8 ms·

This is very cool. Relatedly: I often run while listening to podcasts. When I do, I remember much more of the material. And when I revisit certain blocks aroun

This is very cool. Relatedly: I often run while listening to podcasts. When I do, I remember much more of the material. And when I revisit certain blocks around the neighborhood, I find myself recalling what I heard during the run. The spacial encoding of memories seems very potent and under-investigated.

juliend2 7y ago
It's called the Method of loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci Another term for that is the "memory palace". BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn significant things using this method?
- netsharc 7y ago
  I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal, named after the character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but the description there is of a lavish imaginary palace inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an exam once, in my memory palace there was a room with giant equations. This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just a bird's eye view, it would be cool to create a palace using a 3d game engine, with signs that point to things like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-Sketchup-like tool to add objects that you want to remember. [0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannibal-lecter/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannib... , it describes a painting that he uses to remember the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA 22308".
  - erikig 7y ago
    One cannot build a 3d world without first building a 2d map
    - netsharc 7y ago
      And one cannot have a discussion with pretentious, profound-sounding, smartass one sentence replies.
      - godDLL 7y ago
        Ima one-up you both on that ass scale now. No one can arrive to use a memory palace technique proper good without first learning to visualize space-time. That is FOUR dimensions, not a 2-d map, not a 3-d picture, an actual space you can walk around that changes.
- todd8 7y ago
  Hans-Lukas Teuber[1] was the head of the psychology department and my professor for the intro psychology class at MIT. He gave one two-hour evening lecture per week, which were delivered without notes. The lectures were riveting, they were given in MIT's largest lecture hall; it was standing room only to hear him speak--many students and faculty would attend even though not enrolled. I don't remember ever hearing a better live lecture than those that he gave (and I've heard many lectures--I spent more years at university than Belucci's character in Animal House). He used the memory palace method to remember his lecture's organization. [1] http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/teuber-hans-lukas.pdf http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/m...
- kruasan 7y ago
  I once memorized 200 digits of pi when I had nothing more fun to do on a long boring lecture. Sherlock popped into my mind, so I imagined a journey through my house where I chunked numbers to make them represent certain things or people, and me interacting or talking with them, like in a story of some sort. But it feels like I never applied this method to anything significant, apart from memorizing a few things from my biochemistry course. Although now I remember credit card numbers, every single phone number of my friends and family (by associating numbers with particular facial features or character traits), and some other things. I would say before that day I never fully realized just how much I actually like to memorize stuff like words and numbers. Anyway, I think everyone should give it a try, this is fun.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I visualize and remember code that way. For me, it's hard to forget somewhere I've been, even if I only imagined being there. Each function is a little building like an office or a shop, which has a sign out front telling what services or products it sells, and contains everything inside you need to solve some kind of problem or produce some kind of product or service (where equipment in the room is like references to other objects and functions and imported libraries). You're standing behind the front counter, just about to receive a customer though the front entrance door with the parameters you need for one particular instance of that problem. You go into the back room, solve the problem, then deliver the results out the exit door at the back of the building (or through any of the other earlier emergency exits, if you had to exit prematurely or throw an error and run away). The front/back flow is a metaphor for the top/bottom flow of control through a function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi%E2%80%93Shneiderman_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi%E2%80%93Shneiderman_diag... If you squint you can see the example Nassi-Shneiderman diagram in that article as a map of a building, with its front at the top, and exit at the bottom. You can have internal hallways and rooms for branches and loops, like a Nassi-Shneiderman diagram. The "Sub to Determine Wiki-Article" room is like the front entrance lobby of a theater where buy your ticket. The "Select Favourite Genre" room is like the stage of The Price is Right, and you get to pick what's behind door #1 (History), #2 (Science), or # (Geography), or else choose Other. They each have one or two rooms behind them with your rewards, and then they all finally exit out to the same back stage loading dock, where you take your wonderful prize (or consolation donkey) home.
