They Also Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do

The credibility of claims that mathematical calculation comes from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be mentally calculated. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast and accurate math calculation is therefore evidence against claims that unaided human math calculation occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate calculation occurred by humans unaided by any devices,  the stronger is the evidence against the claim that human math calculation occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human mathematics performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that unaided human math calculation is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that math calculation is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human math  performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to calculate too quickly and too accurately for a noisy address-free brain to ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  My previous post "They Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do" described many such cases, as did my post "They Too Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do." Now let us look at some more cases of this type. 

Some cases of exceptional math performance can be found in the book The Great Mental Calculators by Steven B. Smith. Below from page 179 are the results of very hard math calculations by Arthur Griffith (born 1880):

We see above a record of blazing-fast speed in very hard math calculations.  The "extraction of cube root" referred to is solving the problem: what number multiplied by itself three times gives the supplied number?  The "extraction of a square root" referred to is solving the problem: what number multiplied by itself twice times gives the supplied number? 

A long newspaper article on Arthur Griffith can be read here. We read this:

"While engaged in working a series of tests Griffith multiplied 142,857,143 by 465,891,443 and obtained the product 66,555,920,495,127,349, in ten seconds. He multiplied 999,999,999 by 327,841,277, and had completed the writing of the product, 327,841,276,672,188,723, in nine and a half seconds. Other numbers required a longer time, but in no case was the time needed to complete the multiplication more than thirty seconds. Factors of numbers were called out as quickly as the number was submitted. The fifth power of 996, which equals 980,159,361,278,976, was obtained in thirty-seven seconds. Cubes of large numbers were given without hesitation, and in case the number was not a perfect cube the number which is the nearest perfect cube was given at once."

Using the web site here, I verified that the first  multiplication result is correct. The second multiplication result, 327,841,276,672,188,723, is incorrect only in the fifth-to-last digit, all other digits being correct. We can't tell whether it was a calculation error by Griffith, or an error by whoever wrote down his answer or who typeset the newspaper article. 

On page 297 the author says he was asked by Wim Klein to give two five-digit numbers. The author gave 57,825 and 13,489. In 44 seconds Klein multiplied the two numbers together mentally. On the same page we are told Klein extracted the 19th root of a 133-digit number in under two minutes. 

On page 301 we read this about lightning-fast calculations by Maurice Dagbert:

The same page refers to astounding multitasking and number memorization capabilities of Dagbert:

We read on the next page that Dagbert does not write any intermediate results, but simply announces the number calculated. On page 58 of the book Mental Prodigies by Fred Barton, we have the comment below, which may explain some of Dagbert's abilities. It is a description of something like a photographic memory for numbers:

On page 60 of the same book we read about these "instantaneous" mental calculation feats of Dagbert:

On page 63 of the same book we are told that Dagbert would do performances in which he faced away from a blackboard, and audience members would call out 2-digit numbers that were placed in a grid like the one below. Without  ever viewing the blackboard, Dagbert would correctly name all numbers and their positions in the grid, as well as telling the sum of each of the columns. 

On page 306 of The Great Mental Calculators we read of the astonishing calculation ability of Shakuntala Devi:

In the 1952 newspaper story here, we read of rave reviews of Devi's calculation abilities. A reporter attempts to stump her:

"Your reporter, at this point, slyly glanced at a piece of paper he had laboriously prepared, and asked: 'What is the cube root of 3,375 multiplied by the cube root of 117,649 divided by 5?'

'147,' said Shakuntala, stifling a yawn, and adding, almost apologetically: 'I am usually given problems that present difficulties of one sort or another.' ”

 The answer of 147 is correct. You can get the intermediate numbers in this calculation by using the cube root calculator here, but no such tools existed in 1952. 

