They 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 humans can mentally calculate. 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 many 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 mental math calculation in humans 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 brain has nothing like the CPU or software in a computer that allows it to calculate. It has been pointed out that the brain seems to lack any feature by which it could even store a number. The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate calculation occurring by humans unaided by any devices or even a pencil and paper,  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 mental 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 and difficulty of the best cases of human mental 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 do ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon. 

Some cases of exceptional math performance can be found in the performance records of the Mental Calculation World Cup held every two years in Germany.  Below are some of the results recorded on the page here (the Wikipedia page for Mental Calculation World Cup):

2004:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes. Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 8 correct results."

2008:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes

Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 10 correct results in 8:25 minutes, world record."

2010:

"Adding ten 10-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 10 minutes

Winner: Alberto Coto (Spain), 10 correct results in 3:42 minutes, world record

Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 15 minutes

Winner: Marc Jornet Sanz (Spain), 10 correct results in 4:56 minutes, world record."

Calendar Calculations, dates from the years 1600–2100, one minute

Winner: Yusnier Viera (Cuba), 48 correct results, world cup record."

Viera's feat presumably required naming the correct days of the week for 48 random dates between 1600 and 2100.  Doing such a feat withing one minute is one of the most astonishing demonstrations of human mental speed ever produced.  I have read many times about the ability of some rare savants to name the days of the week given a random date from the past. But I have never heard before about an ability to perform such a feat so many times (48) in a single minute. The feat of Sanz involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of about 30 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation. 

2012:

"Adding ten 10-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 7 minutes

Winner: Naofumi Ogasawara (Japan); 10 correct results in 191 seconds, world record.

Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 tasks in 10 minutes

Winner: Freddis Reyes Hernández (Cuba), 10 correct results in 361 seconds.

Calendar Calculations, One minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Myagmarsuren Tuuruul (Mongolia), 57 correct results, world cup record."

The feat of Hernandez involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of about 36 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation. Tuuruul 's feat presumably required naming within a single minute the correct days of the week for 57 random dates between 1600 and 2100, a feat even more impressive than Viera's feat mentioned above. 

2016:

"Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Georgi Georgiev (Bulgaria), 66 correct results, world cup record."

Georgiev's feat presumably required naming within a single minute the correct days of the week for 66 random dates between 1600 and 2100, a feat even more impressive than the other calendar calculation feats mentioned above.  That's a speed so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. 

2018:

"Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Marc Jornet Sanz [it] (Spain), 71 correct results, world cup record."

 That's a speed so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. 

2020-2022:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 minutes

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 21 points (23 correct, 2 incorrect results), world cup record.

Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100

Winner: Akshita Shah (India), 80 correct results, world cup record."

Again, the calendar calculation is so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days of the weeks (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. The feat of Shukla involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of one correct answer about every 26 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation.

2024:

"Multiplying two 8-digit numbers, 10 minutes.

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 25 points (28 correct, 3 incorrect), world cup record.

Calendar Calculations, one minute, random dates from the years 1600–2100.

Winner: Aaryan Nitin Shukla (India), 100 correct results (out of 100 dates given), world cup record."

We have here two types of blazing fast calculation by the same person, Aaryan Nitin Shukla. Again, the calendar calculation is so fast it is basically instantaneous, as merely stating the days of the weeks (without calculating them) would take almost as much time. The feat of Shukla involved multiplying together 8-digit numbers correctly in his mind at a rate of one correct answer about every 21 seconds per calculation, a blazing speed of calculation.

Below are visuals showing an 1812 account of the blazing-fast math powers of Zerah Colburn, witnessed at a time when the boy was only twelve. 

Postscript: A document entitled "How Much Computational Power Does It Take to Match the Human Brain?" is written by someone making naive and erroneous assumptions that the brain produces all mental effects, and that we should look at the brain to try to calculate how much computing power you would need to duplicate human mentality. But at one point in the document we have an interesting passage that conflicts with such assumptions. We read this:

"Two experts (one physicist, one neuroscientist) mentioned the evolutionary history of neurons as a reason to think that they don’t implement extremely complex computations. The basic thought here seemed to be something like: (a) neurons early in evolutionary history seem likely to have been doing something very simple (e.g., basic stimulus-response behavior), (b) we should expect evolution to tweak and recombine these relatively simple components, rather than to add a lot of complex computation internal to the cells, and (c) indeed, neurons in the human brain don’t seem that different from neurons in very simple organisms.239 I haven’t looked into this, but it seems like an interesting angle.24"