  - klondike_klive 7y ago
    You've given me a very useful framework for remembering functions, thanks!
chenxi9649 7y ago
That's very interesting! You're effectively building "memory palaces" without consciously doing it by associating podcast content with real-life locations. Some memory athletes use that ability to remember digits of pi or decks of cards!
jcims 7y ago
What if you listen to the same podcast, do you remember that part of your run? This flipped relationship is very powerful for me, i get vivid almost intrusive visuals of what i was doing last time i listened.
- mshafer 7y ago
  Yes I get this too! Not so much with podcasts, but with concepts and things I’ve learnt. For example, when I think of the Python framework Flask or the iOS autolayout framework, I get vivid visuals of where I was when I was first trying them out or debugging some issue. Is there any name for this effect, or any related research? It’s kind of like the memory palace idea in reverse, where the concept sparks the imagery of the place involuntarily, instead of intentionally thinking of places to spark recall.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Not under-investigated, just suppressed! ;) The Method of Loci is an ancient technique that used to be taught for thousands of years as a standard part of a classical eduction, way back when people needed to remember things before the invention of smartphones and printing presses. But in the middle ages it was banned for being immoral! Apparently, some bad apples were abusing the Method of Loci to remember "immoral" things they shouldn't be thinking about, using "fabulous" images they shouldn't be imagining. https://www.guildsomm.com/4cb697f52c/discussion_forums/f/general-discussion/9171/advanced-memory-techniques-and-how-to-apply-them https://www.guildsomm.com/4cb697f52c/discussion_forums/f/gen... >Remember to use physical objects in these palaces since they have easily imaginable traits; when you are dealing with more abstract or untranslatable ideas it is best to convert them into objects based on the way the words sound, so Valmur becomes Val Kilmer, Les Preuses becomes purses, etc. Additionally, you don’t need to be concerned with reality when making these memory palaces. The more slapstick, unique and vivid they are, the easier they will stick. Raunchy imagery always works well, to the point where some religious orders in the middle ages banned the practice because it was deemed immoral. Memory Palace techniques have been known as the Mind Palace, Method of Loci, and Memory Journey, Art of Memory, Ars Memorativa, Memorative Art, Mnemotechnics, Architectural Mnemonic, Graphical Mnemonic, and Textual Mnemonic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Art+of+Memory&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfiazzoo_nAhVP2KQKHeMJBgcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=banned&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=front... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory >The most common account of the creation of the art of memory centers around the story of Simonides of Ceos, a famous Greek poet, who was invited to chant a lyric poem in honor of his host, a nobleman of Thessaly. While praising his host, Simonides also mentioned the twin gods Castor and Pollux. When the recital was complete, the nobleman selfishly told Simonides that he would only pay him half of the agreed upon payment for the panegyric, and that he would have to get the balance of the payment from the two gods he had mentioned. A short time later, Simonides was told that two men were waiting for him outside. He left to meet the visitors but could find no one. Then, while he was outside the banquet hall, it collapsed, crushing everyone within. The bodies were so disfigured that they could not be identified for proper burial. But, Simonides was able to remember where each of the guests had been sitting at the table, and so was able to identify them for burial. This experience suggested to Simonides the principles which were to become central to the later development of the art he reputedly invented. >He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and the images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written upon it. >[...] However, this transition was not without its difficulties, and during this period the belief in the effectiveness of the older methods of memory training (to say nothing of the esteem in which its practitioners were held) steadily became occluded. In 1584, a huge controversy over the method broke out in England when the Puritans attacked the art as impious because it was thought to excite absurd and obscene thoughts; this was a sensational, but ultimately not a fatal skirmish. Erasmus of Rotterdam and other humanists, Protestant and Catholic, had also chastised practitioners of the art of memory for making extravagant claims for its efficacy, although they themselves believed firmly in a well-disposed, orderly memory as an essential tool of productive thought. >One explanation for the steady decline in the importance of the art of memory from the 16th to the 20th century is offered by the late Ioan P. Culianu, who argued that it was suppressed during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when Protestants and reactionary Catholics alike worked to eradicate pagan influence and the lush visual imagery of the Renaissance. >Whatever the causes, in keeping with general developments, the art of memory eventually came to be defined primarily as a part of Dialectics, and