As we all know that Memory palace or the method of loci is the most effective memory technique ever. I want to know is there any other memory technique which is as good as the memory palace?
Even though Mnemonics and Story method exist, Is there any way to level them up to increase their efficiency?
Correct me if I am wrong but one of the reasons why memory palaces work so well is because they are essentially just lists of things (locations) that have been pre-memorised, and you just attach new information to it.
If you think of something that you already know that you can list in order, you can use that as a hook for remembering things. For example, you can use the lines of your favourite song and ‘place’ items on each line. Or if you already know the age order of the Stark family from Game of Thrones, you can attach information to that too.
I know the beginning, middle and end of all four Toy Story films. That’s 12 items right there! And I can break them down even further with a little studying.
For ideas check out the page on memory palace alternatives.
Peg lists also work well, but it probably depends on what you’re memorizing.
That’s part of the story and the reason why peg lists also work, but the primary reason memory palaces are superior to peg lists is the spacial component. Your brain is really good at navigating though space, as that is what you do every time you go from one place to another during the day.
So they are a little bit more than “just lists of things” whereas a peg list is exactly that “just lists of things”.
No, because that’s not how your biology works. Have a look at this article…
[…] another hippocampus-centered revolution transpired and earned its pioneers a Nobel Prize: the discoveries, decades apart, of two types of cells, which made it clear that the hippocampal region’s fundamental functions included not just memory but also navigation and the representation of two-dimensional spaces.
The first of these came in 1971, when researchers uncovered “place cells,” which essentially fire to indicate one’s current location.
Which answers your follow up question
Yes, my adding a spatial component to them, but then you are effectively turning them into memory palaces.
My theory is that memory works by contextual attachment. Memories are stored in contexts, as part of the scenery of a room, a story. This is demonstrated by the experience of walking into the next room only to forget why you went there. That piece of information is attached to the context of your previous room or location and didn’t get transferred. Go back or think back and there’s a good chance you will recover it. Memories are like velcro, they attach themselves to a context. The more surface the context exposes the more one can memorize. Each newly attached memory increases the opportunities for new attachments. The strange paradox that the more you learn about a topic the easier it is to absorb and retain further information.
I think that if one pays attention when referencing detailed memories that aren’t often used, one will find oneself first remembering a context, a topic, an incident and then query that context for the details it holds. This is my personal experience but I think it’s fairly typical.
In light of that, a Palace is just an identifiable context with surfaces that can be used for attachments. The benefit comes partly from having a ready made suitable structure but also from the ability to take control of the memory process rather than leave it up to the little elves that live in the recesses of the mind to make these decisions. The result is a much more useful memory, customized to your needs.
A Palace is a memory of a physical substrate but almost any kind of complex structure, a story, a poem, that is stable and persistent could serve. When I use my fingers as a 10 chamber Palace, I don’t see them. I access them with my body sense of position and touch just as I do when I type or play an instrument.
Burned into my brain is the telephone number of our apartment in London where I spent my boyhood. MAI 7490 - The exchange disappeared decades ago. I’m thinking this and other useless relics in my catacombs might be made useful as Palaces. If I can’t demolish the building, I might as well use it for storage.
Definitely something hardwired for monkeys to find bananas and avoid lions.
Work with your innate talent succeed. Fight against it fail.
Our working memory for abstractions is horrid. Chimpanzees crush us on multiple item visual recognition. But we use language, have empathy, and a sense of past and future so I suppose it’s only fair that the other Great Apes have better Now sense. That we are so weak is a bummer. It would have been much nicer to have a chimpanzee’s physical strength. First world problems.
I do think that it is valuable to exercise your working memory but it doesn’t have the staying power no matter how much you work it. With a very small number of claimed exceptions. If you have that part of your parietal lobe deformed you likely also have OCD and Anxiety to go with it.
Brain Signatures of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder | Psychology Today Canada
Actually what led me to this question was that I was using the story method a bit while, but little modified, that is, I gave my Stories real life characters and places.
What I eventually found is that it works so well and gets stick quite well.
Eg: I imagine something like:-
Edwin(my real life friend) was vaccinated wrong medicine by the doctor near my old apartment, which altered his genes and he became small in size.(like antman?)
’ Edward Jenner(sounds like gene) discovered the first vaccine, against small pox disease ’
As for Mnemonics I think they are very useful for short lists and orders.
Eg. For the colour sequence I would much likely prefer the acronym Mnemonic VIBGYOR rather than making a memory palace for it.
Even though mnemonics are not as effective as memory palace but, they can be created much more easily and rapidly than a memory palace or story.
Sometimes when I am short of time I look up for mnemonics on the internet and there’s plenty of good ones out there.(although I prefer making my own)
Is there any way to use these mnemonics to increase their efficiency and make them to stick for a longer time?
Do you mean acronyms like VIBGYOR or PEMDAS? A memory palace is also a mnemonic device…
…you just answered it yourself. That is the tradeoff: speed vs accuracy.
Speed versus efficiency again. You could put them into a memory palace, but that’s a bit overkill for just those few colors… the 140 names of the web safe colors would fit that category:
So alternatively, go with Neurons that fire together, wire together. You could for example learn the braille alphabet. Then you could use your major system codes for P-E-M in one and D-A-S in the next location. If you forget the acronym, just translate your PAO back into braille letters via your binary system.
