This is a continuation of my previous journal, where I introduced an MVP (Minimum Viable) Mental Model inspired by Bruno’s Memory Wheel.
In the previous experiment, I wanted to answer one simple question:
Can our spatial memory be used as a database for storing information?
The answer, at least from my experiments, was yes.
The next step is much more ambitious: building a complete memory wheel that can encode the sounds of the English language.
Bruno designed his original system around the sounds of the language he spoke. Likewise, my version is designed specifically for English. It is not intended to cover every sound from every language.
The Structure of the Memory Wheel
Imagine five circular rings, one inside another, like five concentric circles. Each outer ring is larger than the one inside it.
Bruno’s original system used six or seven rings, but for simplicity I reduced mine to five rings.
Each ring contains:
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30 main slots (one for each sound or character group)
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Each main slot is divided into 5 sub-slots
That gives:
5 rings × 30 slots × 5 sub-slots = 750 unique positions.
These 750 positions become the building blocks of the memory system.
Instead of storing complete words directly, the idea is to combine up to five of these positions together to represent a word.
The number of possible five-slot combinations is over 2 trillion, which is more than enough to build a very large mental database. If more capacity is ever needed, additional memory wheels can simply be added.
A Practical Example
Let’s start with the first character: A.
The first slot represents the sound A.
Instead of containing just one sound, that slot is divided into five vowel combinations:
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AA
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AE
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AI
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AO
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AU
So one slot becomes five smaller sub-slots.
This same structure is repeated for every character across all five rings.
Now focus only on the AA sub-slot.
The sound AA exists once on every ring, meaning there are five different AA positions stacked on top of one another.
Imagine shining a laser through the rings so that it passes through every AA position at the same time.
Although every position represents the same sound, each ring gives that sound a different meaning.
In my simplified system:
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Ring 1 = Character
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Ring 2 = Action
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Ring 3 = Object
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Ring 4 = Supporting character (bystander)
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Ring 5 = Environment or circumstance
The sound stays the same, but its meaning changes depending on which ring it occupies.
One Sound, Multiple Meanings
An analogy that helped me understand this is the idea of multiple possible states in physics.
In quantum mechanics, a system can have multiple possible states until it is measured. Whether or not this analogy is scientifically exact, it helped me think about Bruno’s design.
Similarly, the sound AA can represent different things depending on which ring it appears in.
For example, in my system:
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Character → Aryan
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Action → Arcing
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Object → Ark
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Supporting character → Akuma
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Environment → Arctic
Each word begins with the same sound, making it easy to convert a spoken sound into a vivid mental image.
Current Progress
So far, I have completed the memory wheel up to the letter C.
That means I have created visual representations for:
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3 character groups
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Across all 5 rings
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Giving me 75 completed sub-slots
There is still a long way to go before I reach all 750 sub-slots, but the framework is now working.
Challenges
The biggest challenge has been finding vivid visual images for every sound.
Some sounds naturally produce memorable images. Others, such as CU, are much harder to visualize.
Another lesson I learned is that isolated images are easy to forget.
The images become much more memorable when they interact with one another inside a single scene. Instead of remembering five separate objects, the brain remembers one connected story.
Building this system has been slow and mentally demanding, but it has also been one of the best exercises in visualization and associative thinking that I have tried. Whether or not this becomes a complete replacement for traditional memorization, it has already shown me how powerful spatial memory can be when combined with meaningful visual associations.