Mental athletes from all over the country competed Saturday at the 13th annual USA Memory Championship in Union Square.

Dozens of contestants from all walks of life, including students, entrepreneurs, scientists, secretaries and business owners, gathered at Consolidated Edison’s Grand Auditorium at 4 Irving Place to prove their mettle at feats of memorization.

The tasks included memorizing the names of 99 people from their pictures, remembering as much as possible of a 200-digit number in five minutes, recalling the order of a whole deck of shuffled cards and learning and reciting a 50-line unrhymed poem.

The competition's founder, Tony Dottino, said he started the event to draw attention to a simple question.

"Does it make sense that something we use everyday in everything we do, we've never been taught how to access it or use it?" said Dottino.

Most of the competitors told NY1 that their powers of recollection did not come naturally, but needed to be developed.

"Before I started this, I would take notes in class and I'd be studying over and over and over again for a test, but now I don't take that many notes," said competitor Sonia Kothari.

Entrepreneur James Jorasceh said he uses memory techniques to make money and help acquire a personal touch in business.

"In the age of BlackBerrys and email and stuff, there really is no substitution yet for the human connection," said Jorasceh.

Competitor Nelson Dellis said his grandmother's death from Alzheimer's disease inspired him to train his mind.

"Watching her suffer from it, she'd forget my name, who I was. And I felt like if I can keep this healthy brain, that's a positive way to live your life," said Dellis.

Ron White of Texas, who won last year's championship and successfully defended his title this year, said that he is able to remember the order of a shuffled deck of cards by associating each card with a mental picture.

"Every card I have a picture for. So the nine of diamonds is my friend Robbie, who I went to high school with, the eight of diamonds is 'bleeding,' and the queen of clubs is a pyramid, like in Egypt. So [with the first three cards] here I got 'Robbie bleeding on a pyramid.' Boom, that goes in my front door....," said White. "So then I just go back and memorize what the pictures were."

White will represent the United States in the World Memory Championship this November in Guangzhou, China.