On page 311 of The Great Mental Calculators, we learn of the astonishing short-term memory of Hans Eberstark, who could memorize 40 digits after hearing them spoken only once:

Their Memory Performance Far Exceeded What a Brain Could Ever Do

We do not know that brains remember anything; we simply know that people remember things. The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be learned and recalled, and the length of time things can be remembered. There has never been found in the brain any component known to be capable of a fast storage or retrieval of learned information, or the storage or retrieval of learned information at any speed. The protein molecules that brains are built from have a high rate of molecular turnover,  and have an average lifetime of less than two weeks.  There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  

Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast learning and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that learning, memorization and memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Attached to unstable dendritic spines that do not last for years, chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  So the more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), and the more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very voluminous learning and memorization, the  stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall and memory formation occur from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and very carefully study and ponder all cases of exceptional human memory performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that memory is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that memory is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability and throughput of the best cases of human memory performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to recall too quickly for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do, and the more cases of humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do, and the more cases of humans that seem to learn at a speed, reliability and capacity too fast and accurate for a noisy, relatively slow and transmission-unreliable brain to do,  the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  

A case of exceptional memory performance is well documented in the book "The mind of a mnemonist : a little book about a vast memory" by Alexander Romanovitch Luria. You can read the book on www.archive.org using the link here. The book describes a subject it calls S, a subject now known to be Solomon Shereshevsky. A scientific paper says this about the book:

"According to Luria, Shereshevsky could 'easily remember any number of words and digits' and 'equally easily he memorizes whole pages from books on any subject and in any language.'  He could accurately quote information from a decade earlier, including tables of numbers and strings of nonsense words....What Luria learned was that Shereshevsky’s memory differed from that of the vast majority of individuals; time did not erode his memories. Neither did a new stimulus affect his memory of an earlier one."

On page 17 of Luria' s book we are told that when asked to memorize the table of random numbers below, Shereshevsky reproduced the table perfectly, in 40 seconds, after only three minutes of studying it. 

On page 20 we are told that after Shereshevsky viewed a stimulus a certain length of time, he could continue to see the thing vividly in his mind's eye. We read, "He told us that he continued to see the table which had been written on a blackboard or a sheet of paper, that he merely had to 'read it off,' successfully enumerating the numbers or letters it contained." Around page 23 we are told that  Shereshevsky had to some degree synesthesia.  When tested with electronic sounds, he reported that they would produce some type of visual stimulus. On page 24 we are told, "Every sound he heard immediately produced an experience of light and color and, as we shall see later in this account, a sense of taste and touch as well."

On page 51 we are told that in 1936 Shereshevsky was asked to memorize a hard-to-remember table that started out like this, and had at least two additional rows like the rows below. 

We are told that he reproduced the table correctly, and that four years later he was asked to describe how he did it. Shereshevsky was able to describe in exact detail his memorization technique, and while doing so reproduced all the rows shown above, and two additional rows. On page 57 we are told this:

"On April 6, 1944, eight years after obtaining this record

from him, I had occasion to ask S. to repeat this performance (once again without giving him prior warning). He had no difficulty

whatsoever and came through with a faultless reproduction."

Here is an excerpt from page 61, in which the author talks about the astonishing lack of fading over time in Shereshevsky's memory:

On page 69 we read that  Shereshevsky scorned the idea of writing down things on paper in order to remember them, saying that if you did that, you would tend to forget what was written down. 

On page 139 we are told that Shereshevsky demonstrated that he could will his pulse rate to increase from 70 to 100. When asked how he could do this, he replied that he simply visualized himself running to catch a departing train. 

Recently the Cornell physics paper server included a paper by neuroscientist Bastian Wiederhold, one entitled "An introduction to memory competitions, records and techniques," one you can read here. Below are some quotations from the paper, quotations that may shock very greatly those who have failed to study cases of human best memory performances. 

• "The best competitors manage to memorize a one-hundred-digit number in under 15 seconds."
• "The record for memorizing the sequence of cards in shuffled deck of 52 playing cards was two minutes in 1993 and is now 12.74 seconds by Shijir-Erdene Bat-Enkh set in 2018."
• "Nowadays, tens of thousands of digits are being recalled in π competitions. Modern records include memorizing 35 packs of cards or an over 3000-digit decimal number in one hour, a sequence of 145 words in 5 min, the names of a class of 30 students in under 30 s, a shuffled deck of 52 playing cards in around 12 s or a 50-digit binary number in one second."
• "But didn’t Daniel Tammet memorize 22514 digits of π? Recently, Susanne Hippauf, a policewoman, broke the German record with 18026 digits."
• "For example, in auditive digits, the objective is to memorize a sequence of decimal digits, read aloud at one digit/s [1 digit per second]. The score is the number of digits counted until the first error. The current world record of Lance Tschirhart is 456, over seven minutes of perfect memorization."
• "We tried to estimate the memorization time of the π-record using the function R(t). The π world record of Suresh Kamar Sharma stands at an impressive 70030 digits, a multiple of around 20.5 of the hour world record of 3412."
• "The speed of historic dates [is] the fastest among the five-minute disciplines (Figure 1). The objective is to memorize the year between 1000 and 2100 of fictional events (Appendix B). After memorization, the events are scrambled and competitors recall the respective years of the events. The current world record is 148 by Prateek Yadav." This presumably involved the correct memorization of the years of 148 fictional events, all within a five minute period. 