A Recent Paper Implies That Huge Numbers of Neuroscience Research Volunteers Were Gadolinium-Imperiled

The fMRI brain scan has long been a staple of neuroscience research. When we examine the history of MRI scans, we see a history of overconfidence, and authorities dogmatically asserting that "MRI scans are perfectly safe," when they did not actually know whether they were perfectly safe. The 2009 study here ("Genotoxic effects of 3 T magnetic resonance imaging in cultured human lymphocytes") cautions about the use of a high-intensity("3T and above") MRI, and states that "potential health risks are implied in the MRI and especially HF MRI environment due to high-static magnetic  fields, fast gradient magnetic fields, and strong radiofrequency electromagnetic fields," also noting that "these results suggest that exposure to 3 T MRI induces genotoxic effects in human  lymphocytes," referring to effects  that may cause cancer. 

More than ten years ago there arose the great "contrast agent" scandal.  Scientists began to learn that what are called "contrast agent" MRI scans (given to 30 million people annually) may not be so safe. In such "contrast agent" scans, a subject is given an injection that increases the visual contrast of the MRI scan.  For a long time, the main substance in such an injection was gadolinium.  A mainstream cancer web site states, "Tissue and autopsy reports have also confirmed that gadolinium can accumulate in the brain and other organs." The results can be a health disaster, as described here. A 2019 Science Daily story says, "New contrast agent could make MRIs safer," letting us know that many of them previously were not so safe. On the same Science Daily web site, we read a 2017 news story with the title "MRI contrast agents accumulate in the brain."  A 2020 paper ("Side Effect of Gadolinium MRI Contrast Agents") says this:

"Until recently, it was believed that gadolinium is effectively cleared within 24 hours after intravenous injection, and that it does not have any harmful effects on the human body. However, recent studies on animals and analyses of clinical data have indicated that gadolinium is retained in the body for many years post-administration, and may cause various diseases."

Neuroscientists have extensively used such contrast agents (as described here), very often putting human subjects at risk for the sake of junk poorly-designed studies falling very far short of the best experimental practices. All the while,  many of our experts were making the untrue claim that "MRI scans are perfectly safe," a statement which was not clearly  true for the large fraction of MRI studies that used gadolinium contrast agents. You can do a Google search for "gadolinium deposition" to learn more about this issue. 

An October 2024 article published by the US Department of Veteran Affairs  is entitled "Metal in MRI contrast agents may cause serious health problems."  We learn some shocking details suggesting neuroscience researchers may have been massively endangering their research volunteers:

"New Mexico VA Healthcare System researchers were part of a team of experts who revealed potential chronic health problems linked to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents.

Their review article compiled evidence that the metal gadolinium can remain in the body and lead to multiple conditions, such as kidney injury, debilitating joint and skin problems, and even fatal brain damage....A peculiar, devastating condition, systemic fibrosis, was first identified in 1997 in end-stage renal disease patients. Patients were afflicted with severe pain and a woody or cobblestone-like texture to the skin, as well as joint problems. Nephrologists identified gadolinium as the most significant risk factor in 2006. ...

Now it seems the gadolinium contrast agents have the potential for harm in other patients, not just those with impaired kidney function, based on evidence gathered by Wagner and his team. They said their findings have profound implications for patients experiencing symptoms associated with gadolinium exposure, such as brain fog, skin disorders, joint pain, and permanent disability.

The researchers also discovered gadolinium can stay in the body for a long time, possibly permanently, meaning patients may experience symptoms immediately after as little as one MRI contrast agent exposure or many years after exposure."

The article is discussing the 2024 paper "The safety of magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents," which you can read here. Below are some excerpts:

