I wanted to talk a bit about memory & mnemonics. I’ve used mnemonics quite a bit in my studies, most notably to learn the hormones of the pituitary gland. I used them before that as well for the amino acids. I actually coupled the mnemonics with a number code system, and it worked great. The first thing I noticed is utilizing what I call “Smart Mnemonics” where the word you are memorizing is as similar to the real world as possible. For example, I used “professionally” for the hormone prolactin and “pros” for the amino acid proline. You might have to get a little creative with creating a string of words that make sense, but I’ve found that it helps a lot. The problem, however, is that I can remember the pituitary hormones, and in a specific order but I can’t remember their functions as easily. Does it make sense to create a second mnemonic that helps with the functions? Is rote memorization better? I’m also interested to see if there is a limit… how many mnemonics can you actually remember? And how long are they retained in your memory? The amino acid mnemonic I’ve since forgotten, but the hormone one I still remember, however I’ve used it a bit more recently, and over a longer period of time. Also, I’d like to find out if a photographic memory or the “I just need to read the chapter once” phenomena are true.
So the mnemonics I’ve used in the past are literally just acronyms, or name mnemonics, the 2nd of 10 types of mnemonics listed on Wikipedia. There is one that I’ve actually never heard of to memorize the diatomic elements, BrINClHOF or “Have No Fear Of Ice Cold Beer.” Other types include music mnemonics (the ABCs), model mnemonics (like diagrams or charts, which I’ve used in organic chemistry), and note organization mnemonics, which are flash cards and lists. Lastly, there lists the visualization mnemonics, an example being the infamous method of loci. Interesting. Okay, so there are plenty of types… but do they really work?
There’s actually a World Memory Championship and what goes on there is quite staggering. It does not appear, however, that the ability to memorize hundreds of words in minutes is due to some anatomical advantage, it’s simply via training and mnemonic strategies. Ah hah, and the most prominent technique? The ancient Roman/Greek method of loci, also known as the memory palace or roman room. So if the top memory athletes in the world are using that strategy, well I should look into it.
My initial exposure to this method was when I heard about the “memory palace.” Where you pick a room basically, your “palace” and you place things to be memorized in locations. Like glycine in a chair, and leucine on the stairs. But I guess I need to come up with some sort of connection there? Like maybe glycine is in the glyrage and leucine is loosely floating in the bathtub or something. Regarding the memory palace, there’s an interesting article over on Med Insiders:
This is what professionals use in memory competitions. Not being one myself, I would use the memory palace only for concepts that didn’t fit well into either regular flashcards or mnemonics. If a concept was particularly difficult for me the memorize, I would go with the memory palace. The reason for this was that the memory palace takes the greatest amount of time to create, but it is the most robust way to memorize information.
Yea, but that doesn’t make sense. The entire idea of these memory competitions is that they are timed. I would argue memorizing 100 flashcards is much more time intensive, because you can’t do it in a single run-through. I keep seeing that you walk through a location and place items. So perhaps I would walk around my entire house and place like 20 hormones.
I listened to a video today that outlined the strategy and I used my house as the “walk.” What I had to remember was a list of numbers, and I still remember almost all of it, 12 hours later. I walk into my front door and see 3 kids on the stairs (like at the bottom, middle, top of the stairs), then I walk into my living room and see 14 (I saw two weekly calendars, or visualized 2x7) then into my dining room where I saw 6 candles on my chandelier, walked into the kitchen and saw a 9 as a cat on the windowsill, then into the family room to see 2 people, then finally into the bathroom to see 5 candles. I’m a bit fuzzy on which was 5 and which was 6, but the fact that I remember this is pretty staggering.
The other thing I stumbled upon is a thread on a forum called Art of Memory where a medical student describes the memory techniques they used to memorize the characteristics of a certain disease. The whole post is worth sharing:
On a side note, an intermediate method that became one of my favorites was creating brief stories that either did or did not have a physical spatial setting involved. For example, to memorize the adverse effects of Tamoxifen, an antineoplastic drug, I imagined my friend’s sister Tammy. I thought up ridiculous things either about her or happening to her, each of which represented one of the adverse effects of the drug.
