How fast can humans memorize?
Why memory-sport records follow a power law—and what its lifetime extrapolation suggests.
Read the explainer →Research
Publications.
Selected research by Bastian Wiederhold, from memory techniques and cognitive processing to mathematical models of populations and epidemics. Preprints are labelled separately from peer-reviewed journal articles.
Research explained
Start with the questions.
How fast can humans process information?
What mental calculation reveals about proposed limits of high-level thinking.
Read the explainer →Memory & cognition · Preprints
Mental calculation speeds surpass known limits for high-level cognition
bioRxiv · Revised 4 March 2026; first posted 2025
A study of mental calculation speeds and their implications for estimates of high-level cognitive processing.
The speed limits of memory
bioRxiv · Preprint
An investigation of the speed limits of human memory.
An introduction to memory competitions, records and techniques
arXiv:2504.06747 · Revised 29 August 2025
An overview of memory competitions, the development of records and the techniques behind competitive memorisation.
Preprints share research before journal peer review. They should not be read as established scientific consensus.
Probability & mathematical biology
A new stochastic SIS-type modelling framework for analysing epidemic dynamics in continuous space
Stochastic Processes and their Applications · 195, 104896
A stochastic framework for modelling epidemic dynamics in continuous space.
Central limit theorems describing isolation by distance under varying population size
ALEA, Latin American Journal of Probability and Mathematical Statistics · 22, 283–330
Mathematical results on spatial population genetics when population size fluctuates.
Central limit theorems describing isolation by distance under various forms of power-law dispersal
ESAIM: Probability and Statistics · 29, 113–157
Mathematical results on spatial genetic relatedness under long-range dispersal.
A Λ-Fleming-Viot type model with intrinsically varying population size
Electronic Journal of Probability · 29, article 125
An extension of a classical population-genetics model to populations whose size varies intrinsically.