Listing these feats, our neuroscientist has no neuroscience hypothesis to offer to explain how people could memorize so quickly.  When neuroscientists attempt to explain learning and memory formation, they discuss processes that occur at a very sluggish rate, processes such as synapse strengthening and protein synthesis. Such explanation attempts are very lame and inadequate. When human memory performance is fastest, humans do not learn and recall at the speed of brains, but instead learn and recall at the speed of souls. 

Newspaper Accounts of Memory Marvels (Part 4)

 The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be recalled. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast thinking and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), the stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human memory performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that memory is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that memory is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human mental performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to recall too quickly for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do, or humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do,  the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  In part 1  and part 2 and part 3 of this series, I gave many newspaper clips giving examples of such exceptional human memory performance. Let us now look at some more of such newspaper clips. 

The 1906 account below is one that is rather hard-to-believe, as it is a claim that a man memorized the entire Bible.

You can read the claim on the newspaper page here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026843/1906-08-24/ed-1/seq-5/

It is well known that quite a few Muslim scholars memorized the entire Quran, a work of 6236 verses. In the newspaper story here, we read of a 90-day scripture memorization contest; and we have the claim that the winner memorized the entire New Testament (a work of 7,957 verses) and also a good deal of the Old Testament: 

"On the day of the award it was found that among the older competitors the winner was Miss Leste May Williams, a young woman 16 years of age. With these ninety days, during which she had an attack of measles, she committed to memory and recited to the committee 12,236 verses of Scripture, covering the entire New Testament ...and including liberal selections from Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and other parts of the Old Testament."

The length of memorization claimed above (roughly 10,000 verses) is in the same league as the claim made in a scientific paper that between age 59 and age 67 a person memorized all 10,565 lines of Milton's Paradise Lost, recalling the entire work over a three-day period. But the total number of verses in the Bible is about 31,102.  So a person memorizing the entire Bible would seem to display an unprecedented human ability of memorization, in terms of the total length. 

The 1923 news story here in the Washington Times claimed that  H. H. Halley had memorized the entire New Testament. The 1926 newspaper account here claims that H. H. Halley of Chicago, USA memorized the entire Bible. The same paper (the Indianapolis Times) had made the same claim in the 1925 newspaper account here. 

In the 1888 newspaper article here, we read of a Rev. Nathan Smith here, and it claimed that he had memorized the entire Bible. We are told he can name the verse, chapter and book of any Bible quotation. 

The newspaper page here has in its "Lived Under All Presidents" article a claim that an old woman named Elizabeth Freeman "memorized nearly the entire Bible."

The newspaper account below appeared in 1925.

"Germans believe that a member of the staff of the Prussian State library has the finest memory in the world. He has specialized in weather reports and from memory he can describe the weather of any day from 1881 up to the present time. His wonderful memory recently was tested by the Berlin Meteorological society and he came through with flying colors. Colonel Charratle of England once memorized the entire Issue of a newspaper on a wager; a stoker memorized Haydn’s  'Dictionary of Dates,' and Lord Randolph Churchill, also of England, was able to repeat a page of print after a single reading."

You can read the account on the page below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83032307/1925-08-27/ed-1/seq-5/

The account above refers to a perfect recall of weather reports over a period of 44 years (1881 to 1925), involving about 16,000 days. If we assume that each weather report would require on average a number of words equal to a single verse, the claim above is roughly equivalent to a claim that a man memorized  a body of material about as long as 16,000 verses.

Below are some accounts of extraordinary memory powers held long ago, from the newspaper account here:

The newspaper account claims that Thomas Cranmer memorized an entire translation of the Bible, and that Lord Granville memorized the entire New Testament. We also have a claim that a Corsican could repeat in order 36,000 names, and could also repeat the names in reverse order. 