"Safety concerns with magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents arose when gadolinium was linked to the blight systemic fibrosis, a grievous infirmity (Grobner, 2006)... In addition to severe pain, the skin has been characterized as having a woody induration and cobblestoned. The disease is also associated with severely debilitating joint contractures....Gadolinium-based contrast agents are increasingly associated with cutaneous and systemic abnormalities in patients with normal renal function...Data mining of the United States Food & Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System corroborates that skin complications relate to most brands of magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents (Wang et al., 2023). As of 30 September 2023, 31,868 reactions were reported to the United States Food & Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (Figure 2). The leading reaction group for all magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents is skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders (including nephrogenic systemic fibrosis)....Symptoms were skin thickening, 'like hard rubber,' hair loss, skin biopsy with fibrosis, and abnormal calcification on mammograms and x-rays....Acute kidney injury has also been temporally linked to gadolinium-based contrast administration....Neurotoxicity has been linked to magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents in rodent models and case reports (Rogosnitzky and Branch, 2016)....Known complications of gadolinium-based contrast agent administration include kidney damage (Leander et al., 1992; Prince et al., 1996; Sam et al., 2003; Thomsen, 2004; Akgun et al., 2006; Briguori et al., 2006; Ergun et al., 2006; Elmstahl et al., 2007), nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, skin disorders, and sometimes permanent neurologic sequelae (including coma and death). Each dose of gadolinium is fraught with unanticipated risks...In humans, a single magnetic resonance imaging contrast agent exposure can trigger nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (Broome et al., 2007; Thomsen et al., 2007; Abraham et al., 2008; Shabana et al., 2008; Leyba and Wagner, 2019). When Dr. Sean Cowper (Professor of Dermatology, Yale School of Medicine) maintained a registry of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis cases, he noted that 46% of cases had just a single exposure....There are many reports of neurotoxicity induced by gadolinium (Table 2). Many case reports detail acute, subacute, and chronic complications (summarized in Supplementary Material). Invariably, these cases required escalation of care for life-threatening scenarios....The doses of magnetic resonance imaging contrast agent needed to induce severe neurologic manifestations (and sometimes death) are minute. .Disinherited by the medical establishment, patients spend an eternal time in chronic symptomatic purgatory....Magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents cause kidney injury and gadolinium encephalopathy (sometimes fatal) and may lead to permanent gadolinium retention. Provider education regarding these known adverse events is critical, and informing patients of these risks and outcomes is essential."

The University of North Carolina publishes a template for an "Adult Consent Form," an informed consent form for research studies. The template has the selection below. I will boldface and underline two lines:

"As part of the MRl procedure you may receive a dye called gadolinium. Gadolinium makes it easier to see details on the MRI pictures. If you have any problems with your kidneys, you may be at risk for a condition called Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis or Nephrogenic Fibrosing Dermopathy (NSF). NSF has been reported to occur between 2 days and 18 months following injection of gadolinium. There is no known treatment for NSF. Some people have even died from this. Signs and symptoms of NSF may include:  burning, swelling, hardening or tightening of the skin, blood vessels and internal organs (heart, lungs, live; yellow spots on the white part of the eyes; joint swelling and stiffness; pain in the hip bones or ribs; muscle weakness."

This is a template for an "informed consent" form that will notify neuroscience research volunteers about hazards of being injected with gadolinium. But it does not properly notify volunteers of the risks of being injected with gadolinium.  An "informed consent" form made from this template will give research volunteers the incorrect idea that they will have risk from the gadolinium only if they have kidney problems. But research has long shown that gadolinium has serious risks for people without kidney problems (i.e. with normal renal function), as discussed above. The same University of North Carolina "informed consent" template fails to mention that research has found genotoxic effects from fMRI exposure, with chromosome damage proportional to the number of fMRI scans. The 2022 paper "The effects of repeated brain MRI on chromosomal damage" found that "The total number of damaged cells increased by 3.2% (95% CI 1.5–4.8%) per MRI." The paper was referring to "DNA breaks" that have a possibility of increasing cancer risk.

Another example of an appalling template for an informed consent document is the McGill University document that you can reach here.  The document has no mention of MRI risks. In the part of the document that should discuss such risks, we read only this:

"During this study, you will be exposed to a strong magnetic field.  

No long-term negative side effects have been observed from this type of study. As mentioned above, the MR is very noisy and you will be given earplugs to reduce this effect."

We have an appalling example of carelessness.  The passage doesn't even spell MRI correctly, spelling it as MR. It is a fact that people are sometimes injured by MRI machines that can turn metal objects into high-speed projectiles. A young boy was once killed by an MRI machine when that happened.  Carcinogenic effects have been studied from exposure to MRI machines, as quoted above.  The claim that "no long-term negative side effects have been observed from this type of study" is false. Above I make a long quote of devastating side effects from fMRI studies using gadolinium contrast agents. Neuroscience experiments often expose subjects to long and repeated fMRI brain scans, with total fMRI exposure much longer than they would get from a normal MRI checking for body injury or cancer. Some examples of this can be found in my series of posts here, such as subjects who each underwent 16 hours of medically unnecessary brain scanning. 