So I start with making an image of what the disease unit I am trying to study is (lets say Wilsons disease) something most med students have heard of but it has enough hard to remember information correlated with it that its a good example.
I have this disease placed in one of the nursing stations at a hospital I worked at prior to med school. My memory hook is Wilson the volleyball off of Castaway and also Tom Hanks. I picture them in the middle of my location just standing there to start. Everything that is going on in the image revolves around them and the end goal is when I hear Wilsons disease is to recreate Wilson and Tom Hanks in my head after which everything else should rematerialize when I need to recall it. I will break it down as follows: a black cat is my key code for the number 13 (I only have images for numbers up to 100 or so since that’s all I really need in regards to medicine)
Wilsons disease is on chromosome 13: black cat playing with the Wilson ball mutation in ATP B7 gene- ATP= batteries, B= a bee, 7= boomerang. a battery powered B toy throwing a boomerang next to Wilson. Copper builds up in liver, and basal ganglia (mostly putamen) So tom hanks has a copper liver and copper putters in his brain (a putter is my image for the putamen) copper build up causes cirrhosis = this goes without saying but lets make that copper liver nodular the copper build up in the putamen causes psychotic like symptoms (relatively to patient’s baseline), irritability, and Parkinson like issues. So essentially I picture Tom Hanks with swirly crazy eyes, while he’s looking all over the place all distracted and has cogwheels taped to all his joints while he walks around shuffling.
Labs- low cerumoplasmin- My picture for low is usually a red pet cage with a down arrow door. So I have flubber in this cage (flubber just sounds like cerumoplasmin doesn’t it)? High free copper (a ton of pennies floating around Wilson the ball, and high urinary copper. a bunch of pennies in a piss puddle by Tom Hanks. Most copper is excreted by bile (so I put a gallbladder in a garbage can that Wilson the ball is sitting on top of).
Tx- penicillamine- a bunch of pencils in a mine. Trientine- three ents (either from Lord of the Rings, or Warcraft 3).
Holy. Crap. Not only does the poster share my name, but they mention Lord of the Rings and Warcraft 3, two franchises I am fond of. So there’s a lot to unpack here, but what stood out to me most is that this person has image keys for the numbers 1-100. So if 15 was a cannon for example, (James Buchanan was the 15th president), and a certain medication’s dose was 15mg, then you would work a cannon into the image. That’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard. But you can already imagine the possibilities. You can put things in cannons, people can operate cannons, they can be certain colors, be in certain places, etc. So I can visualize how that would work with a string of numbers. I definitely want to try and apply the basic memory palace technique to the hormones and see how I do.
So one of the things I was really interested in was the idea of memorizing an entire deck of cards, and then picking up another deck and organizing it in the same exact way. The record for this by the way is under 13 seconds. Yes, 13 seconds. The whole idea here is yet another memory technique called person, action, object. What you do is assign every card a person, action, and a object. So the queen of hearts for example would be your mom, her action would be let’s say cooking, and the object would be with a spatula.
The method of loci is definitely something I want to look into. The Feynman Technique is also something I want to talk about eventually. Then there is the Major Mnemonic System where you assign letters to numbers; letters are easier to remember than numbers. This is how people memorize 100 digits of pi or a list of phone numbers. I also want to learn how to memorize an entire deck of cards. I’m becoming fascinated with memory.
Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5439266/
Dresler M, Shirer WR, Konrad BN, Müller NCJ, Wagner IC, Fernández G, Czisch M, Greicius MD. Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory. Neuron. 2017 Mar 8;93(5):1227-1235.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.003. PMID: 28279356; PMCID: PMC5439266.
https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/memory-palaces-in-medical-school/34920/5
https://medschoolinsiders.com/pre-med/memorization-techniques-method-of-locimemory-palace-mnemonics-and-how-to-actually-use-them/