In the newspaper account below, from the page here, we have a claim that a man memorized a catalog of more than 1,100 pages, and that he demonstrated his memorization of the catalog:

In the 1963 newspaper account here, we read of a man who every week would memorize the entire Saturday Evening Post, a magazine that at that time would have very many pages in each edition, with a page typically consisting of three of four columns of small print adding up to more than 700 words per page.

In the newspaper account here, we read of an opera singer with an astonishing memory: 

"Julia Rosewald, the prima donna with the Abbott opera company, has, perhaps, the most astonishing memory on the lyric stage. Her repertoire consists of sixty-eight operas, in nine of which she sings double roles. Besides this marvelous selection she adds ten oratorios, and what is more wonderful still, she memorizes the entire work and will instantly detect the slightest error in harmony or instrumentation. The rapidity with which she studies is almost incredible. On one occasion, to save the company, she studied an entirely new role in twenty-four consecutive hours, and without rest appeared in the part without an error. This is vouched for by the conductor, Tomasi, and the entire company."

Derek Paravicini was born 25 weeks early, with severe brain damage, but he has reliably demonstrated countless times the ability to very accurately play back on a keyboard any song that is played to him, note for note, even if he has never heard the song before. In the newspaper account below, which can be read here, the claim is made that such an ability was demonstrated repeatedly by an entire orchestra, which could play from memory some newly written march it had only heard once.. We read this:

"Practically all Latin Americans possess, in marked degree, what is known as ‘musical memory'....This ability to memorize has been exemplified on many occasions in San Antonio, Tex., when the visiting Mexican band has been asked to ‘stand by’ while the latest march from the United States is being played by the American band. With all standing at attention, the Mexican bandsmen have waited until the finish of the first strain and then came the marvelous test; the playing of this number in harmony by the entire group. Audiences have been astounded at this exhibition and some in the audience have expressed the thought that ‘there was some trick in it.’ That is absolutely true, for there is a trick, but it has taken thousands of years to produce it, and it is in the form of this musical memory . .. Leaders of the great orchestras in Latin America, with but little effort, are able to memorize the entire scores of dozens of operas.”

In support of such a claim, you could cite the huge number of opera roles memorized by Placido Domingo, who knew 151 opera roles in several different languages. 

On the newspaper page here, we have the claim that the Belgian shcolar Joest Lips (also called Justus Lipsius) memorized the entire text of the Histories of Tacitus, a work of 50,000 words. The page also claims that he once challenged a man to stand over him with a dagger, and to stab him if he transposed a single word. 

They Memorized Many Times Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do

 The main theory of a brain storage of memories is that people acquire new memories through a strengthening of synapses. There are many reasons for disbelieving this claim. One is that information is generally stored through a writing process, not a strengthening process. It seems that there has never been a verified case of any information being stored through a mere process of strengthening. Another reason for rejecting the claim is that human memories can last 1000 times longer than the average lifetime of proteins in the brain. A scientific paper states, "Recent studies have revealed that most proteins, including synaptic proteins, have half-lives that range between 5 and 7 days (Cohen et al., 2013, Dörrbaum et al., 2018)."  The average lifetime of a protein is about twice its half-life. 

The 2018 paper here is entitled "Brain tissue plasticity: protein synthesis rates of the human brain." It tells us the astonishing fact that proteins in the human brain are replaced at a rate of 3% to 4% per day. We read this:

"Where skeletal muscle tissue has been shown to turnover at a rate of 1–2% per day, here we show that brain tissue turns over much faster at a rate of 3–4% per day. This would imply complete renewal of brain tissue proteins well within 4–5 weeks. From a physiological viewpoint this is astounding, as it provides us with a much greater framework for the capacity of brain tissue to recondition. Moreover, from a philosophical perspective these observations are even more surprising. If rapid protein turnover of brain tissue implies that all organic material is renewed, then all data internalized in that tissue are also prone to renewal. These findings spark (even) more debate on the interpretation and (long-term) storage of data in neural matter, the capacity of humans to consciously or unconsciously process data, and the (organic) basis of our own personality and ego. All of this becomes quite remarkable in light of such rapid protein turnover rates of the human brain."

