A few years ago, my friends and I tried the Method of Loci to memorize a list of random objects by placing them virtually in a familiar room. Surprisingly, this method worked really well; we had way better recall than just trying to remember the list without any strategy.
Yep it’s an incredible technique. I use it to remember key ideas from audiobooks, long enough to jot them down, sometimes the next day. Incredibly powerful
Highly recommend the book about him by Luria. Fascinating to see how his amazing gifts caused him problems. He really struggled to synthesize and summarize things and see the big picture, bottom line; he would get bogged down in details. Also, it was exhausting for him to read anything because it would flood his mind with distracting images and sensations since he would automatically memorize everything. I wonder how many calories he burned a day just from thinking so much.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing! The only part that seems kind of regular is the pulse change. I assume imagining a tranquil situation to lower one's pulse is kind of like meditation and should probably be achievable for many? Not sure about raising the pulse though, that seems more difficult.
I've always found lowering pulse to be more difficult, as calm mental states are easily disturbed by random thoughts and sense impressions, and emotions tend to persist unless replaced by something more captivating.
Raising the pulse should work by thinking of stressful situations. Or plausible scenarios that you never really want to experience. Maybe it's easier for people prone to such thinking.
I think you are talking of situations of maintaining a low pulse rate in normal situations. However, there are also situations where it is urgent to lower heart rates. A pulmonary specialist advised me to either do pursed lip breathing (or breathing where the exhale is much longer than inhales) or gently do a carotid massage.
It’s awesome to see these extraneous physiological techniques linked to synesthesia. Because we all have the ability to explore memory palaces, number of loci, etc. it’s just that his brain was hardwired to hallucinate them thus promoting already known cognitive devices.
