
An ancient memorization strategy might cause lasting changes to the brain - jaboutboul
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-method-of-loci-brain-fmri-activity-neuroscience
======
achow
There is a very interesting book on this topic - memory competitions - the
book is about how ordinary people using an ancient Roman technique (Memory
palace) becomes extraordinary memorizers. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art
and Science of Remembering Everything [https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-
Einstein-Science-Remember...](https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-
Science-Remembering-
Everything/dp/0143120530/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

I could pickup the technique to help me in my day to day life. For very little
investment in efforts it managed to drastically improve my life.

Context: I consider myself quite challenged when it comes to memorizing
numbers.

The technique described in the book (and in this article) allowed me to
remember details of a financial instrument which involves 32 numbers without
any pattern. Whenever I have to use this instrument I have to input random 6
numbers out of those 32. Before I discovered this technique I had to pull out
the hardcopy of the instrument every time for reference (it was painful -
sometime it will be not in my possession, or it would be buried inside some
cabinet etc.)

The technique that I use/adapted essentially is, I use mental map of a roadway
which I’m intimately familiar with to place the 32 numbers on the various 32
landmark along the way (landmarks can be anything - a funny looking rock next
to the road will also do. The key is one should be able to visualize it very
clearly). So, whenever I need to retrieve numbers I mentally ’drive’ on the
road and start checking out the landmarks. Example: I need to retrieve number
corresponding to landmarks 5,9,15,20.. I start ‘driving’ reach landmark no. 5
and able to remember immediately this landmark is associated with number 29,
then I move on and reach to next landmark, when I ‘reach’ that one I’m able to
recollect that this landmark has number 89 associated with it, and so on…

Somewhere I read that it works so well because as a human species we have
ability to remember geo spatial things much better than abstract things like
numbers. I would guess that it has to do with our hunter-gatherer days when we
were primarily dealing with spatial concepts; brain is hard wired to store
those information much better than things like numbers.

~~~
e19293001
Another good books to suggest are books written by Harry Lorayne[0]. You could
also see his demonstrations in youtube. His books were published long before
Moonwalking with Einstein, most of them are similar to Lorayne's system and I
would recommend it for those who want to improve and train further on
memorizing things.

Also for those who want a book that demonstrates the use of creating a memory
palace, I would recommend The Memory Palace - Learn Anything and
Everything[1]. You'll just learn the 37 plays of Shakespeare wherein almost of
the descriptions were funny.

I also listen to a free audiobook Memory: How to Develop, Train and Use It by
William Walker Atkinson[2].

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lorayne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lorayne)

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Palace-Anything-Everything-
Sha...](https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Palace-Anything-Everything-Shakespeare-
ebook/dp/B007V3FLTE/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1489937650&sr=8-5&keywords=memory+palace)

[2] - [https://librivox.org/memory-how-to-develop-train-and-use-
it-...](https://librivox.org/memory-how-to-develop-train-and-use-it-by-
william-walker-atkinson/)

~~~
kinleyd
+1 for Harry Lorayne. I learned how to memorize long lists, numbers, dates, as
well as decks of cards (backward, forward, by card number or if given a card,
I'd call it's number in the deck). Fun stuff, and quite useful too.

------
mrfusion
Dumb question I've always wondered. How do you reset the memory palace? I feel
like old things you stored would stick in your memory and get confusing.

~~~
wodenokoto
I read "moonwalking with Einstein" and can relay what it said in the book
about this.

You mentally walk through your memory palace and clean it out. You walk
through every room and look at every nook and cranny and imagine them clean.

As far as I understand you don't do this every day, but every once in a while
or before competitions.

~~~
fao_
This sounds analogous to a stop-the-world GC. I wonder whether it's possible
to construct a method for dealing with memory palaces that is more analogous
to a non-stop-the-world GC?

~~~
blunte
If you can figure out how to have two active conscious thoughts
simultaneously, please share!

~~~
WalterSear
Learn to play and improvise on a polyphonic musical instrument.