Such rapid replacement of brain proteins is utterly inconsistent with claims that brains store old memories of what someone learned decades ago. A person like me remembers many things he learned 50 years ago, but if my brain was storing my memories, I would not be able to remember back more than a few months, given a 3% per day replacement of brain proteins.  A 2022 scientific paper confesses this:

"Conclusive evidence that specific long-term memory formation relies on dendritic growth and structural synaptic changes has proven elusive. Connectionist models of memory based on this hypothesis are confronted with the so-called plasticity stability dilemma or catastrophic interference. Other fundamental limitations of these models are the feature binding problem, the speed of learning, the capacity of the memory, the localisation in time of an event and the problem of spatio-temporal pattern generation."

If it were true that memories were stored by a strengthening of synapses, this would be a slow process. The only way in which a synapse can be strengthened is if proteins are added to it. We know that the synthesis of new proteins is a rather slow effect, requiring many minutes of time. In addition, there would have to be some very complicated encoding going on if a memory was to be stored in synapses. The reality of newly-learned knowledge and new experience would somehow have to be encoded or translated into some brain state that would store this information. When we add up the time needed for this protein synthesis and the time needed for this encoding, we find that the theory of memory storage in brain synapses predicts that the acquisition of new memories should be a very slow affair, which can occur at only a tiny bandwidth, a speed which is like a mere trickle. Do a Google image search for "speed of protein synthesis" and you will see charts that look like this (with data point dots scattered across the lines):

Don't make the mistake of thinking that a brain storage of new memories would occur as quickly as the speed of protein synthesis.  Such a storage would rely on three things that would be slow:

(1) Protein synthesis itself, which would require an average of multiple minutes. 

(2) Much additional time required for some act by which sensory information was encoded in some never-discovered storage format allowing sensory information to be translated into brain states or synapse states. 

(3) The time needed for signal transmission to occur across various parts of the brain, which would be quite an additional slowing factor, because of the relatively slow speed of transmission across synapses and dendrites, illustrated by the diagram below:

The synaptic gaps of chemical synapses and relatively slow dendrites (speed bumps for the brain) vastly outnumber myelinated axons, meaning for the brain the slowing parts vastly outnumber the fast parts. 

Memory contests show that some humans can actually acquire new memories at a speed very many times greater than the slow speed that would occur if brains were storing memories by protein synthesis. For example, according to a page on the site of the Guinness Book of World Records, "The fastest time to memorize and recall a deck of playing cards is 13.96 seconds, achieved by Zou Lujian (China) at the 2017 World Memory Championships held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, on 6-8 December 2017." Memorization speeds this fast utterly discredit claims that learning occurs by synapse strengthening, which would require the synthesis of new proteins, something which would require multiple minutes. 

The page here on www.wikipedia.org describes a competition called the World Memory Championships, which has the website here.  There are various different competitions, which are described in Chapter 7 (page 57) of the handbook you can read here:

Discipline 1:  a competition to memorize as many abstract images as possible, given 15 minutes to memorize, and 30 minutes to recall.  (Page 58.) 

Discipline 2:  a competition to memorize as many binary numbers as possible  given 5 minutes to memorize, and 15 minutes to recall (national level), or 30 minutes to memorize, and 60 minutes to recall (international level).  (Page 62.)

Discipline 3:  a competition to memorize as many random decimal digits ( such as 8, 9, and 2) as possible, given 15 minutes to memorize, and 30 minutes to recall (national level), or 30 minutes to memorize, and 60 minutes to recall (international level), or   60 minutes to memorize, and 120 minutes to recall (world  level). (Page 67.)

Discipline 4:  a competition to memorize as many name and face combinations as possible, given 5 minutes to memorize, and 15 minutes to recall (national level), or 15 minutes to memorize, and 30 minutes to recall (international level or world level).  (Page 70.) Competitors are asked to provide names when shown a face. 

Discipline 5:  a "Speed Numbers" competition to memorize as many random decimal digits ( such as 8, 9, and 2) as possible, given 5 minutes to memorize, and 15 minutes to recall. (Page 75.)

Discipline 6:  a competition to memorize as many pairs of dates and fictional events as possible, given 5 minutes to memorize, and 15 minutes to recall. (Page 80.)

Discipline 7:  a competition to memorize as many separate packs of shuffled playing cards as possible, given 10 minutes to memorize, and 30 minutes to recall (national level), or 30 minutes to memorize, and 60 minutes to recall (international level), or   60 minutes to memorize, and 120 minutes to recall (world  level). (Page 82.)

Discipline 8:  a competition to memorize as many random words as possible, given 5 minutes to memorize, and 15 minutes to recall (national level), or 15 minutes to memorize, and 30 minutes to recall (international level or world level).  (Page 87.) 

