clipped from www.livescience.com

In the experiment, 14 people ranging from age 18 to 40 viewed nearly 3,000 images, one at a time, for three seconds each. Afterwards, they were shown pairs of images and asked to select the exact image they had seen earlier.

The test pairs fell into three categories: two completely different objects, an object and a different example of the same type of object (such as two different remote controls), and an object along with a slightly altered version of the same object (such as a cup full and another cup half-full).

Stunningly, participants on average chose the correct image 92 percent, 88 percent and 87 percent of the time, in each of the three pairing categories respectively. Though 14 subjects may not sound like a huge sample, the fact that they each recalled the objects with very similar rates of success suggests the results are not a fluke.

Though previous studies have never measured such astounding feats of memory, it may be simply because no one really tried.