Bhubaneswar, April 11: Students like 14-year-old Sambhavan and her cousins are planning to join a memory training programme during their summer vacations. This programme is meant to hone study skills, improve concentration and shed fears regarding examinations.

“Summer camps offering music, dance, painting and swimming lessons are now passé. We were looking for something new and this memory development programme sounds interesting,” said the teenager.

About half a dozen institutes offering memory training programmes to students have come up in the city. These courses are not only fun, but also assure enhancement of study skills in an interesting manner.

These institutions are offering training in various memory techniques, concentration techniques, meditation, examination skills and personality development.

“Our techniques begin with identifying the memory profile of individual students. The training is designed and implemented accordingly. The methods are clinically proven, scientific and help students to develop their memory and mental ability,” said Debabrata Panda, founder, Root Thought. This institute will run its programmes from May 6 to May 14.

It will teach students to improve brain power and performance, stress management, concentration techniques, creativity and fluid intelligence, tackling mental block, techniques to develop conceptual clarity and problem solving ability, goal cognitive exercises, reading methodology and a spontaneous memory.

“We also invite parents to accompany the students to the workshop. It is great to provide children with better memory and a stress free and confident spirit,” said Panda. The memory training programmes works on functions of the mind, be it the conscious, sub-conscious or super conscious mind. Students are taught to register and recall what they hear and see through visuals, colours, brain exercises and therapies.

“The working capacity, creativity and success of a person depend on his memory and his recollection. An average person uses only 10 to 15 per cent of his memory. Even great scientists use about 20 to 24 per cent of their brain’s capacity,” said Bibhu Hota, founder of Manthan, a similar institute.

“Modern psychology proves that it is possible for a person to improve his memory and utilise power for better quality of life.

“Some of these methods are acronyms, acrostats, link method, international coding system, transformation of numbers to pictures, decoding pictures to numbers, association, concentration and techniques.

These programmes are designed for school students between Classes VI and XII in the age group of 11 to 17 years.