A. R. Luria: "The Mind of a Mnemonist"

A. R. Luria

I'm now catching up on my garage sale book-buy reading of last summer -- namely, the classic study of a memory "super-savant." The descriptions of the way "S." combines his synesthesia sensations to build a "memory palace" for his images is fascinating. (A. R. Luria studied Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalist with a seemingly unlimited memory, sometimes referred to in contemporary literature as "flashbulb" memory, in part due to his five-fold synesthesia.)

"A welcome re-issue of an English translation of Alexander Luria's famous case-history of hypermnestic man. The study remains the classic paradigm of what Luria called 'romantic science, ' a genre characterized by individual portraiture based on an assessment of operative psychological processes. The opening section analyses in some detail the subject's extraordinary capacity for recall and demonstrates the association between the persistence of iconic memory and a highly developed synaesthesia. The remainder of the book deals with the subject's construction of the world, his mental strengths and weaknesses, his control of behavior and his personality. The result is a contribution to literature as well as to science.

Luria's essay is a model of lucid presentation and is an altogether convincing description of a man whose whole personality and fate was conditioned by an intellectual idiosyncrasy.

A distinguished Soviet psychologist's study...[of a] young man who was discovered to have a literally limitless memory and eventually became a professional mnemonist. Experiments and interviews over the years showed that his memory was based on synesthesia (turning sounds into vivid visual imagery), that he could forget anything only by an act of will, that he solved problems in a peculiar crablike fashion that worked, and that he was handicapped intellectually because he could not make discriminations, and because every abstraction and idea immediately dissolved into an image for him. It is all fascinating and delightful."

Ed Cooke: On the Memory Palace

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 January 2012

iIlustration: Randy Mora/YCN

Have you ever wondered how some people manage to learn multiple decks of cards in perfect sequence, list thousands of items, or recall vast tracts of poetry? These feats are so foreign to our sense of what our memory is normally capable of that we often assume that some kind of special brainpower is the only way to account for them.

In almost all such cases, though, a remarkably simple technique can take the credit. Memory palaces are said to be the brainchild of a man named Simonides, who famously nipped out of a banquet at the moment the hall happened to collapse, killing the guests inside. His luck was twofold: not only did he survive, but he realised he could recall the exact location of the less fortunate dinner guests, and thereby identify their otherwise unrecognisable remains.

After Simonides, the Greeks came to understand that our most robust and powerful memory is for spaces and what happens in them. We learn their structure and contents effortlessly, absorbing hundreds of "facts" without even noticing it. Whenever we conjure up a memory, one of the first things we recall is where the event took place. This is most likely a legacy of our mammalian ancestors, who had plenty of practice at locating familiar sources of food and shelter.

The Greeks' innovation was to co-opt these powerful spatial and visual systems into the service of learning more abstract information. They practiced transforming lists of words into colorful sets of objects, which they arranged in their imagination around familiar spaces. Then they learned to automatically translate these images back to their original meaning.

How to create your own memory palace

Let's explore how this works by attempting to learn 40 of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order (see PDF below). This may sound like a daunting task, but if you follow these six steps, you should be able to do it.

• First, think of a familiar route. The path from your bedroom to the local shop, for example, via the rest of your house. The first stop might be your bed, the second your wardrobe, then your doorway or bathroom. Don't be afraid to pass through walls. Try and imagine a 40-stop route in total.

• Think of an image to correspond with each play. As we know, vivid images are marvellous for memory. Imagine The Two Gentlemen of Verona as two men in bowler hats wrestling, for instance; The Taming of the Shrew could be a vicious shrew being tamed; King Henry VI parts 2, 3 and 1 might be Prince Harry, aged six, trying to count to three, and instead counting 2, 3, 1... You get the picture. Remember, always go with your own personal associations – not necessarily the examples given here. We've left a column on the PDF for you to fill in with your own vivid images.

• Imagine walking along the route, linking the images and locations together in your mind. The two gentlemen might be wrestling on your bed, for example; the shrew might be in your wardrobe; a six-year-old Prince Harry could be standing at your bedroom door, and so on. Continue in this way until each play has found a place in the sequence. Try to feel the emotion you would experience if these scenes were actually taking place in your house: disgust, elation, suspicion, surprise. This will help etch the images into your memory.

