I have been using memory palaces extensively for over 3-4 years now. I first discovered them while going through the book “Moonwalking with Einstein” by Joshua Foer. Back then I was very interested in finding ways to read and absorb information faster to become a superlearner, enhancing my performance. As a sophomore year engineering student taking courses that required some physical intuition (Fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, strength of materials ), I found these palaces effective for memorization through visualization.
Over time, I learned more advanced methods for using these palaces as I stopped using notes for learning (both taking in class and for personal study). I found ways to manage multiple palaces and not get them confused, how to enhance visualisations and impressions, how to fuse them with mnemonics, and ultimately became a power user of them.
Now, at the end of my engineering degree, with solid grades, even with my poor memory and retention and lack of interest and attention in some classes, some theory-heavy with little imagination or engineering involved ( Law, Management), I still found ways to avoid writing and cramming copious notes by honing and leaning solely on memory palaces. I can say I’ve accomplished feats that I am proud of (storing over 500 items in an extremely dense manner and making visual meaning out of meaningless statements) during exam seasons.
Still, I feel my memory palace journey is incomplete, or at least my journey of finding better mental representations is. While memory palaces can set you apart in test-based environments unless they are intermittently walked through, information is sure to be lost. And this has to be on the order of more than once a day for new palaces. Storing in memory palaces doesn’t make for fast or efficient retrieval most of the time, because they usually involve walking a specific path, and remembering items on the way. If the palace has been traversed multiple times, then there will be some memorable loci, but random retrieval is almost never possible. This makes it useless for skill-based information which must be retrieved from the fly and meshed with other information to generate insights.
But in terms of usefulness outside a test-based environment, memory palaces are great for types of data such as lists and sequences (todo lists and digits of pi), and maybe general information worth storing, or as an intermediary between short and long-term memory (making mental notes when other devices aren’t available ( maybe to prevent rudeness i.e. in a conversation) ) or even extending working memory in long-chained talks or thoughts. Of course, a lot of practice is required to reach the stage of rapid creation in this space. There’s also the benefit of learning groupings, physical representations or even understanding certain concepts to better fit them in these palaces.
HISTORY OF THE MEMORY PALACE
This has been discussed multiple times so I’m just going to cite sources for further study. To know the history of the Memory Palace and its modern uses, see:
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”Moonwalking with Einstein” by Joshua Foer
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“The Art of Memory“ by Frances Yates
IMPROVING MENTAL VISUALIZATION
While memory palaces can be traversed abstractly or with low-quality visualizations, enhanced knowledge and practice of mental visualizations would help in crossing the chasm of uncertainty and nebulousness that comes with manipulating memory palaces. Mastering control of this can also help placement and traversal speeds by knowing the level of detail to use per time.
How do we visualize? Knowing your observation point.
Through lots of practice with visualization, I have noticed that it is hard to pinpoint a comfortable observation point or even properly embed myself in visualizations. Getting really comfortable with a certain visualization requires either a focused time range in which other things are blocked out or something such as Lucid Dreaming. Other than that, we flail when we can’t pinpoint where the visualization lies. Is it in our heads, above our heads, there when we close our eyes (certainly not)? There are some ways of dealing with this which are outlined below:
- Imagine being an outside observer of a screen:
This involves two layers of visualization. This is more of a strategy to make the visualization feel like a typical memory recollection. We do this by imagining ourselves sitting behind a screen where the visualization takes place. This removes the discomfort of not being one with the observer as we now become detached from that reality. This is very easy as the screen could be a TV, laptop or computer monitor.
- Be comfortable with fuzziness:
Depending on the clarity of your neural renderings, while spending time on them and focusing on the level of detail, you might begin to observe some fuzziness either in focus or the inability to enhance L.O.D. for a large scene due to working memory constraints. While this is something that can be partly solved by visualizing for longer periods of time, for most rapid visualizations we have to learn to get comfortable with this and even in some cases embrace or enhance it for speed purposes.
- Knowing where the visualization is taking place:
Imagine a red apple on a rotating platform with your eyes open. Close your eyes. Notice as the blackness of your eyes turns into redness, intermingles, interferes and produces nothing but noise. Notice that you can’t find your visualization there, but instead, your eyes are trapped, restricted by this physical sheath above it. Mental visualization does not rest in the physical eyes. This is an important realization. We must learn to become comfortable with the fact that mental visualization lies on another plane. Enmeshing visualizations into fake memories makes taking that leap much easier as we are used to flashes of memory recall.
