If you'd told Alex Mullen a few years ago that he was capable of memorising a whole pack of cards in 21.5 seconds, he would have said you were being ridiculous. His memory wasn't anything special - "below average" even. Fast-forward to today and Mullen, a medical student at the University of Mississippi, has just been crowned the World Memory Champion.

如果在几年前，你告诉阿历克斯·马伦（Alex Mullen），他能在短短 21.5 秒时间内记住一整副扑克牌，他会以为你的想法很可笑。他的记忆力没什么特别的，甚至还"低于平均水平"。时间来到今天，已经成为美国密西西比大学的一名医科生的马伦已然荣登世界记忆力锦标赛冠军的宝座。

Mullen told me about a book he'd read called Moonwalking with Einstein. The book was written byJoshua Foer, a journalist who attended a US memory championship to write about what he thought would be "the Super Bowl of savants". Instead, he found a group of people who had trained their memory using ancient techniques. Foer started practicing the techniques himself, and went on to win the competition the following year.

马伦告诉我，他此前读过一本书，名为《与爱因斯坦月球漫步》（Moonwalking with Einstein）。这本书的作者是记者乔舒亚·福尔（Joshua Foer），他参加过一次美国记忆力锦标赛，书中描述了他所认为的"超级记忆专家"。他发现一些人会利用古老的记忆术训练自己的记忆力。于是，福尔也开始用这些记忆术进行自我培训，在随后一年的记忆力锦标赛上，他一举夺得冠军。

Mullen was spurred on to improve his own memory by Foer's story. "I definitely didn't have a great natural memory," he said, "but in 2013 I started training using the techniques that Foer had talked about." A year later, Mullen came second in the US memory championship. "It was really motivating, I kept practicing and eventually ended up at the 2015 world memory championship."

受到福尔经历的启发，马伦决定也要改善自己的记忆力。他说，"我天生的记忆力肯定不怎么样，但 2013 年，我开始利用福尔所说的记忆术开始训练"。一年后，马伦就在美国记忆力锦标赛上荣获亚军。"我深受激励，于是坚持训练，最终在 2015 年世界记忆力锦标赛上赢得冠军。"

The championship took place in December in Guangzhou, China. It consists of 10 rounds of mental challenges, which include memorising as many numbers as you can in an hour, remembering as many faces and names as you can in 15 minutes, or committing to memory hundreds of binary digits. The final event is always the speed card round, where competitors memorise a single pack of cards as fast as possible.

锦标赛于 12 月份在中国广州举行。比赛分 10 轮记忆力挑战，其中包括：在一小时内尽可能记住最多的数字；在 15 分钟内尽可能记住最多的面孔和名字；或者要记住成百上千的二进制数字。最后的环节总是要比赛记忆扑克牌：参赛者要尽快记住一副扑克牌。

Mullen was in second place when they began the final task. He looked at the cards for 21.5 seconds - just one second faster than Yan Yang, the competition leader. It was enough to push Mullen into first place, winning the championship.

在最后的比赛环节，马伦还暂居第二位。他用 21.5 秒时间观察扑克牌，这个时间只比领先的 Yan Yang 短了 2 秒钟，但这已足以将马伦送上比赛的冠军宝座。

Mullen now holds the world record for remembering as many numbers as possible in one hour - 3,029. "A few years ago, I would have thought that was impossible," he says. He also holds a half-dozen US records, which include him memorising 3,888 binary digits in 30 minutes.

马伦现在保持着在一小时内记住最多数字的世界记录：3,029 个数字。他表示："要是在几年前，我会认为这根本就不可能"。他还保持着半打美国记录，其中包括，在 30 秒内记住 3,888 个二进制数字。

Enter your mind palace

进入记忆宫殿

If you're unable to remember a grocery list, let alone thousands of ones and zeros, these feats of memory may seem somewhat unattainable. But according to Mullen, anyone can do it. "You just have to create a mind palace," he says.

如果你连购物清单也记不住，那就更别说成千上万个数字了，这种惊人的记忆力简直是不可企及的事情。但据马伦说，任何人都能做得到。他表示："你必须要建立一个记忆宫殿"。

For those of you who aren't familiar with Sherlock Holmes, a mind palace is an image in your mind's eye of a physical location that you know well. Perhaps it's your house or your route to work. To remember many items, be it cards or groceries, you just walk through your mind palace and drop off an image of each item at specific places along the route.

对熟悉神探夏洛克·福尔摩斯的人而言，记忆宫殿就是脑海中自己所熟悉的实际位置所组成的画面。它也许是你的家，也许是你上班的路线。为记住很多东西，无论是扑克牌还是生活用品，你只要在脑海中走一遍，把各种东西的影像放在特定的位置就好了。

You just walk through your mind palace and drop off images at specific places along the route

你只要在脑海中走一遍，把各种东西的影像放在特定的位置就好了。

The technique is attributed to a Greek poet called Simonides of Ceos, who lived in 477 BC. Legend has it that Simonides was at a dinner party held by a rich and mean nobleman. Halfway through the banquet he was called outside to meet a messenger. As he stepped through the door, the roof over the banquet caved in, killing everyone inside. As friends and relatives sorted through the remains of their loved ones, crushed beyond recognition, Simonides thought back to where he had been sitting. Suddenly, he could picture speaking to the guest opposite him, another was sitting to his left, a third was at the head of the table; he realised he could identify the bodies by remembering the exact order in which everyone had been sat. This event was said to have led him to discover that the best way of remembering a group of objects or facts is to attach images to a specific and orderly location.

这种记忆术还要归功于生活在公元前 477 年的希腊诗人西蒙尼德斯。据传说，西蒙尼德斯曾参加一个富有而吝啬的贵族所举办的晚宴。宴会进行中，他被叫到外面去见一名信使。在他出门时，宴会厅屋顶突然坍塌，宴会厅里的客人无一幸存。亲朋好友纷纷前来寻找亲人遗体，但都已面目全非，于是，西蒙尼德斯设法回忆坐在宴会桌旁的人。突然，他想起自己和宴会桌上坐在对面的人说话的情景，另一个人坐在自己左侧，第三个人坐在宴会桌最前面；他意识到，自己能按回忆起来的准确座位顺序，帮助辨认客人的遗体。据说，这件事让西蒙尼德斯发现，记住一系列对象或事实的最好记忆方法是，将影像与按特定顺序排列的位置联系起来。

When I see the seven of diamonds and the five of spades I think of Michael Jordan

看到扑克牌方片 7 和黑桃 5 时，我想到的是 NBA 的迈克尔·乔丹（Michael Jordan）

Centuries later, Eleanor Maguire at University College London and her colleagues scanned the brains of 10 people who had placed at the highest levels of the world memory championship. She hoped to identify whether they had any structural brain differences that predisposed them to having such an extraordinary memory. The tests could not establish any difference in intellect, nor any structural changes in their brains. The only difference appeared to be in the preferential use of three areas involved in navigation. The super-memorisers were better at remembering purely because they were walking around their mind palaces.

几百年后，英国伦敦大学学院的埃莉诺·马奎尔 （Eleanor Maguire）和同事扫描了 10 个人的大脑，他们都曾在世界记忆力锦标赛上名列前茅。她希望能发现让他们具有非凡记忆力的异于常人的特殊大脑结构。但试验既未发现任何智力差别，也未发现他们的大脑有什么特殊结构。惟一的区别似乎是，这些人会优先使用大脑中与导航相关的三个区域。有超凡记忆力的人擅长记住东西，完全是因为他们会在自己的记忆宫殿中四处走动。