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/301427-head-full-
symphonies/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/301427-head-full-symphonies/)

------
pps
Some good resources for beginners:
[https://mullenmemory.com/](https://mullenmemory.com/)
[http://artofmemory.com/](http://artofmemory.com/)

You can't just imagine something and remember it forever, combine
mnemotechniques with:
[http://www.retrievalpractice.org/](http://www.retrievalpractice.org/)
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules)
[http://rs.io/anki-tips/](http://rs.io/anki-tips/)

~~~
JoshMnem
Thanks for the mention. :)

If anyone is near SF you can learn how to do the techniques (free) at our
memory club: [http://artofmemory.com/sf](http://artofmemory.com/sf) and train
for our upcoming memory championships (SF Bay Area and internationally) at
[https://memoryleague.com/](https://memoryleague.com/)

------
DoodleBuggy
Source study without The Verge garbage-ification

[http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(17)30087-9](http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273\(17\)30087-9)

------
walterbell
Memory palace tutorial:
[http://artofmemory.com/start](http://artofmemory.com/start)

~~~
emerongi
How easy is it to reuse the memory palace?

Ultimately I'd like to use this technique to remember played cards during a
card game. I can remember most cards quite easily, but often when it comes to
the last 3-8 cards, I can't be 100% sure what they are.

Though I'm not sure it's worth my time. I already remember more cards than my
usual opponents.

~~~
achow
Think remembering birthdays is difficult? Try memorizing two decks of cards in
five minutes or less. That is what Joshua Foer did to win the 2006 U.S. Memory
Championship...

“Moonwalking With Einstein” does just that: It takes the reader on Foer’s
journey from memory novice to national champion.

[http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/foer_moonwalking_with_einste...](http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/foer_moonwalking_with_einstein/)

~~~
gcb0
even the opening of the article is misleading. memory palace is great for
silly memory competitions but I've never seen anyone mention they used it to
remember birthdays.

~~~
pps
I'm using it for that, I have database of all my friends and family. You can
use memory palaces for everything. Just remember that you need to use spaced
repetition as with every other thing you want to know forever.

~~~
summarite
How do you structure it? Do you have a palace ordered by months/dates with
people placed in?

~~~
pps
No, I have these people standing in locations on the journey. Each person have
information stored in parts of their bodies. Place for scenes encoding
birthdays is on their heads, I need to "zoom" there to see it. E.g scene on my
girlfriend's head: Joanna Jędrzejczyk (01) is standing in the heap of
chestnuts (october), while Adam Nowak (19) is stomping dynamically (71) on
something. I'm using PAO ( [http://artofmemory.com/wiki/Person-Action-
Object_(PAO)_Syste...](http://artofmemory.com/wiki/Person-Action-
Object_\(PAO\)_System) ) with Dominic System (
[http://artofmemory.com/wiki/Dominic_System](http://artofmemory.com/wiki/Dominic_System)
) which gives me ability to store up to 6 integers as one image, but I encode
months symbolically and not as numbers.

------
hluska
I started practicing the method of loci when I was in Toastmasters. Over the
course of a year, I went from literally reading my entire speech off of paper,
to speaking without any notes at all. That one change made an unbelievable
difference in my confidence and helped turn me into a pretty damned good
public speaker.

I highly recommend it to anyone who dislikes doing presentations.

~~~
kevinwang
how do you apply this technique to speeches? Like, what do you store in the
locations? Topics, or whole sentences?

~~~
summarite
Key ideas of the speech.

Some people remember transition phrases but that never seemed helpful for me.

In the end spend time remembering a few core ideas and practice the speech
freely a few times.

I actually don't write speeches anymore - i just think of a rough structure
and practice until i get through it in a way i like. Then refine beginning and
ending, make sure the core ideas are clear to me - and it's in my head for a
while. Means I'll never give the same speech twice, but it's also more fun for
me as i learn new things/ideas while speaking :)

------
andai
From PGP's Passphrase FAQ:

> _" Shocking nonsense" means to make up a short phrase or sentence that is
> both nonsensical and shocking in the culture of the user, that is, it
> contains grossly obscene, racist, impossible or other extreme juxtaposition
> of ideas. This technique is permissable because the passphrase, by its
> nature, is never revealed to anyone with sensibilities to be offended._

[https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/passphrase-
faq....](https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~conrad/krypto/passphrase-faq.html)

------
stevehiehn
Interesting, Whenever i have trouble understanding an algorithm/code its
usually because of not being able to remember what everything does. It usually
not a due to a lack of logical reasoning.