A scientific study made a survey of "informed consent" documents used in neuroscience research, and found massive misrepresentation. We read this:

"In 30% of the files, the consent forms and protocols made no mention of any potential unknown harms of MRI. Of the consent forms and protocols that did discuss potential unknown harms, 46% contained statements such as, 'no long-term adverse health effects of MRI have been reported' or 'no long term harm to patients has been found from exposure to the magnetic field.' Nineteen percent of the consent forms and protocols had statements along the lines that, 'there are no known side-effects or complications that have occurred during or following MRI examinations.' ”

The same study states this:

"Statements that 'no long term harms of MRI have been reported' or 'no long term harm to patients has been found from exposure to the magnetic field' are inaccurate.... Not enough useful epidemiological evidence has been gathered to support an unequivocal statement that there is insignificant risk associated with the static magnetic fields of MRI. Until there is sufficient scientific evidence about long-term harms of MRI (at all strengths and for all

populations) or clear standards developed for unknown harms, researchers cannot make a blanket claim that there is insignificant risk associated with the static magnetic fields of MRI."

Eager to get as many human volunteers as possible for neuroscience research (mostly low-income volunteers lured in by "chump change" payments such as 20 dollars an hour), our neuroscience researchers are not properly informing subjects of the risks they are undergoing. This is a moral disgrace. Most or a large fraction of the people who are being put at risk (without being properly informed of the risks they are taking) are people put at risk for the sake of poorly designed neuroscience studies typically guilty of Questionable Research Practices such as lack of a blinding protocol, lack of pre-registration and way-too-small study group sizes. What's going on is like what is imagined in the visual below. 

Postscript: A year 2024 study ("Evaluation of the Biological Effects of Exposures to Magnetic Resonance Imaging on Single-Strand DNA: An In-vivo Study") found that MRI scanners only half as powerful as 3T scanners can produce genotoxic effects.  It reported this:

"The DNA single-strand breaks were significant for all tested parameters in both MRI 1.5 T (p<0.01) and 3.0 T (p<0.001)....The percentage of cells destroyed in the group exposed to 3.0 T MRI was increased to 12.65 ± 1.0 after 10 minutes of exposure."

As shown in its Table 1, the study found that with a 3.0T MRI scanner, the longer you scan, the more DNA damage is done. The reported damage after 40 minutes of 3.0T MRI scanning is given a numerical value of 57, which is nearly twice as high as the damage done after only 10 minutes of scanning (damage given a numerical rating of 32). A similar relation is reported in Table 4, using a different measure of damage.  Using that measure, 10 minutes of 3.0T MRI produces DNA damage given a numerical value of 12.66, but 40  minutes of 3.0T MRI produces almost twice-as-bad DNA damage given a numerical value of 22.38.  Any DNA damage tends to increase cancer risk. 

Examining the Evidence-Poor Blog Archive of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 2020 to 2025

An organization called the Cognitive Neuroscience Society has an annual meeting and a blog that you can read here. At the page here you can very conveniently get a single page showing the titles of all of the blog's posts over the past 13 years. Below are comments on posts I examined in this archive, while trying to find posts written in the past five years that might be the best evidence for the explanatory dogmas of cognitive neuroscientists, such as the dogma that your mind is made by your brain, and the dogma that brains store memories. 

