An ancient memorization strategy might cause lasting changes to the brain
There is a very interesting book on this topic - memory competitions - the book is about how ordinary people using an ancient Roman technique (Memory palace) becomes extraordinary memorizers. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...I could pickup the technique to help me in my day to day life. For very little investment in efforts it managed to drastically improve my life.Context: I consider myself quite challenged when it comes to memorizing numbers.The technique described in the book (and in this article) allowed me to remember details of a financial instrument which involves 32 numbers without any pattern. Whenever I have to use this instrument I have to input random 6 numbers out of those 32. Before I discovered this technique I had to pull out the hardcopy of the instrument every time for reference (it was painful - sometime it will be not in my possession, or it would be buried inside some cabinet etc.)The technique that I use/adapted essentially is, I use mental map of a roadway which I’m intimately familiar with to place the 32 numbers on the various 32 landmark along the way (landmarks can be anything - a funny looking rock next to the road will also do. The key is one should be able to visualize it very clearly). So, whenever I need to retrieve numbers I mentally ’drive’ on the road and start checking out the landmarks. Example: I need to retrieve number corresponding to landmarks 5,9,15,20.. I start ‘driving’ reach landmark no. 5 and able to remember immediately this landmark is associated with number 29, then I move on and reach to next landmark, when I ‘reach’ that one I’m able to recollect that this landmark has number 89 associated with it, and so on…Somewhere I read that it works so well because as a human species we have ability to remember geo spatial things much better than abstract things like numbers. I would guess that it has to do with our hunter-gatherer days when we were primarily dealing with spatial concepts; brain is hard wired to store those information much better than things like numbers.