~~~
kingmanaz
As much as I disliked my time spent with perl several decades ago, the
terseness did allow for some impressive "stunts" due to the amount of moving
parts one ~80x40 window of code could present to the coder.

God help anyone trying to read that stuff after the fact.

------
motoboi
> one group was trained in the method of loci, and they practiced using an
> online course for six weeks, 30 minutes per day.

Does someone know if the course referred to in the article is available to
anyone?

~~~
JoshMnem
You can train with the techniques at
[https://memoryleague.com/](https://memoryleague.com/)

Start with "images" by linking each image to the next one to form a story, and
pick up the techniques for the other disciplines at
[http://artofmemory.com/start](http://artofmemory.com/start)

~~~
Denzel
Wow, this is why HN is awesome. Just wanted to say thanks for Art of Memory!
It's helped me a lot, especially the discussion forums.

~~~
JoshMnem
Thanks for mentioning the site, and glad to hear that it's useful. :)

------
ozim
I kind of used that technique when I was working as sales for small gastronomy
single-use plasticware.

I went to a customer without notepad, he was telling me what he needs like
20-30 items with amounts, and the way I was able to remember that list was
because at the time person was telling what he needs I was imagining place in
the truck where I had what he needed.

So only reading that story I realised that I was using some technique that I
never heard before.

------
jackreichert
I enjoyed Moonwalking with Einstein, but I felt that it was more story than
technique.

I found [Unlimited Memory]([https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Memory-Advanced-
Strategies-...](https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Memory-Advanced-Strategies-
Productive-ebook/dp/B00I3QS1XQ)) a nice follow-up to the former.

------
hprotagonist
Nearly any habitual task causes "lasting changes to the brain". Plasticity is
not only real, but normative.

~~~
SubiculumCode
This is true. Indeed, the true question usually revolves around transfer. That
is, as your brain changes in response to a certain memory task (e.g.
recognition of visual objects) to get better at it, will those changes
transfer benefits to other types of memory tasks (e.g. recall of visual
objects), or tasks which have a memory component (e.g. navigation).

Transfer has been the bane of most cognitive training paradigms. Improvements
are seen in the same task, but do not seem to transfer to conceptually related
tasks. One idea to overcome problems in transfer has been to identify tasks
which inordinately rely on core cognitive processes of memory (e.g.
recollection vs. familiarity; Yonelinas, 2002), or relational binding (Konkel
& Cohen, 2009). Another idea might be to train using memory strategies, like
loci. Typically that research looks to whether using a particular strategy
benefits memory, and frequently, does that strategy work in a particular
population with poorer memory (e.g. children, adults with Alzheimer)

~~~
summarite
Very interesting. Did these ideas bear fruit?

~~~
SubiculumCode
I diverted my attention to lower hanging fruit in my Ph.D., so stopped
following that literature closely. Overall I think that unless you already
exercise regularly, exercising will have a larger effect on cognitive ability
than any task-based cognitive training regimen.

------
dev24333344
On a dofferent note this story is on the front page from past several days
even though it has only 49 points as of now.

------
jwdunne
How unusual :) I'm reading Conceptual Blockbusting, based on the
recommendation in programming pearls (another great book btw). It just walked
me through the method of loci technique as a demonstration of using long term
memory.

------
skyisblue
Does this explain why it's easy to remember complex concepts using analogies
as we're mapping new ideas to something we're familar with?