• "Tapping into the Rhythms That Lead to Predictions in the Brain." We have a quote by neuroscientist Andre Bastos, claiming, "We’ve really seen in the last few years a total revolution in our tools and our methods, and, increasingly, in our concepts and models,” That is not true, and experimental neuroscientists keep using the same old bad methods, easy-to-discredit concepts and Questionable Research Practices that they have been using for decades.  The unreliability and low statistical power of their methods has been pointed out to them over and over again in the past ten years, but neuroscientists have turned a deaf ear to such complaints. Referring to the epiphenomenon that is brain waves, Bastos senselessly states, "I was totally fascinated by the idea of brain rhythms being this orchestra in the brain, conducting activity between one part of the brain with one type of wave and another part of the brain with another type of wave."  This is as silly as claiming that the scent from your cooking controls what type of meal you are making, given that brain waves (as picked up in EEG readings) are an epiphenomenon like the scent from cooking, and not any controlling mechanism. Bastos also engages in the emptiest and skimpiest of hand-waving by claiming that "the integration of these activities may form the neural basis of consciousness." We have these misleading statements by Bastos: "The proposed neural implementation of that is that the predictions are associated with different rhythms in the brain. The rhythm most associated with prediction is the beta frequency range, oscillations around 20 hertz. The beta rhythm coordinates neurons and can form plastic, dynamic ensembles or groupings of neurons, and that is what learning is – forming new connections between neurons that didn’t exist before." Brain waves do not coordinate neurons and do not form ensembles or groupings of neurons;  instead the electrical activity of billions of neurons give rise to brain waves.   The claim that learning occurs from forming new connections between neurons is empty hand-waving, untenable as a theory of memory creation that can occur instantly (much faster than the time it takes to build brain connections) and memory storage that can last 1000 times longer than the average lifetime of proteins in brain connections. There is no evidence that brain waves are associated with predictions or that they do anything to produce learning. Bastos makes another unwarranted claim: "We now have evidence that what we thought was a ubiquitous code for predictions is actually a sparse code, with the main driver being neurons in higher-order areas utilizing beta rhythms (rather than sensory areas, which were previously hypothesized to compute prediction 'errors'). And we now call that predictive routing." There is no evidence for any neural code for predictions.  The post has no reference to any specific studies or papers, except for a reference to a 2001 paper that does not substantiate any of the claims of Bastos. His claims are not well-founded. Nowadays neuroscientists are notorious for their pareidolia in analyzing brain waves as picked up in EEG readings, and the analysis of such waves is a cesspool of junk science. Again and again we see neuroscientists making unfounded claims after analyzing the noisy, ever-fluctuating data of brain waves recorded by EEG readings. In this regard neuroscientists are acting like someone who claims to see the face of Jesus in his toast after carefully scanning his toast endless times. Looking for research papers by Bastos on Google Scholar, I find nothing demonstrating his claims. I find some poor-evidence papers like the one here using a way-too-small study group size of only three monkeys, and the one here using a way-too-small study group size of only two monkeys. 
• "How Threats Shape the Organization of Our Memories."  We have a mention of some paper behind a paywall. The abstract of the paper does not list any study group size, and when that happens, it's a pretty safe bet that the study group sizes used were way too small. The article does not mention any physical organization of memories in a brain, and says basically nothing about the brain. 
• "What Our Memories Made Of?"  We have a mention of a keynote address by neuroscientist Sheena Jocelyn, but no link to that address. No answer is suggested to the question. If you look up Jocelyn's papers on Google Scholar, you will fail to find any original research by her or anyone else that provides robust evidence to support her claims about memories being found in rodent brains. What you will be most likely to find are bad examples of low-quality research guilty of Questionable Research Practices, such as way-too-small study group sizes, and the use of unreliable techniques for judging whether a mouse recalled, typically the utterly unreliable method of trying to judge whether "freezing behavior" occurred. An example is her low-quality 2024 paper here, which used way-too-small study group sizes such as only 8 or 9 rodents, and also used the utterly unreliable method of trying to judge recall in rodents by judging "freezing behavior." Another paper by her (the 2023 paper here) has the same defects, and is just as poor quality. 
• "Watching a Memory Unfold."  The post is a question and answer interview with the neuroscientist Jocelyn discussed above. We have this completely untrue claim: "Viral vectors, optogenetics, and live imaging have all enabled neuroscientists like Josselyn to explore how cells activate and interact to create specific memories in real time." We have no references to particular papers, at least none that give a name of the paper or a link. Jocelyn makes the very misleading claim that "We can literally watch a brain that’s thinking, that’s encoding a memory and then recalling it." No one has any understanding of how a brain of any type could think or form a memory or recall, and there are no observations of brains that can honestly be called examples of viewing such things.  Jocelyn makes this claim: "An engram is a theoretical concept that’s been around for over 100 years. The thinking is that if there’s an experience, I must have some sort of trace of that experience in my brain, because I may need to recall it at some point. Nowadays, we think that a memory is stored in a bunch of cells that get together to form a circuit. And these cells are part of  an 'engram circuit,' with the engram storing the memory. So if we artificially turn these cells off in a mouse, it is as if the mouse has forgotten this memory. On the other hand, we can get the mouse to seemingly recall the memory if we turn these cells on. We’ve shown all these different ways of identifying these specific memory circuits in mice."  Her grandiose boasts about having done such things are unfounded, because the research work she is referring to consists of examples of low-quality research badly guilty of Questionable Research Practices, research like the two studies of hers I refer to above. We have no references in the post to named scientific papers, and there are no well-designed high-quality scientific papers backing up the claims that Jocelyn made in the post. There is no robust research backing up Jocelyn's boasts in the second half of this statement: "You can see what’s happened to that cell or that circuit of cells once you’ve trained an animal, once you’ve asked them to recall something, once you extinguish their memory, and once you’ve changed your memory." Scientists cannot locate, extinguish or change a memory in any animal, and claims to have done such things are not backed up any robust well-designed research with a high statistical power. 