was assimilated in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and René Descartes into the curriculum of Logic, where it survives to this day as a necessary foundation for the teaching of Argument. Simplified variants of the art of memory were also taught through the 19th century as useful to public orators, including preachers and after-dinner speakers. "The Art of Memory" is also the title of a 1966 book by Frances A. Yates about the history of mnemonic systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Memory Here's some racy discussion from that book about those problematic morally reprehensible corporeal images: https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Art+of+Memory&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfiazzoo_nAhVP2KQKHeMJBgcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=banned&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=front... >What we are reading is very extraordinary indeed. For scholasticism in its devotion to the rational, the abstract, as the true pursuit of the rational soul, banned metaphor and poetry as belonging to the lower imaginative level. Grammar and Rhetoric which dealt with such matters had to retreat before the role of Dame Dialectic. And those fables about the ancient gods with which poetry concerned itself were high reprehensible morally. To move, to excite the imagination and the emotions with metaphorica seems a suggestion utterly contrary to the scholastic puritanism with its attention severely fixed on the next world, on Hell, Puratory, and Heaven. Yet, though we are to practice the artificial memory as a part of Prudence, its rules for images are letting in the metaphor and the fabulous for their moving power. >And now the imagines agentes make their appearance, quoted in full from Tullius. Remarkably beautiful or hideous, dressed in crowns and purple garments, deformed or disfigured with blood or mud, smeared with red paint, comic or ridiculous, they stroll mysteriously, like players, out of antiquity into the scholastic treatise on memory as a part of Prudence. The solution emphasizes the reason for the choice of such images is that they 'move strongly' and so adhere to the soul. >The verdict in the case for and against the artificial memory, which has been conducted in strict accordance with the rules of scholastic analysis, is as follows: >"We say that the ars memorandi which Tullius teaches is the best and particularly for the things to be remembered pertaining to life and judgment (ad vitam et iudicium), and such memories (i.e. artificial memories) pertain particularly to the moral man and to the speaker (ad ethicum et rhetorem) because since the act of human life (actus humanae vitae) consists in particulars it is necessary that it should be in the soul through corporeal images; it will not stay in memory save in such images. Whence we say that of all the things which belong to Prudence the most necessary of all is memory, because from past things we are directed to present things and future things, and not the other way round." Lots more on the Memory Techniques Wiki: https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Main_Page https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Main_Page Here's some more recent research -- isn't the point of memorizing to cause lasting changes to the brain?: An ancient memorization strategy might cause lasting changes to the brain Using the memory techniques of the pros alters patterns in brain activity, new research says https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-method-of-loci-brain-fmri-activity-neuroscience https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-me...
pdr2020 7y ago
I've found this to strangely work (tangentially) with music and intense exercise too. When I accidentally listened to an old gym playlist from 2 years ago at my office desk, I felt a rush of the old determination that used to fuel my HIIT workouts. It was jarring and incredible.
mettamage 7y ago
Two effects working here: - The recall effect when you see the same areas again. [0] - The effect of running itself. Your ARAS (or Ascending RAS, or Ascending Reticular Activating System -- not everyone uses the same acronym) in your brainstem is hurling a whole lot of neurotransmitters (like adrenaline and dopamine) towards your hippocampus. Long story short: you'll be able to remember better for the next 30 to 60 minutes. [1] [0] Too lazy to look up the source (sorry, not having my day in terms of productivity), anyone who studied psychology would've learned the study about people diving under water and doing a memory task and then having a much better recall underwater then on land regarding that memory task. [1] Source: learned it at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from Prof. Dr. Erik Scherder. I still don't know where a paper is that describes the full story. I also couldn't find too much information about it online, and I never had enough time to fully figure the story out. So if there's a neuroscientist in the room, please help me out :D
- pergadad 7y ago
  There's a lot more to this. E.g. there's is constant neurogenesis (new neurons being born) but most of those die before they can attach themselves. Aerobic exercise tends to improve their attachment (exact mechanism is not clear) so a lot of new brain cells find their place during sports activities.
thiagomgd 7y ago
This is described in the book Moonwalking with Einstein. It's mentioned that one way to remember things would be to "put them" somewhere you are familiar, like where you run, for example.

