page_title: Recall (memory)
section_title: Total recall
hierarchical_section_title: Recall (memory) / In popular culture / Total recall
caption_attribution_description: Jorge Luís Borges 1951
context_page_description: Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall. Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of humans and animals.
  Two main theories of the process of recall are the two-stage theory and the theory of encoding specificity.
context_section_description: The Argentinean author, Jorge Luis Borges wrote the short story Funes the Memorious in 1944.  It depicts the life of Ireneo Funes, a fictional character who falls off his horse and experiences a head injury.  After this accident, Funes has total recall abilities.  He is said to recall an entire day with no mistakes, but this feat of recall takes him an entire day to accomplish.  It is said that Borges was ahead of his time in his description of memory processes in this story, as it was not until the 1950s and research on the patient HM that some of what the author describes began to be understood.  A more recent instance of total recall in literature is found in 
  is in Stieg Larsson's books The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in which the lead character, Lisbeth Salander remembers anything she reads, indicating she has total recall ability. Another example is in Dan Brown's books The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, in which the main character, Dr. Robert Langdon, a religious iconography and symbology professor at Harvard University, has almost total recall ability. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, the main character, Christopher Boone, is a 15-year-old autistic boy with total recall abilities.
  Total recall is also popular in television. It can be seen in Season 4 of the television show "Criminal Minds", in which the character Dr. Spencer Reid claims to have total recall ability. Agent Fox Mulder from the television show "The X-Files" has a photographic memory, a popular term for total recall.  Also, the character of hospital resident Lexie Grey on the television show "Grey's Anatomy" has total recall ability.
caption: Jorge Luis Borges in 1951
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