• "When Our Brains Trick Us With a False Memory." We have an interview with a neuroscientist about some paper she wrote, the paper here. The paper was some study doing fMRI brain scans on subjects while they did some memory task. The paper fails to mention any good evidence of a neural correlate of memory.  Looking for the percent signal change indication typically found in such papers, we find nothing. 
• "Using Virtual Reality to Explore the Neuroscience of Out-of-Body Experiences."  We have an interview with a neuroscientist who did some research that is irrelevant to explaining out-of-body experiences.   The research involves putting people in some virtual reality setup unlike anything nearby when people have out-of-body experiences. The title of the post is misleading, because no research has been done on out-of-body experiences. The neuroscientist misleadingly claims that her research "provides a proof-of-concept for studying the phenomenon of out-of-body experiences in laboratory settings."  No it does not, because people do not wear virtual reality goggles when they have out-of-body experiences. 
• "What do Math Skills Look Like in the Brain?" We have an interview with neuroscientist Xueying Ren, discussing some paper she wrote. In that paper we read this: "Studies with adults did not reveal correlations between cortical thickness and math competence (Heidekum, Vogel, & Grabner, 2020; Torre, Matejko, & Eden, 2020). For instance, in an MRI study with 89 typically developed adults, Heidekum et al. (2020) investigated the associations between brain structures and math competence. However, they did not find associations between cortical thickness and math competence in math-related brain regions such as IPS." The quote contradicts the idea that you do math by using your brain. Nothing in the post provides any evidence that there is such a thing as some brain activity that looks like someone doing math, so the title of the post is misleading. 
• "Forget About It: Investigating How We Purge Thoughts from Our Minds." The post has almost no reference to neuroscience, making only the groundless claim that "Their work suggests that when the brain suppresses a thought or clears thoughts entirely, the frontoparietal control network likely plays a prominent and distinct role." We get no mention of a scientific paper backing up any such claim. Scientists actually have no understanding of any neural basis of forgetting. 
• "Looking Forward to Understanding Working Memory." No claim is made about any neural basis for working memory. 
• "When Philosophical Questions Turn to Neuroscience Experimentation." We have no discussion about philosophical questions. We have a neuroscientist claiming without warrant that "Attention function is controlled by populations of neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex. "  We have no reference to a paper backing up such a claim. For a discussion of why brains cannot explain an act of a mind focusing on some topic or question, read my post here. 
• "Groups Decisions Less Burdensome to the Brain Than Solo Ones."  We have a reference to a paper doing some experiment in which people made different types of decisions while having their heads hooked up to EEG machines that read brain waves. You cannot actually detect a greater burden on the mind by looking at brain wave readings of people in healthy states. Although useful for a few things such as monitoring the effectiveness of anesthesia and detecting signs of epilepsy, EEG brain wave readings are basically just noise; and all that seems to be occurring in this paper is a little noise-mining, similar to someone looking at thousands of cloud photos, and saying this one or that one looks like an animal. The paper did not test a pre-registered hypothesis, and failed to use a blinding protocol. 
• "Brain Structure Is Key to Understanding Human Cognition."  The post does not say anything to back up this claim, and does not refer to any particular paper. The post does have a graph from the paper here. That paper is a not-very-impressive paper that analyzes brain scans from different subjects doing different things, and gives us some arbitrary statistical analysis to create some table showing certain brain areas more active than others during certain types of activity.  But we get no clear specifics about how much the differences were. Such a table could be created regardless of whether the brain is responsible for creating the mind. 
• "Quantifying and Getting to the Heart of Human Learning." We read no claims of an understanding of a neural basis for learning, and no reference to any paper. 
• "Getting to Know You: New Insights in Facial Recognition." We have a reference to the review article here, which fails to explain how a brain could ever recognize anything, but merely discusses studies trying to show which brain regions are most active when someone is recognizing something. For a discussion of why such studies are not impressive as evidence for brains causing recognition, see my post here. 
• "Disentangling Overlapping Memories in Older Adults." We have a reference to a neuroscience paper which had people perform different memory tasks while having their heads hooked up to EEG machines that read brain wave. Brain wave readings are just noise, and all that is occurring here is a little noise-mining, similar to someone looking at thousands of cloud photos, and saying this one or that one looks like an animal. The paper did not test a pre-registered hypothesis, and failed to use a blinding protocol. The analysis is "keep torturing the data until it confesses" kind of work. 
• "Modeling Learning Across the Lifespan." We do not hear of any neuroscience research that can explain how a brain could learn. 
• "Revealing the Cognitive Sorcery of Human Intelligence." We have an interview with a Harvard neuroscientist  who fails to reveal any brain mechanisms that might explain cognition. There is no link to a specific paper. 