How to actually visualize: The Rendering Pipeline
Mental visualization can be accomplished in a structured way. This involves taking inspiration from the graphics rendering pipeline used in Computer Graphics:
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Render the scene / environmental background
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Have a rough outline of the placement of objects
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Render 3D geometry only
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Add Color
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Lighting
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Animation
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Embed other senses (touch, hearing, etc)
How to improve visualization: Hyperphantasia
According to Wikipedia [1], “Hyperphantasia is the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery. It is the opposite condition to aphtanasia where mental visual imagery is not present. The experience of hyperphantasia is more common than aphantasia and has been described as being “as vivid as real seeing”. Hyperphantasia constitutes all five senses within vivid mental imagery; however, “visual” mental imagery research dominates the literature, and there is a lack of research on the other four senses.“
Mental visualization capability is a spectrum, take the VVID (Vividness of Visual Imagery) Questionnaire to find out where you stand: https://aphantasia.com/vviq/
This will serve as a good personal benchmark for how hard to push your visualizations. Try to be as honest as possible. The problem with tests or scales like this is that we cannot fully understand what goes on in other people’s minds so any objective measure or ranking usually fails due to varying levels of personal confidence.
Image Streaming
Basically, sit with a visualization scene for 5 minutes in silence or with meditation music. Keep mumbling words describing the scene in all its richness and detail, building up the mental image gradually, slowly. Let the visualisation wash over you, and apply more senses. Works great if you are the observer or in the scene.
MEMORY PALACE TECHNIQUES
Making One
Imagine a place you are very physically familiar with. You’ll find it easy to recall objects and their locations as you take a path through this place. This is what we are trying to exploit. You might have multiple such places like this, choose one that is diverse in scenery (not just some straight road), which will make it easier to attach concepts or memories to items that stand out. These are called loci. Walk through the memory palace again and see how many loci you can locate. Even if there aren’t many, with time you’ll be able to create very dense maps through mastery of that palace.
For simple practice, make a basic to-do list. Walk through the palace and place items representing your list in respective loci.
Enhancing
With the to-do list in mind, you might notice some items are easier to remember than others based on the length of the list, the loci placements, and how outstanding the items you place are. By paying attention to mental visualization and the rendering pipeline, try to make more outstanding, alive and unique representations because the brain performs way better at remembering novelty.
Encoding
Now with the basics of creation and enhancement in mind, for more complex ideas and sequences, simple animations and objects would not be enough for recall. This requires some encoding.
This can be done by creating animation inside objects that map to sequences or acronyms. For example, mapping a sentence into a single object in the palace might involve extracting useful keywords in the sentence and storing them in sequence i.e. The man with the telephone chomped on a grape. man → telephone → teeth → grape.
This can be turned into a single animation with a panned view of a man standing with an old telephone, then a pair of fake teeth on the same table as the telephone, with a grape rolling off the edge of the table.
Numerical Encoding
Another useful but effective form of encoding (for storing silly things such as digits of pi), involves just mapping the numbers 0-9 into different objects and animations. These can then be placed in the palace and decoded on the fly with enough practice.
ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
Temporary Pinning
Especially for quick palaces, remembering everything is not important. Since memory palaces simply act as a bridge between short and long-term memory, objects placed in there can simply act as a reminder for subsequent recall i.e. seeing a vat of fluid changing form in response to punching can bring to mind classes of fluids and the viscosity equation. The object can then be enhanced later to make sure one remembers to bring these things to mind.
Sparse Filling
Very simple. Skim the text multiple times, each time building a tree of contextual information worth storing. Then you can expand and increase the LOD of these contextual points on loci.
Palace Expansions
You can easily expand palaces by grafting locations onto each other. You can also expand hierarchically by nesting palaces inside each other, creating a hub. As you use an increasing number of palaces, you might notice some decay in the novelty and potency of frequently used palaces. It helps to intentionally clean up old palaces that might still be lingering in your mind and start afresh. Using different loci and even starting points helps too. Restarting an entire palace that might be suffering from this entanglement might be necessary.
EXTRA
Does Lucid Dreaming Help?
I’ve experimented a bit with lucid dreaming (Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge). I don’t find that it helps so much when it comes to mental visualizations or memory palaces but they are an interesting instrument to experiment with.