juliend2 7y ago

It's called the Method of loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci Another term for that is the "memory palace". BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn significant things using this method?

netsharc 7y ago
I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal, named after the character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but the description there is of a lavish imaginary palace inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an exam once, in my memory palace there was a room with giant equations. This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just a bird's eye view, it would be cool to create a palace using a 3d game engine, with signs that point to things like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-Sketchup-like tool to add objects that you want to remember. [0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannibal-lecter/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannib... , it describes a painting that he uses to remember the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA 22308".
- erikig 7y ago
  One cannot build a 3d world without first building a 2d map
  - netsharc 7y ago
    And one cannot have a discussion with pretentious, profound-sounding, smartass one sentence replies.
    - godDLL 7y ago
      Ima one-up you both on that ass scale now. No one can arrive to use a memory palace technique proper good without first learning to visualize space-time. That is FOUR dimensions, not a 2-d map, not a 3-d picture, an actual space you can walk around that changes.
todd8 7y ago
Hans-Lukas Teuber[1] was the head of the psychology department and my professor for the intro psychology class at MIT. He gave one two-hour evening lecture per week, which were delivered without notes. The lectures were riveting, they were given in MIT's largest lecture hall; it was standing room only to hear him speak--many students and faculty would attend even though not enrolled. I don't remember ever hearing a better live lecture than those that he gave (and I've heard many lectures--I spent more years at university than Belucci's character in Animal House). He used the memory palace method to remember his lecture's organization. [1] http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/teuber-hans-lukas.pdf http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/m...
kruasan 7y ago
I once memorized 200 digits of pi when I had nothing more fun to do on a long boring lecture. Sherlock popped into my mind, so I imagined a journey through my house where I chunked numbers to make them represent certain things or people, and me interacting or talking with them, like in a story of some sort. But it feels like I never applied this method to anything significant, apart from memorizing a few things from my biochemistry course. Although now I remember credit card numbers, every single phone number of my friends and family (by associating numbers with particular facial features or character traits), and some other things. I would say before that day I never fully realized just how much I actually like to memorize stuff like words and numbers. Anyway, I think everyone should give it a try, this is fun.
DonHopkins 7y ago
I visualize and remember code that way. For me, it's hard to forget somewhere I've been, even if I only imagined being there. Each function is a little building like an office or a shop, which has a sign out front telling what services or products it sells, and contains everything inside you need to solve some kind of problem or produce some kind of product or service (where equipment in the room is like references to other objects and functions and imported libraries). You're standing behind the front counter, just about to receive a customer though the front entrance door with the parameters you need for one particular instance of that problem. You go into the back room, solve the problem, then deliver the results out the exit door at the back of the building (or through any of the other earlier emergency exits, if you had to exit prematurely or throw an error and run away). The front/back flow is a metaphor for the top/bottom flow of control through a function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi%E2%80%93Shneiderman_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassi%E2%80%93Shneiderman_diag... If you squint you can see the example Nassi-Shneiderman diagram in that article as a map of a building, with its front at the top, and exit at the bottom. You can have internal hallways and rooms for branches and loops, like a Nassi-Shneiderman diagram. The "Sub to Determine Wiki-Article" room is like the front entrance lobby of a theater where buy your ticket. The "Select Favourite Genre" room is like the stage of The Price is Right, and you get to pick what's behind door #1 (History), #2 (Science), or # (Geography), or else choose Other. They each have one or two rooms behind them with your rewards, and then they all finally exit out to the same back stage loading dock, where you take your wonderful prize (or consolation donkey) home.
- klondike_klive 7y ago
  You've given me a very useful framework for remembering functions, thanks!

chenxi9649 7y ago

That's very interesting! You're effectively building "memory palaces" without consciously doing it by associating podcast content with real-life locations. Some memory athletes use that ability to remember digits of pi or decks of cards!

jcims 7y ago

What if you listen to the same podcast, do you remember that part of your run? This flipped relationship is very powerful for me, i get vivid almost intrusive visuals of what i was doing last time i listened.

mshafer 7y ago
Yes I get this too! Not so much with podcasts, but with concepts and things I’ve learnt. For example, when I think of the Python framework Flask or the iOS autolayout framework, I get vivid visuals of where I was when I was first trying them out or debugging some issue. Is there any name for this effect, or any related research? It’s kind of like the memory palace idea in reverse, where the concept sparks the imagery of the place involuntarily, instead of intentionally thinking of places to spark recall.