So examining all the posts on this site from January 2020 to March 2025 that had headlines sounding like they might be some substantive evidence for "brains make minds" and "brains store memories" claims, I find no such substantive evidence. We have lots of cognitive neuroscientists claiming to know things they don't know. But a close look at their research always fails to find robust evidence in support of the dogmas that cognitive neuroscientists keep chanting. 

The very existence of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society should remind us that the academia authorities behind "brains make minds" claims and "brains store memories" claims are members of a guild, a society, and a belief community. The utterances of such people at annual meetings of such a society are largely "preserve the faith" utterances comparable to the speeches at Protestant revival meetings or the sermons in Catholic churches, except that a different type of old creed is being taught. 

Postscript: This post was published in March 2025, and when I wrote it I had not yet reviewed all of the 2025 posts of the blog of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Reviewing the remaining 2025 posts, I find no post making any noteworthy evidence claim supporting "brains make minds" or "brains store memories" claims. 

Newspaper Accounts of Memory Marvels (Part 3)

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 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. 

In the newspaper account below from 1890, we seem to have an account of what is now called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, something that reportedly dozens of people around the world have.  We read this:

"Prof. Henkle makes mention of a remarkable character whom he  met at Salem, Mass., in I868, Daniel McCartney by name. McCartney was 51 years of age at that time, but proved to the satisfaction of Mr.  Henkle that he could remember where he had been, the state of the weather, etc., for each day and hour since he was 9 years old; dates covering a period of forty-two years! These remarkable feats were proved and verified by weather records and newspaper files kept in the city, and of the hundreds of tests resorted to to try his powers be never failed of proving himself a wonder of wonders in a single instance."

The account can be read here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=PWA18901025.2.10&srpos=1&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txTI-memory+prodigy-------

I have found the original source for this claim, a paper that documents the case in the greatest detail.  It is the paper "Remarkable Cases of Memory" by W.D. Henkle in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January, 1871). Henkle gives transcripts of several interviews he had with Daniel McCartney, and documents the most extraordinary ability of him to do "in his head" very quickly very hard math problems, as well as his ability to correctly tell the day of the week and weather of random dates long ago, and what he what was doing on such dates, and whether any important news event occurred on such dates. Henkle verified the correctness of the recollections of the weather and what McCartney was doing by asking McCartney on different days about the same dates, and checking whether the answers given were consistent. 

In the newspaper story here, we read of a 90-day scripture memorization contest. We read this about the winner:

"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."

Aitken and JB  performed similar feats when they memorized epic poems of about 10,000 lines, as did George Vogan de Arrezo, who memorized the entire text of Virgil's Aeneid (consisting of 9,896 lines. The New Testament has about 180,000 words, so the feat of Leste May Williams would seem to be far more impressive than the memorization of Virgil's Aeneid, which has only 63,719 words.  At the link here, the claim is made that "Indian youths have more than once repeated the whole New Testament," a feat matching the feat attributed to Leste May Williams in the quote above. 

Below is a description in a newspaper account of memory marvels of ancient times:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016339/1904-01-15/ed-1/seq-7/

An 1895 newspaper account tells us this:

The same article tells us this about a man who must have known the meaning of at least a million words in many different languages:

You can read the full account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015104/1895-04-18/ed-1/seq-6/

Below is a newspaper account of a young girl with remarkable powers of memory:

"Miss Gussie Cottlow, of Chicago, gave an entertainment at the Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening, under the

auspices of the Y. P. S. C. E. She is called

the child pianist and is only twelve years

old. She played the  most difficult pieces from the great composers without a note before her, thus displaying in addition to

her wonderful execution a power of memorization that is in itself a marvel."

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015679/1891-05-31/ed-1/seq-14/#

The 1948 newspaper story below discusses a 10-year-old boy (Pierino Gamba) who had apparently memorized dozens of long orchestral works, well enough to conduct them from memory. We are told he knew "33 complete works by memory."

