Super-recognition, super-memory, echolocation. Many ordinary people have abilities that the rest of us might call superpowers. But it is possible for us to learn these skills.
Spider-Man can climb walls. Cyclops can shoot energy beams from his eyes. Wonder Woman has both super strength and super agility. Superhero stuff…
Already the ordinary human beings They may not be able to fly, lift buildings or run as fast as a speeding bullet, but many ordinary people have superpowers, or at least what appear to be superpowers. super-human talents.
Some of these abilities may be innate, but others we may be able to learn on our own, explains .
1. Super-Recognition: Faces that Stand Out in the Crowd
Have you ever come across someone and thought: “I know I’ve seen that face somewhere”, but simply can’t remember Who are you from or where did you meet?
They don’t have this problem. These are people who are much better than most at recognizing faces — even the faces of people they haven’t seen in years.
Richard Russellprofessor of psychology at Gettysburg College, first described this condition in a 2009 issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
Super-recognition is the opposite end of the spectrum from , or “face blindness,” to inability to recognize faces, explains Russell.
There are specific brain areas involved in the perception of faces, most notably the Fusiform Area of the Face (FFA), but so far no definitive research has explained the phenomenon of super-recognition.
Like prosopagnosia, overrecognition is a condition somewhat discreet. “We don’t really know we have it unless we do a formal test. Or perhaps we can learn over time that we are seeing things subtly differently than other people,” says Russell.
Even the people who know who are super-recognizers tend to hide that fact. Telling people we recognize them when they aren’t expecting it can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable. seem a little “intrusive”says Russell.
Still, this rare ability may be useful. In the United Kingdom, for example, police forces recruit super-recognizers for tasks such as identifying suspects caught on closed-circuit television and scanning crowds at public events looking for known offenders.
2. Super-Memory and Mnemonics: Practice Makes Perfect
Some people’s superpower is memory. The ones, sometimes called mnemonistsare people who can memorize long lists of items, such as numbers or randomly arranged playing cards.
Em 2025, Vishva Rajakumara 20-year-old student from Puducherry, India, memorized 80 random digits in 13.5 seconds. Naturally, he won the Memory League World Championship.
As impressive as these feats are, mnemonists are more like Batman than Superman: This ability is acquired. Super memorizers to help them remember long lists.
One of these techniques, the two loci methodalso known by the name of , involves assigning each item on the list that you want to memorize a specific place on an imagined mapperhaps the house where we grew up or the neighborhood where we live, explains the memory sports champion Katie Kermode.
After, we mentally walk around the house or neighborhoodcollecting these memories. It’s not quite as simple or as easy as it seems, but it’s effective — and With practice, most people can master it..
The fact that these talents are not innate doesn’t mean that the brains of these memory champions are the same as the brains of the rest of us. A 2017 in the journal Neuron found that practicing these techniques can result in lasting changes in the pattern of brain connections.
Of course, for this technique to work with you, you have to practiceand it only helps with the things you’re trying to memorize. Even super memorizers occasionally forget where they left their car keys.
3. Echolocation: Using Our Ears to Navigate
When you think about echolocationyou probably think of bats or whales. But the .
Second Lore Thalerneuroscientist at Durham University, UK, “the human beings use echolocation, passively, all the time” — even if they are unaware that they are doing it.
When humans echolocate, project clicks made with the mouth or sometimes finger snaps, and sounds bounce off any objects in front of you, explains Thaler in a 2013 publication in Frontiers magazine.
With this technique, it is possible to estimate how far away an object is by the time it takes for the echo to return. Whether the object is to the right or left can be determined noting in which ear the echo is loudest. Thaler has been studying this phenomenon for years, and trains people to perfect the technique.
It was once thought that only blind people were able to master this ability. However, Thaler and his team proved otherwise: they trained blind and sighted people, and found little difference in your ability to learn the method.
“It’s not terribly difficult“, says the neuroscientist.
However, Thaler states that, as it is more beneficial for blind peoplethey are more involved in training, although it is important to note that the technique is a complementnot a substitute for guide dogs and long canes.
“People who use echolocation, what we call expert levelthey are all blind people, because for them it is more useful than for people with normal vision”, he explains.
While the benefits are obvious to blind people, Thaler says that sighted people who have learned the technique report that it increases their general sensitivity to sound. “They really like it,” he says.
Thaler’s investigation found that echolocation is initially processed in the same brain centers than any other sound, such as the primary auditory cortex, and then activate other areasincluding many areas that are associated with vision.
These are just some of the seemingly superhuman characteristics that ordinary people possess. Maybe more of us should wear capes.