You’re essentially doing the same, but in a different way, so it will also strengthen the connection.
Those of us who use ‘memory palaces’ rely very largely on purely mental constructs–sequences and patterns of loci that exist only in our minds. They may be based on actual real-world locations that we remember well, but when we use them, we just look inward, not at the real thing. The better your visual imagination, the more easily you can apply this method. But there are other helps and techniques as well. For one thing, real places that you actually visit can be very helpful. For a student, for example, a building or a path on campus that you walk regularly can provide visual (and other sensory) correlatives; you can visit it in person, not just in your imagination. And the richer sensory experience can create a stronger mental bond than mere imagination. This is the basis for what Australians call ‘song lines’. Lynne Kelly in “The Memory Code” explains this very effectively and describes how she applies it herself. She also refers to a tradition of the Luba people in Africa involving an object called a ‘lukasa’. A lukasa is board about the size of a notebook covered with carved patterns, coloured stones, studs, beads, and other distinct objects that the Bumbudye, the official knowledge keepers, use as a kind of hand-held song line. They associate the objects and patterns of objects on the board with the stories and lore they need to remember. And while the board is small and the number of objects on it is not very great, the number of patterns that can be found on it is infinite. Something as simple as a fountain pen or a wrist watch can be used in a similar way. This is why we have souvenirs (and ‘souvenir’ means ‘memory’).
There are many avenues to explore in this vein. I recommend Lynne Kelly’s book as an inspiration. But in general, I think any memory process benefits from having sensory correlatives to the subject matter as well as merely imaginary ones. Think mass and texture, smell and taste, melody and rhythm, every way of feeling, it all helps build memory.
How do you figure that souvenir means memory? I could make the case for memory aid, but it surely doesn’t mean memory. Its English equivalent, etymologically speaking, is to subvene. Depending on the context, synonyms for souvenir are:
Thanks to the Battle of Hastings, a lot of French has entered the English language: a cow that ends up on the dinner table is beef (from the French bœuf meaning ox). Similarly, …
…there is a French word souvenir that means memory when it’s a noun; however, …
…when used as a verb se souvenir means to remember. It’s reflexive (“se”), so to remind oneself (of something,) might be a grammatically more accurate translation. Note that there is also the French word mémoire which also means memory.
So just like with the Battle of Hastings, we have Julius Cesar to thank that French is just full of Latin. Here you’ll find the verb subvenire which autocorrect will automatically split into sub + venire for you, as I’ve just noticed. These two in turn are under or upwards (sub) and to come (venire).
From that you get two similar but slightly different meanings: support or assist in the sense of coming to someone’s aid; hence, the meaning of memory aid. Or in the more literal sense of coming up; thus, from the depth of your mind up to the surface.
There is a similarity with tip of the tongue there… where the word is on the tip of your tongue but just won’t come out. So subvenire is the act of:
going down into the depths of your memory and retrieve (bring to the surface) some information and a noun that helps you to achieve that would be considered a memory aid.
If you take the original Latin back into English, you end up with the verb to subvene (which I’ve mentioned at the very top) or the noun subvent (support or assist by the payment of a subvention). Now, autocorrect is highlighting subvene, so probably in the 1,600 SAT category then; but intervene (it’s more common cousin) works the same…
If you intervene, you come between something in order to stop it. “Inter” is Latin for between. So when you subvene, you come under something to support it.
I think this makes more sense than simply saying ‘souvenir’ means ‘memory’… that’s like me saying, bra means good in Swedish because it keeps them from falling into the soup. After all, you’re talking about one possible French translation.
Fine.
I could not agree more, Jimon! The books by Lynne Kelly completely freed me from limitations how many and what kind of memory palaces I can have. Not only… now I only pick memory palaces that will benefit me in some other ways as well (like famous paintings and etc ) and not worrying about creating artificial memory palaces or using some movies for information I need to memorize. Song lines, lukasas and etc… truly opened a different world for me. I know other members/competitors/Josh in his book were talking about using sensory experiences but, for some reason, it only clicked with me after I’ve read the books by Lynne Kelly.
Mnemonics are very effective but limited in their depth and complexity. They exploit verbal structures rather than visual or spatial structures. It’s more akin to a linked list or a journey than a palace. IMO one could make a verbal memory palace by adding artificial details to a well known story or poem.
The Major System is a scheme for constructing mnemonics.
Ahh the power of mnemonics and mental images, now those of us whose Swedish is limited to ‘Abba’ and IKEA and who had absolutely no desire to learn more, will forever be unable to forget at least one Swedish word 
It’s probably just semantics, but the Major system is a mnemonic—that is, it’s a technique for memorizing information, which is the definition of a mnemonic. (Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood your post, but it seemed to me that you were equating “mnemonics” with a specific type of memory aid or technique.) A memory palace is a mnemonic, just as are the peg system, the Major/Dominic/etc. systems, acronyms, sentences like “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” etc.
Bob
I rely a lot on visual mnemonics and songs. I find that traditional memory palaces fail to easily stick for me, and so I use my fail-safe methods.
You can explore with every combination of it
Memory palace it self is strong, but you can play with zoom in zoom out to make more, or you can play with mindmap
Zooming in and zooming out - hey, nice idea! That’s something I’m great at visualizing (I have mentally zoomed in from an atom to the universe too many times).