You can read the account of Gamba here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86075258/1948-09-22/ed-1/seq-6/

In the 1947 newspaper account here, we have another mention of Pierino Gamba. We see the young boy conducting an orchestra, and we see no musical score in front of him:

 It is known that the great Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini had a similar ability. According to the 1920 newspaper article here, he had so well-memorized 150 opera scores that he "never even glances at a score when conducting." During his later conducting years Toscanini's eyesight was too bad for him to read a musical score in front of him. He was able to continue conducting many symphonies and operas, because he had memorized their musical scores. The Encyclopedia Britannica article on Toscanini says, "His phenomenal memory stood him in good stead when, suffering from poor eyesight, he was obliged always to conduct from memory." At the site here, we read this about Toscanini: "It is believed that he conducted 117 operas and 480 concert pieces by memory, both during rehearsals and concerts." An average opera is hours in length. The newspaper account here claims Toscanini memorized one opera score in a single night. 

According to the page here, Pericles Diamandi was able to memorize 50 random digits in 7 minutes, 100 random digits in 25 minutes, and 200 random digits in 2 hours and 15 minutes. On that page, we are told Diamandi repeated a sequence of 200 random digits without any error. Below are 200 random digits. I don't think 1 in 100 people could memorize a sequence that long, even if he had all day:

2 0 9 6 9 1 9 1 8 5 2 2 3 3 1 8 4 7 4 8 5 2 5 7 5 4 9 2 5 7 8 7 5 4 2 7 4 5 1 4 8 6 4 9 3 1 5 1 8 7 0 5 1 9 2 0 9 5 8 9 4 8 4 1 1 9 2 2 5 7 6 2 7 2 5 1 8 1 0 7 9 8 4 1 9 1 3 8 3 8 2 1 3 5 4 5 4 9 0 2 9 5 7 0 1 2 4 9 4 7 3 5 4 1 2 9 1 9 1 4 5 2 0 3 2 0 1 8 5 5 0 3 3 5 7 7 4 2 0 3 7 1 3 9 1 0 8 8 2 1 8 9 0 8 7 0 0 8 5 0 3 5 2 7 6 5 9 3 5 4 3 4 1 2 9 8 6 5 6 4 4 0 3 0 6 2 2 0 8 0 0 6 4 7 9 8 5 9 1 3

The described feat above was far surpassed by the digits memorizations feats mentioned in my post here, discussing results from the World Memory Championships. 

According to the page here, a young man named Terry working at Harvard had an exceptional memory:

The account says Terry could recognize 10,000 faces. This ability is twice as good face recognition as the average person, since according to an article in the journal Science, the average person can recognize about 5,000 faces. The paper here tested 25 random subjects, and estimated that the face recognition per person varied between 1000 and 10,000, the latter matching the face recognition ability attributed above to Terry. 

In the 1955 newspaper account here, we read this about someone's remarkable memorization ability:

Back then papers typically had multiple columns and small print, meaning that memorizing 40 pages of a newspaper would be a stunning feat. 

In the newspaper account here, we read of a 4-year-old memory marvel named Gertie Cochran:

"Little Gertie Cochran, aged 4 years and 7 months, who has more facts and figures in her head than a college professor would contain will come to Lincoln ...Little Miss Cochran will give an exhibition from the stage of her marvelous powers of memory. Her mental store has been acquired from remembering what she has heard others repeat, as she has never been to school a day, nor does she know her letters. Her wonderful powers of readily appropriating everything that she hears were discovered shortly after they began to develop themselves when she was less than a year old. She began to talk at 7 months of age and rapidly acquired a vocabulary which attracted the attention of all who happened to come within the circle of neighbors known to her bumble home in Mount Vernon, ...The little one can recite the facts contained in the Bible from beginning to end, which, although a wonderful mental feat, is only a drop in the bucket to the oceans of mathematical statistics which she has at her tongue's end and which she recites as soon as asked without a minute's hesitation. These figures she has committed to memory by having them repeated to her, and in no case, no matter how long the string of figures, does she require that they be repeated more than twice before she has them fixed in her little head, never to be forgotten for so much ss a second when to repeat them."

Searching for Gertie Cochran's name on the Chronicling America site, I get many matches. On the page here we read this: "She can tell without a moment's hesitation the population of every city in the world, of over 100,000 inhabitants, and can answer most any other question that can be answered. "  The newspaper account here gives this description of Gertie's abilities:

The newspaper article here also mentions Gertie's abilities, hailing her as the girl who "never forgets anything she sees or hears":