Diving Deeper into Memory

In this video and the next, we’re going to deepen our understanding of memory.

As you’re probably beginning to understand, memory is only part of learning and developing expertise but it’s often an important part.

It may surprise you to learn that we have outstanding visual and spacial memory systems that can help form part of our long-term memory.

Here’s what I mean.

If you were asked to look around a house you never visited before, you’d soon have a sense of the general furniture layout and where the rooms were, color scheme, the pharmaceuticals in the bathroom cupboard.

In just a few minutes, your mind would acquire and retain thousands of new pieces of information.

Even weeks later, you’d still hold far more in your mind than if you’d spent the same amount of time staring at a blank wall.

Your mind is built to retain this kind of general information about a place.

You can greatly enhance your ability to remember if you tap into these naturally super-sized, visual, spacial memorization abilities.

Our ancestors never needed a vast memory for names or numbers but they did need a memory for how to get back home from the three day deer hunt, or for the location of those plump blueberries on the rocky slopes to the South of the camp.

These evolutionary needs helped lock in a superior “where things are” and “how they look” memory system.

To begin tapping into your visual memory system try making a very memorable visual image representing one key item you want to remember.

For example, here’s an image you could use to remember Newton’s second law.

F is equal to ma.

This is a fundamental relationship relating force to mass and acceleration.

And it only took humans, oh, a couple of hundred thousand years to figure out.

The letter f in the formula could stand for flying, m could stand for mule, and a, well that’s up to you.

Part of the reason an image is so important to memory is that images connect directly to your right brain’s visual spacial centers.

The image helps you encapsulate a seemingly humdrum and hard to remember concept by tapping into visual areas with enhanced memory abilities.

The more neural hooks you can build by evoking the senses, the easier it will be for you to recall the concept and what it means.

Beyond merely seeing the mule, you can smell the mule, you can feel the same windy pressure the mule is feeling.

You can even, hear the wind whistling past.

The funnier and more evocative the images, the better.

Focusing your attention brings something into your temporary working memory, but for that something to move from working memory to long term memory two things should happen.

The idea should be memorable.

There’s a gigantic flying mule braying f is equal to ma on my couch.

And it must be repeated.

Otherwise remember your tiny metabolic vampires, they can suck away the neural pattern related to that memory before it can strengthen and solidify.

Repetition’s important.

Even when you make something memorable, repetition helps get that memorable item firmly lodged into long-term memory.

Remember to repeat not a bunch of times in one day but sporadically over several days.

Index cards can often be helpful.

Writing and saying what you’re trying to learn seems to enhance retention.

For example, if you’re trying to learn concepts in physics you might take an index card and write the greek letter rho.

That’s a common abbreviation for density.

You’d write it on one side and you’d write the remaining information on the other.

Handwriting helps you to more deeply encode, that is convert into neural memory structures what you are trying to learn.

While you’re writing out the kilograms per cubic meter you might imagine a shadowy kilogram just feel that mass lurking in an oversize piece of baggage that happens to be one meter on each side.

The more you can turn what you’re trying to remember into something memorable, the easier it will be to recall.

You’ll want to say the word and its meaning aloud to start setting auditory hooks to the material.

Next, just look at the side of the card with the Greek letter rho on it, and see whether you can remember what’s on the other side of the card.

If you can’t, flip it over and remind yourself what you’re supposed to know.

If you can remember, put the card away.

Now, do something else.

Perhaps prepare another card and test yourself on it.

Once you have several cards together, try running through them all and even mixing them around to see if you can remember them.

This helps interleave your learning.

Don’t be surprised if you struggle a bit.

Once you’ve given your cards a good try, put them away.

Wait and take them out again, maybe before you go to sleep.

Remember that sleep is when your mind repeats patterns and pieces together solutions. Briefly repeat what you want to remember over several days.

Perhaps for a few minutes each morning or each evening.

Gradually extend the time between the repetitions as the material firms itself into your mind.

By increasing your spacing as you become more certain of mastery, you’ll lock the material more firmly into place.

Great flash card systems like Anki have build in algorithms that repeat in scale ranging from days to months.

Interestingly, one of the best ways to remember people’s names, is to simply try to retrieve the people’s names from memory at increasing time intervals, after first learning the name.

I’m Barbara Oakley.

Thanks for learning, about learning.