For better recall, drop the Adderall and summon your inner Alfred Hitchcock.

by Laurel Berger

Lots of us have trouble remembering the name of the person we just met. But rattling off the names, from memory, of more than 200 people he’s just shaken hands with is a piece of cake for Ron White, a 36-year-old navy reservist and the winner of this year’s USA Memory Championship. The trick, says White, is to focus your attention on what he calls the “outstanding feature” of each face in the crowd: a lantern jaw, a scar on a chin, a stubbly pate. Then things get a little weird. “Say the guy’s name is David and he’s got a high forehead. Because ‘David’ sounds like ‘divot,’ as I’m being introduced to him I’ll imagine a murderous golf club whacking out a divot in the center of his brow.” In fact, says White, the more aberrant the association, the better his recall.

“Whenever gory stuff wanders into the mind, the amygdala, a structure that mediates emotion, sends out an amplified response,” explains Melina Uncapher, a scientist at the Stanford Memory Lab, unsurprised by White’s tactic. An excited amygdala, she adds, “increases the probability that the hippocampus, which presses the ‘record’ button in your brain, will pick up the signal and register the memory permanently.”

Memory starts fading around the age of 30, but when put to the test, mental athletes like White can rocket past high school students. And it’s not necessarily because their brains are wired any differently. In 2002, British researchers memory used MRI technology to examine the brains of 10 expert memorizers, all men, eight of whom were top-ranked competitors in the World Memory Championships (a Wimbledon of the mind, held this November in London). The study found that “superior memory was not driven by intellectual ability or structural brain differences.” As such, almost everyone has the ability to enhance their retention. You just have to work at it.

Instead, many opt for memory-improving drugs, which Sam Wang, associate professor of neuroscience at Princeton, calls “bad stuff.” Most can be harmful, even addictive. For example, Adderall, an amphetamine, juices up the brain’s reward circuitry by inhibiting the uptake of neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Monkeying with these pathways might allow one to capture memories, but it can also cause headaches and nausea. A safer way to increase memory, Wang and others say, is to eat the healthy fats found in nuts and fish, exercise regularly, and get at least seven hours of sleep per night.

Or you can follow Ed Cooke’s lead. A six-year veteran of the competitive circuit’s top tiers, Cooke set out to memorize all 12 books of Milton’s Paradise Lost. (He’s already got the first four under his belt.) To do this, he takes Ron White’s gore technique one step further. Cooke goes on frequent walks, making gruesome associations en route. “If you were trying to memorize all of the British kings, you’d have to remember the first one is Offa. You’d want to envision masses of stinking offal — sheep’s lungs, lambs’ kidneys — landing on buildings and dripping on the people below.”

“Walking a route is probably more effective because your hippocampus is then doubly engaged,” says Uncapher. “The hippocampus is also active during unfamiliar events. That’s why it’s a good idea to get out of your chair and see new things. With practice, cognitive strategies could be more effective than taking a pill.”

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This article originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.