DonHopkins 7y ago

Not under-investigated, just suppressed! ;) The Method of Loci is an ancient technique that used to be taught for thousands of years as a standard part of a classical eduction, way back when people needed to remember things before the invention of smartphones and printing presses. But in the middle ages it was banned for being immoral! Apparently, some bad apples were abusing the Method of Loci to remember "immoral" things they shouldn't be thinking about, using "fabulous" images they shouldn't be imagining. https://www.guildsomm.com/4cb697f52c/discussion_forums/f/general-discussion/9171/advanced-memory-techniques-and-how-to-apply-them https://www.guildsomm.com/4cb697f52c/discussion_forums/f/gen... >Remember to use physical objects in these palaces since they have easily imaginable traits; when you are dealing with more abstract or untranslatable ideas it is best to convert them into objects based on the way the words sound, so Valmur becomes Val Kilmer, Les Preuses becomes purses, etc. Additionally, you don’t need to be concerned with reality when making these memory palaces. The more slapstick, unique and vivid they are, the easier they will stick. Raunchy imagery always works well, to the point where some religious orders in the middle ages banned the practice because it was deemed immoral. Memory Palace techniques have been known as the Mind Palace, Method of Loci, and Memory Journey, Art of Memory, Ars Memorativa, Memorative Art, Mnemotechnics, Architectural Mnemonic, Graphical Mnemonic, and Textual Mnemonic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Art+of+Memory&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfiazzoo_nAhVP2KQKHeMJBgcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=banned&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=front... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory >The most common account of the creation of the art of memory centers around the story of Simonides of Ceos, a famous Greek poet, who was invited to chant a lyric poem in honor of his host, a nobleman of Thessaly. While praising his host, Simonides also mentioned the twin gods Castor and Pollux. When the recital was complete, the nobleman selfishly told Simonides that he would only pay him half of the agreed upon payment for the panegyric, and that he would have to get the balance of the payment from the two gods he had mentioned. A short time later, Simonides was told that two men were waiting for him outside. He left to meet the visitors but could find no one. Then, while he was outside the banquet hall, it collapsed, crushing everyone within. The bodies were so disfigured that they could not be identified for proper burial. But, Simonides was able to remember where each of the guests had been sitting at the table, and so was able to identify them for burial. This experience suggested to Simonides the principles which were to become central to the later development of the art he reputedly invented. >He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and the images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written upon it. >[...] However, this transition was not without its difficulties, and during this period the belief in the effectiveness of the older methods of memory training (to say nothing of the esteem in which its practitioners were held) steadily became occluded. In 1584, a huge controversy over the method broke out in England when the Puritans attacked the art as impious because it was thought to excite absurd and obscene thoughts; this was a sensational, but ultimately not a fatal skirmish. Erasmus of Rotterdam and other humanists, Protestant and Catholic, had also chastised practitioners of the art of memory for making extravagant claims for its efficacy, although they themselves believed firmly in a well-disposed, orderly memory as an essential tool of productive thought. >One explanation for the steady decline in the importance of the art of memory from the 16th to the 20th century is offered by the late Ioan P. Culianu, who argued that it was suppressed during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when Protestants and reactionary Catholics alike worked to eradicate pagan influence and the lush visual imagery of the Renaissance. >Whatever the causes, in keeping with general developments, the art of memory eventually came to be defined primarily as a part of Dialectics, and was assimilated in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and René Descartes into the curriculum of Logic, where it survives to this day as a necessary foundation for the teaching of Argument. Simplified variants of the art of memory were also taught through the 19th century as useful to public orators, including preachers and after-dinner speakers. "The Art of Memory" is also the title of a 1966 book by Frances A. Yates about the history of mnemonic systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Memory Here's some racy discussion from that book about those problematic morally reprehensible corporeal images: https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Art+of+Memory&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfiazzoo_nAhVP2KQKHeMJBgcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=banned&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=MRFFAQAAQBAJ&printsec=front... >What we are reading is very extraordinary indeed. For scholasticism in its devotion to the rational, the abstract, as the true pursuit of the rational soul, banned metaphor and poetry as belonging to the lower imaginative level. Grammar and Rhetoric which dealt with such matters had to retreat before the role of Dame Dialectic. And those fables about the ancient gods with which poetry concerned itself were high reprehensible morally. To move, to excite the imagination and the emotions with metaphorica seems a suggestion utterly contrary to the scholastic puritanism with its attention severely fixed on the next world, on Hell, Puratory, and Heaven. Yet, though we are to practice the artificial memory as a part of Prudence, its rules for images are letting in the metaphor and the fabulous for their moving power. >And now the imagines agentes make their appearance, quoted in full from Tullius. Remarkably beautiful or hideous, dressed in crowns and purple garments, deformed or disfigured with blood or mud, smeared with red paint, comic or ridiculous, they stroll mysteriously, like players, out of antiquity into the scholastic treatise on memory as a part of Prudence. The solution emphasizes the reason for the choice of such images is that they 'move strongly' and so adhere to the soul. >The verdict in the case for and against the artificial memory, which has been conducted in strict accordance with the rules of scholastic analysis, is as follows: >"We say that the ars memorandi which Tullius teaches is the best and particularly for the things to be remembered pertaining to life and judgment (ad vitam et iudicium), and such memories (i.e. artificial memories) pertain particularly to the moral man and to the speaker (ad ethicum et rhetorem) because since the act of human life (actus humanae vitae) consists in particulars it is necessary that it should be in the soul through corporeal images; it will not stay in memory save in such images. Whence we say that of all the things which belong to Prudence the most necessary of all is memory, because from past things we are directed to present things and future things, and not the other way round." Lots more on the Memory Techniques Wiki: https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Main_Page https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Main_Page Here's some more recent research -- isn't the point of memorizing to cause lasting changes to the brain?: An ancient memorization strategy might cause lasting changes to the brain Using the memory techniques of the pros alters patterns in brain activity, new research says https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-method-of-loci-brain-fmri-activity-neuroscience https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-me...

