did as poorly on those as everyone else.
As told to Rachel Feltman
Crashing crow funerals

"..they might fall silent and stare at the dead bird, almost like they’re in mourning. Watching this behavior is—“moving” is not the right word. It’s startling and incredible.
Peter Oumanski
When one crow sees another dead on the ground, it caws an alarm. Then others—five to six on average, but in rare cases as many as 60—fly in and perch on branches, cawing. In anecdotal reports, they sometimes place objects like sticks over the body as if burying it. Then they might fall silent and stare at the dead bird, almost like they’re in mourning. Watching this behavior is—“moving” is not the right word. It’s startling and incredible.
I started studying this activity to understand if crows just do this as a response to danger, or if their behavior serves some other function. To do that, I stage my own crow funerals in downtown Seattle.
Crowsare smart: They can recognize ­human faces. To deal with this, my researchers and I wore identical masks so the birds would think we were all the same person. Then we laid a stuffed crow on the ground and watched the birds perform their ritual. We found that the funerals probably serve to identify potential new predators—like us—and warn the group about them.
Watching crow funerals is not like watching humans mourn. I know what a human feels; I can’t empathizewith crows. My job as a scientist is to not make assumptions about their feelings. As long as we live in cities, crows will be part of our lives. I hope my research helps people realize that these ubiquitous and annoying animals are actually kind of cool.
As told to Ellen Airhart
I loved writing the SAT (▪ ▪ ▪)

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