Six years ago, science writer Brian Foster was just like the rest of us. (0) He was forgetting where he had left his car keys, what he needed to buy at the grocery store and even his girlfriend’s birthday. This often caused him problems and embarrassment.
Twelve months later, he became the U.S. memory champion. (19)
. Foster recently wrote a book on his experiences.
Foster trained himself to become a memory athlete, someone who regularly tries to memorise lists of hundreds of numbers and words. It might sound like an incredible feat, but such human brains aren’t any different to a normal one. (20)
. This creates stronger, novel connections in the brain between words or figures and images.
Employing techniques that date back to the Greeks, memory champions like Foster create ‘memory palaces’ that rely on the human brain’s natural advantage with spatial and visual memory. They think up images to represent everything they want to remember – the more outlandish or shocking the better. If you’re trying to remember a microwave, for example, “maybe it’s frying a chocolate bar or something”, Foster said. (21)
. This could go back to the period when we were hunter gatherers, and remembering, say, phone numbers was not that important when you were hunting down a mastodon or whatever.
Foster found that cutting-edge neuroscience can prove the hypothesis that the people who are best at memorising really do use their brains differently. One study of London cab drivers found that memorising the complex street grid made parts of their brains larger than average. Another study scanned memory champions with MRIs and discovered that the spatial part of their brain lights up when they try to remember things. (22)
. Researchers agree that they are simply using a different strategy.
Memorising a deck of cards might seem like a quirky trick, but experts say that techniques like the ‘memory palace’ can make a difference in everyday life. (23)
. And what about where you left your keys? Some experts recommended that when you set them down, take a mental snapshot of the exact spot to help you when you’re looking for them later.
Everyone struggles to remember people’s names, but one trick you can use is to associate a name with a vivid image. The name John Corn, for instance, becomes a toilet bowl sitting in a field of corn... that’s on fire. (24)
. But for the rest of us who just want to make life a little easier, all that’s required is our imagination.
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