pdr2020 7y ago

I've found this to strangely work (tangentially) with music and intense exercise too. When I accidentally listened to an old gym playlist from 2 years ago at my office desk, I felt a rush of the old determination that used to fuel my HIIT workouts. It was jarring and incredible.

mettamage 7y ago

Two effects working here: - The recall effect when you see the same areas again. [0] - The effect of running itself. Your ARAS (or Ascending RAS, or Ascending Reticular Activating System -- not everyone uses the same acronym) in your brainstem is hurling a whole lot of neurotransmitters (like adrenaline and dopamine) towards your hippocampus. Long story short: you'll be able to remember better for the next 30 to 60 minutes. [1] [0] Too lazy to look up the source (sorry, not having my day in terms of productivity), anyone who studied psychology would've learned the study about people diving under water and doing a memory task and then having a much better recall underwater then on land regarding that memory task. [1] Source: learned it at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from Prof. Dr. Erik Scherder. I still don't know where a paper is that describes the full story. I also couldn't find too much information about it online, and I never had enough time to fully figure the story out. So if there's a neuroscientist in the room, please help me out :D

pergadad 7y ago
There's a lot more to this. E.g. there's is constant neurogenesis (new neurons being born) but most of those die before they can attach themselves. Aerobic exercise tends to improve their attachment (exact mechanism is not clear) so a lot of new brain cells find their place during sports activities.

thiagomgd 7y ago

This is described in the book Moonwalking with Einstein. It's mentioned that one way to remember things would be to "put them" somewhere you are familiar, like where you run, for example.