Last week I attended a great workshop on memory - specifically on how to remember things. I know that this is a topic of perennial interest - even if it's just that you can't remember peoples' names (like me). And if you took the ACLAM boards exam this past week - congratulations for buckling down to all that studying and best of luck!
So before we get to the memory/mind palace let's talk about a few basics. I think everyone knows by now that highlighting is a pretty inefficient way to try and commit something to memory. Ditto reading something through multiple times. What works is making the brain work hard and pay attention - specifically by thinking about it, testing yourself on the material etc. That's probably why flash cards work, but only if you really think about the ones you get wrong! Write yourself questions about the material, close your eyes and see how many facts you can recall from what you just read, even writing summary notes in your own words - it all works better than just reading something.
For more information check out this course from UCSD. I used to write myself notes that were crammed all over the page with boxes, colors, arrows, whatever. When I came to recall the material I actually visualized the page - which brings me to the first thing I learned in the memory workshop.
Memory is primarily visual.
Because memories are visual, we were told, you need to actively store them as pictures. As a kind of
pre-test, we were given a list of 20 objects to remember in their correct order 1 through 20 - not a written list, the instructor read them out loud. I knew I didn't have a chance of just 'remembering' them so I invented a story in pictures from the words (I can still remember that story and most of the words a week later). I actually did pretty well in terms of recall (I got 18/20 words in the right order) but didn't do so well on the test because one of the 2 words I missed was early in the sequence so all the other words were one number early... and if I had been asked for word 15 I wouldn't have been able to tell you without recounting the entire sequence ( or not at all because I forgot one word in the sequence). Which is where the memory palace comes in.
The memory palace allows you to remember the words AND where they sit in the sequence. How? by associating them with a sequence of objects that you have no trouble remembering. There are a number of different methods, but the memory palace involves remembering a place you know really well (like your house, your childhood home, etc) and walking through it in a fixed sequence, remembering objects you are familiar with. You set this "memory palace" in advance and memorize it (not difficult because you already know this place really well). The example we were given for the 20 objects was to walk around 4 rooms in the same direction and recall 5 objects in each room. It could be a wall, a toilet, a window, a refrigerator... you get the idea. Once that sequence is well established, then you associate your list of 20 words with your objects in the room. Not just associate, but think of an outrageous and ridiculous association. Supposing your first memory palace object is a sofa and the object you are trying to remember is cigars - maybe you think of a giant cigar on the sofa, or hundreds of cigars cascading off the sofa, or a monkey smoking a cigar on the sofa... you get the picture (!). The effort of thinking of the ridiculous association "fixes" the picture in your brain. If it's too easy to come up with the association, it will be the one you forget, so work at it. Repeat this for each object as you walk around the rooms. Now if you have to recall object 15, you just need to think of the picture association for the 5th object in room 3. It works, trust me. I got all 20 (new) objects in the correct sequence on the second 'test.'
Well you might say, this is all great if you have to learn a list of 20 objects, but what if they are NOT
objects? After all, most of what we might like to learn is not really a grocery list (though come to think of it, having a grocery list in my head might have prevented me forgetting the onions I needed for that recipe last week). That takes you on to the next stage, which is imagining a picture for something that is not an object. The example given was names - think of a "sounds like" or picture that brings to mind that name. For my name, "jewel" would represent "Julie". So if someone were to want to remember my name, they would picture my face and some amazing jewels ( some nice big diamonds would be good! 😉 ) - perhaps as big as melons...though then they would definitely be fake. And if a whole group of people needed to be remembered, then walk around your memory palace and associate the silly face/name combinations with your room objects.
In our profession, there is a lot of rote memorization that might lend itself to these techniques (perhaps nomenclature acronyms or lists of differential diseases). And failing that, remembering someone's name is definitely a useful skill. I'm planning on reading more on the subject - lots of books available but
this one gets good reviews so it's as good a place to start as any. If you're taking Boards next year, you might do worse than take in one of these books before you get started on your study journey...
