Total recall

Can memory palaces train your brain?

Fans of the TV series Sherlock will be aware of the awesome potential of the memory palace. Visualising items you wish to remember by “placing” them in particular locations within a building familiar to you is a mind technique supposedly created by the poet Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century BC. Today, it is used by many individuals regarded as memory champions – from chess masters to pub quizzers.

Fresh evidence for the memory-boosting qualities of this technique was presented last month in the journal Neuron. Martin Dressler and colleagues from Radboud University in the Netherlands showed that after practising the technique for half an hour every day for 40 days, participants dramatically improved their ability to remember a list of 72 random nouns. An average of 26 items recalled before training rose to 62 afterwards.

However, it’s not clear how practical the memory palace is for helping you remember the things that make your day-to-day life run smoothly – for example, where you parked your car in the multi-storey, or the time of your dental appointment. What are the problems?

First, this technique requires you to call up and visualise a building you know well, so you can “walk through it” confidently. This isn’t easy for everyone, and actually it isn’t even necessary. Eric Legge and colleagues at the University of Alberta showed this when they gave lists of unrelated words to two groups of participants. They asked one group to imagine a familiar building for their memory palace, and the second group to work with a computergenerated (unfamiliar) structure. The two groups performed equally well – and better than the control group. It may be that focusing our full attention on each item is the crucial factor, rather than where we “place” it in a building.

Second, memory coaches stress the importance of creating as bizarre or unusual an image as possible for each item. They point out – quite rightly – that we’re more likely to remember unusual items. However, memory contestants work with unrelated, random material. Most of what we wish to remember, on the other hand, is of personal relevance. It would therefore be better to “embellish” what you wish to remember by relating it to what you already know and what matters to you.

So, for example, to remember where you parked your car, you might notice that you parked in Bay C, Row 2. You note that C is the first letter of your daughter’s name, and 2 is your lucky number. On the way to the shops, you repeat to yourself that Charlotte has your lucky number.

Memory palaces are great fun, and they’ll help if you wish to memorise lists of random items. However, to improve everyday recall, simply take the time to pay good attention to what you wish to remember, give it personal relevance, and repeat the association to yourself several times. Much less complicated.