Discipline 9:  a 'Spoken Numbers" competition to memorize as many spoken numbers as possible, with the numbers being read at a rate of one number per second. (Page 92, complicated rules.)

Discipline 10:  a "Speed Cards" competition to commit to memory as many cards as possible, given 5 minutes or less for memorization, and only 5 minutes for recall.  (Page 98.)

Below is performance data recorded on the site and on the wikipedia.org page here.

Discipline 1, abstract images:  Two competitors in 2021 (Huang Jinyao and Xu Yangran) were able to memorize more than 1000 abstract images in only 15 minutes (or score more than 1000 points on such a competition, indicating similar ability).

Discipline 2, binary digits: Four competitors in 2021 were able to recall more than 600 binary digits memorized in a 30-minute period. Ryu Song I was able to recall 7485 binary numbers memorized in a 30-minute period (WMSC World Championship 2019).

Discipline 3, random decimal digits: Ryu Song I was able to recall 4620 decimal digits  memorized in an hour-long  period (WMSC World Championship 2019). Seven competitors in 2021 were able to recall more than 600 binary digits memorized in a 30-minute period. 

 Discipline 4, face and name combinations:  Katie Kermode was able to recall the names of 224 previously unseen people from their images, having had only 15 minutes to memorize their names (IAM World Championship 2018). Similarly, the scientific paper here says someone identified as SM1 "memorized 215 German names to the corresponding faces within 15 minutes at the Memoriad in 2015 in Istanbul." (The paper stated that the super-memorizers it studied did not have increased hippocampal volumes.) Several Mongolian or Chinese contestants were able to recall the names of more than 600 previously unseen people from their images, having had only 15 minutes to memorize their names (2021 World Memory Championships). 

Discipline 5, Speed Numbers: Wei Quinru was able to recall 642 digits memorized in a 5-minute period (Korea Open Memory Championship 2024). Four  people were able to each recall more than 800 digits memorized in a 5-minute period (2021 World Memory Championships).

Discipline 6, Dates and Fictional Events:  Prateek Yadav memorized in 5 minutes dates corresponding to 154 fictional events (2019).  Several other contestants memorized in 5 minutes dates corresponding to 700+ fictional events (2021 World Memory Championships).

Discipline 7, "Hour Cards" Card Memorization:  Kim Su Rim memorized 2530 cards in 60 minutes.  

Discipline 8, Random Words:  Prateek Yadev memorized 335 random words in 15 minutes. Several others in 2021 memorized more than 500 random words in 15 minutes. 

Discipline 9, "Spoken Numbers":  Ryu Song I was able to recall 547 decimal digits that had been read at a rate of one per second (WMSC World Championship 2019).  Tenuun Tamir and several other Mongolian or Chinese contestants were able to recall more than 600 decimal digits that had been read to him at a rate of one per second. 

Discipline 10, "Speed Cards":  Munkhshur NARMANDAK memorized 981 cards in five minutes, and several others memorized more than 600 cards in five minutes. 

Below from the World Memory Championships site is a table showing some of the best performers (link).

What we have in the performance records above is what can be roughly describing as lightning-fast memorization ability. Such an ability has been demonstrated by many subjects, doing many different types of memorization. The performances listed above are many times faster than any conceivable result that could be produced if memories are stored in brains.  There does not exist any detailed credible theory that can explain fast memorization by neural or synaptic processes. When neuroscientists say something about how memories form, they typically engage in hand-waving that vaguely refers to processes that are known to be very slow, such as synaptic strengthening. 

Routinely displaying instant recall abilities utterly unaccountable by the activity of brains completely lacking in addresses, sorting or indexes (the things that make fast retrieval possible in computers), humans do not recall at the speed of brains. Humans recall at the speed of souls. And the fastest memorizers do not memorize at the speed of brains. Such memorizers memorize at the speed of souls. 

For other posts documenting the ability of some humans to memorize at a blazing fast speed, see my posts with a tag of "photographic memory" or "eidetic memory."  On page 29 of the nineteenth century book here, we have an interesting account of photographic memory obtained under hypnosis (with it apparently progressing to become photographic memorization that could occur outside of hypnosis). The author states that eventually outside of hypnosis "the duration of a single second or a mere

glimpse at the page was sufficient for the pupils to retain in their memory the whole contents of it."