Having read Moonwalking with Einstein years ago when it came out I haven’t really started to dive into creating my own memory palaces until fairly recently, mostly because I am interested, and also because I teach high school science and now want to introduce my students to these techniques.
But before I introduce these techniques to my students, I need to understand them for myself.
I understand how to set up a memory palace but my question is, does it really matter if the memory palace is based on a real location?
I have gone on Youtube and seen some very cool VR style walk throughs of interesting locations like the Louvre, the British Museum, etc., and I could see myself taking screen shots of locations and linking images to them. But this takes time and effort and some locations have very interesting (sometimes confusing) internal constructions
My question is, would it simply be better and more efficient to create an imaginary Memory Palace for a topic thereby saving time, rather than doing a walk through, screen capture, etc of a real location that I could capture location images for? Do I stay in the Matrix or use the real world?
Is there any evidence, anecdotal or research-based that supports one or the other?
Thanks in advance for any insights and suggestions!
No, essentially any well known structure real or imagined can be pressed into service.
The advantages of using a real building or location that is familiar is that you already have it memorized and perhaps having walked through it, Have a keen sense of the layout. It’s an easy way to get started.
Constructing your own fantasy palaces is more work but it offers more possibilities including the option of tailoring the structure to suit the information it is to hold. Also, in your imagination, size and space are not constraints. You can fit the Palace of Versaille into one compartment of a jewelry box and still traverse its chambers.
This thread has a lot of ideas about memory palaces:
As a science teacher of High School wouldn’t you have an already existing memory palace being the Periodic Table of Elements. If you know the elements in sequential ‘atomic mass’ order than you have a ready to go to “Palace” that you could link other Peg Words to?
I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to be going off on an inefficient memory palace tangent by either focussing on the real or imaginary.
And you also answered a further question that I was going to post about tailoring a memory palace to the topic that you wanted to learn, ie. a Louvre walk through to remember Art, etc, so thank you for that!
Ok, interesting…I hadn’t even thought in those terms!
So if I understand correctly, the order itself is the Memory Palace? And being able to tag every fifth location would give me places, in the list of elements, to jump to and navigate from?
If that is the case, it would simply things immensely and allow us to focus on building strong imagery for each element…
The Periodic Table of Elements can also be sung as a song here are a couple of threads you may find interesting:
And Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) sing it to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major General”. The Singer Rhianna (guest on the Graham Norton show) looks clearly embarrassed for him:
And the best (the original version) by Tom Lehrer whom Daniel Radcliffe was referring to
It depends on what you mean by better and more efficient!
I created an imaginary football training facility to store info on Super Bowls (winner, loser, score.) I did this so that I could control the layout and make each section represent a decade. This made for easy navigation and recall… BUT it took quite a long time to come up with the layout, the areas, and the individual loci. It probably would have been faster and more efficient to find a “real” location to learn online, but it was cool custom fitting a palace perfectly to my data set.
In terms of utility, it works just as well if not better than some real life locations I’ve used.
My concern for the imaginary palace would be for students with aphantasia - no visual imagery. It is why I always use physical palaces. That would be very few of your students, but you will have them. I would suggest checking with students how well they can remember imaginary palaces, and even let them decide which would be better - although a palace for the whole class would work best because of the group encoding.
This is a very good point to be aware of when teaching others! I was almost completely unaware that aphantasia existed before joining this forum. Fascinating how there are so many different ways that brains process information!
Thanks for the insights! I hadn’t even thought about the aphantasia aspect. It would be great to give them a choice of virtual vs real depending on their preference.
@fred2 's suggestion of the periodic table demonstrates that completely abstract structures can be used.
If you’ve done much programming you will understand that the data structure itself can encode a lot of information - for example knowing that all the elements in one column share properties saves having to memorize those facts individually for each element. Likewise, with hierarchical information a hierarchical structure can encode the common information about an entire subtree just in the parent node. Knowing that aardvarks are grouped with mammals already tells you a lot about aardvarks even if you’ve never looked them up.
Interesting! I found that I was spending more time in a real environment looking for the perfect location etc. When I was doing a virtual tour of the Louvre I was spending A LOT of time searching and not a lot of time locking down locations, sort of an “analysis paralysis” situation. It just felt easier to build my own and more efficient with my time. Still experimenting though…
Personally, I use both but prefer fantasy palaces (imaginary palaces)
For me it’s like having an infinity blank sheet. As said before you can tailor the palace for your needs. The fact that it’s generated from my imagination means the route is easily remembered.
One aspect i have discovered is that palaces in the open/the big outdoors have so much potential than indoor ones. The indoor palaces seem to need repetitious loci or locus: another door, painting, sofa, chair, bathroom…(I have a real problem with ghosting)
The outdoor palaces have endless potential for fantasy routes, structures, objects and buildings. I’m not limited by a familiar structure. I can add what and where I want.
Of course your milage may vary.
You may want to try mixing real and imaginary. I find that very useful.
One thing about phantom palaces: try to get the layout right the first time as any changes may be frustrating to deal with.
For me using outside palaces frees me from a claustrophobic feeling I get using internal palaces. That’s a personal problem I have I suppose.
Admittedly, I’ve never tried using an imaginary palace. But it seems to me that much of the point of a memory palace is to locate images within a well-known location, a place so familiar you could navigate it in the dark.
If you must work to recall both how you arranged the imagined palace in addition to all of the images, that seems like unnecessary stress to me.
TBH, I have tried working with virtual memory palaces.
It’s not a good idea.
Because we are not familiar with that location, it adds the added burden or “memorizing the locations” in addition to the information we are trying to memorize.
I have found it a drain of time to build rooms and locis from virtual palaces and then first trying to memorize objects and then the information there.
Our brain naturally works with our spatial environment. There is no dearth of real locis. They work!
Sometimes I revisit old threads to coalesce my thoughts on using MPs and similar, and this insight strikes me as a key enabler for new comers!
I think establishing hierarchies and combining or referencing shared attributes has felt like a bit of a road block for me.
How would you go about visualising shared attributes across different data sets? Do you use a particular recurring motif/ symbol to represent something like weight?
