How to improve visual memory

General Memory Chat
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Can anybody tell me how can i improve my vissual memory and imoprove my imagination and combine this with my logical thinking to understand concepts better

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Hi Sahil,

First, get an object and examine it: it’s color, shape, and size
Concentrating on the object will allow you to visualize it much more easily.

Second, close your eyes and try to visually “see” the object in your minds eye.

I tend to add the colors ((if it has colors)), smells (if it gives off an aroma) and tastes (if it’s a food) when I visualize a thing.

Stefos

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It takes practice as the poster above says. Oftentimes when I have a brain fart and need an image I google random pictures and pick one.

The minds eye requires training and can be made into a fascinating memory tool. Using other senses is important as the above poster states but make sure they all revolve around the visual axis since vision is the most complex sense we have and has the most encoding ability (uses the most brain to function, thus crosslinks more synapses when you use it than for say sound or smell)

If we were dogs I would say smell would be more important!

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I would also say that creating passion about the thing to be visualized or learned it really quite vital.

Without passion about something, the willingness to do anything regarding it, including memorize is severely hampered.

Stefos

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Anymore advice or some training regime can anyone suggest

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within the past 6 months i started trying to feel the image in my hands. It also helps to move your hands around as if you are manipulating the image. For example try to picture a pencil without hand movements, then do the same while making linear motions as if if feeling all the surfaces of the pencil.

Just make sure you are at home otherwise people might think you have issues

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:sweat_smile:

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A good way to improve creativity is to spend about 5 minutes picking any random object and coming up with as many ways to use it as possible. For this example I’ll use a pencil.

  1. Spin it very fast and use it to fly.
  2. Throw it like a spear.
  3. Thrust it into the ground and raise a flag for an ant city.
  4. Use it like an Ice pick to climb a mountain.
  5. Split it in half and make it into chop sticks.
  6. Imagine the pencil grow and make it into a tree house.

I hope you found this helpful.

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Do techniques in this article work

Pls anyone can advice

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You could try and spend a weekend learning Toki Pona for example:

There are only 120 words in that language, so after that you have to combine these words to “describe” new words. So without a “lemon” you now have to call it “yellow fruit” and depending on the context that could be good enough (maybe not). Either way it makes you think about the essentials that give meaning to a particular object.

A “butterfly” has little to do with “butter” or “flies”. In French it’s a “papillon” and in turn a “papillon de nuit” (night butterfly) is a “moth”. In English you differentiate “meat” and “flesh” in German both translate to “Fleisch”. A “lobster” in Chinese is “韙號” (the characters for “dragon” and “shrimp”) and a “phone” is â€œç””èŻâ€ (the characters for “electricity” and “words”). If dragon shrimps sounds funny to you, then consider a dragonfly in English. A “seal” in German is a “Seehund” (sea dog)

Point being, you will have to think about how to describe what we all consider common day things. Kinda like what @Gaia is saying too but from an etymological point of view: spend time with the object and try and figure out its essence.

So consider spending the time it takes to learn 120 root words and very little grammar rules and then find a chat or forum where you can speak Toki Pona with others.

PS: not sure if that will necessarily improve your “visual memory” but you also talked about “improving your imagination and logical thinking” in your original post
 and it will definitely do that.

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Thank u very much for ur advice @bjoern.gumboldt . it is working well for me.

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Hi everybody ,
Happpy new year to all of u and thank u for all of u . But i am having problem ,
Actually i want to see pictures while reading text from a textbook and every word i listen that is imp i want to make a pictute , color , smell , music and other sensory perceptions like s from the chapter " man who knew too much" in the book ’ moonwalking with einstien ’ and also visualize concepts like feymann and einstien more like synesthestates . i want to develop a multisensory recall and memorisation system with my visual memory for all important concepts . i want my visual memory to improve for the concepts and all the chemical reactions. I want an image developing memory like will hunting in movie goodwill hunting. . can anyone help . @Josh , @SilvioB , @user_7e ,
@bjoern.gumboldt , @LikeARollingStone

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I’m not sure exactly how to do all of that, but practicing visualization should improve it. I haven’t seen Goodwill Hunting and am not sure exactly how Einstein and Feynman visualized things. I read that Feynman was obsessed with calculus and solving puzzles, so he probably developed certain mental skills from that constant practice. I think the brain gets good at things through constant, deliberate practice with good form.

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Can u pls tell me how to practice visualization. Like a good technique with a routine @Josh

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This is probably something that doesn’t just come from one moment to the other, it takes a lot of practice.

But you can definitely improve your ability to visualize/think in pictures, even with just practicing 15 minutes a day. Since I started using memory techniques (I started around Spring/Summer 2017), I have gotten much better at visualizing. I started with easy things like a shopping list, then just random words and now I mainly use memory palaces to memorize laws/jurisdiction. In the beginning it was hard to come up with images for abstract legal terms, but now it has become very natural to me. Memorizing random words on Memory League is probably what helped me most. When you have to come up with an image for a word very quickly, you force your brain to get better and faster at visualizing. The good thing is, when I memorize these legal things for work/study, I tend to get better at memorizing random words too (and vice versa).

So my advice would be, don’t just try to think in pictures but also use the techniques productively for work or study. It can be exhausting in the beginning, but the more you practice, the easier it gets.

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I don’t know if I have any more suggestions for that other than what I wrote above and here. I’m not able to do those things that you mentioned in your post. :slight_smile:

General advice for improving any skill:
“Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent.” If you want to be good at something, practice slowly and deliberately, with good form. Improving your visualization ability may take a long time, but I think it’s possible.

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Some time ago I figured out a method to improve visualization to a degree you wouldn’t believe to be possible. Unfortunately the effect lasts only for some days (unless I take a longer break and start over again). It also didn’t help me with memory sports at all.

I think you shouldn’t overestimate imagination. From my experience there are lots of clear mental pictures when you learn something new. But they start to fade with growing experience. In the end you just ‘know’ what to do when there is a task at hand, with your once so sharp images being only blurred fog in the back of your brain. You are then rather thinking in ideas, concepts and templates. For example you don’t see a sharp picture of a dog but a faint silhouette, and you ‘know’ that it has four legs and a good nose. The same applies for other things.

Just my 2 cents

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My images are never really that clear. But I see what you mean with images fading over time. With spaced repetition it seems to be less dramatic though. I usually don’t just rely on the actual image when trying to learn something for long term, but I bring in emotion, action and how I would react, when confronted with that action/image. This helps me still getting the information out of it, even if the image is very unclear.

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Hello Finwing, could you please tell us more on this method ?

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Can u pls explain more @Finwing

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