• Practise recalling the plays in order. After a couple of walk-throughs, in which you practise recalling the images in the correct order, you're ready to recite the plays of Shakespeare in chronological order. Close your eyes, go along the route and translate each image into the correct play as you encounter it. Sometimes, you might find that you can't remember what the image stands for. Don't worry about that, just make a mental note and try again. It'll soon become automatic.

• Practise recalling the plays backwards. One of the great advantages of spatial memory is how flexible it is. You should be able to list the plays backwards as well as forwards. Also, try challenging yourself by asking: "What comes before Cymbeline? What comes after?" (This is also a good way to while away time on the commute to work.)

With this method, it's possible to learn lists that are thousands of items long. Spatial memory is extraordinarily capacious in this way: if you are willing to spend the time arranging a thousand images in your mind, you'll be able to learn a thousand item list. Imagine that!

Shakespeare plays

 

 

from Wiki:

 

Edward "Ed" Cooke (born 1982) is a British writer and author of Remember, Remember: Learn the Stuff You Thought You Never Could. He is also a Grand Master of Memory and the co-founder of Memrise, a free online educational platform that uses memory techniques to optimise learning. He grew up in Oxfordshire.

 

Career

 

After graduating with a first class degree in psychology and philosophy from Oxford University in 2004 and completing a Master's degree in Cognitive Science at Paris Descartes University under the supervision of J. Kevin O'Regan in 2005, he started a career researching, writing about, and teaching memory techniques.

 

At 23, he became a Grand Master of Memory. Cooke uses memory techniques popularized by the likes of Tony Buzan and Dominic O'Brien, which involves turning raw data - packs of cards, series of numbers, US Presidents - into colourful imagery. His work has found popular application in education.

 

To learn the electromagnetic spectrum, for instance, Cooke proposes transforming each stage (for example, the microwave) into an image (a microwave in the kitchen).

 

He also features prominently in Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein, having acted as memory coach to Foer, who went on to become U.S. Memory Champion.

 

He is co-founder of Memrise, an online educational platform that uses memory techniques to optimise learning.

 

Cooke's latest writings on memory, education and philosophy can be found on his blog and on Twitter.

 

Achievements in Memory Sports Contests

2008–10th at the World Memory Championships

 

2007–7th at the World Memory Championships
2007–Champion at the Cambridge Memory Championship

2006–8th at the World Memory Championships

2005–11th at the World Memory Championships

2004–11th at the World Memory Championships
2004–3rd at the Austrian Open Memory Championship

2003–10th at the World Memory Championships

Building a Memory Palace

At the World Memory Championships, top competitors memorize the order of 20 shuffled decks of cards in an hour and more than 500 random digits in 15 minutes, among other events.

Think you have what it takes? Believe it or not, almost everybody has the capability to perform such amazing feats. Competitive memorizers don’t necessarily have “better memories" than the rest of us; instead, they learn and perfect a variety of mnemonics (memory aids) to improve their ability to quickly learn and recall just about anything. One of the most useful and widely used mnemonics is the memory palace, a place or series of places in your mind where you can store information that you need to remember. With time and practice, anyone can build a memory palace, and they are useful for far more than just memory competitions and trivia.
Here’s how to build your own:

 
1. Decide on a blueprint for your palace. While a memory palace can be a purely imagined place, it is easier to base it upon a place that exists in the real world and that you are familiar with. A basic palace could be your bedroom, for example. Larger memory palaces can be based on your house, a cathedral, a walk to the corner store, or your whole town. The larger or more detailed the real place, the more information you can store in the corresponding mental space.

2. Define a route. If you will need to remember things in a certain order, it is essential that you follow a specific route through your palace, both in the real world and in your mind. Thus, once you’ve decided what your memory palace is, decide how you will travel through it. If you don’t really need to remember things in order, this step is unnecessary, but still useful, as it makes memorizing your palace easier.

3. Identify specific storage locations in your palace or along your route. When you use your memory palace you will put individual things to be remembered (a number, a name, or a part of a speech that you will be giving, for example), in specific locations. Thus, you need to identify as many locations as you think you will need. Walk through your structure or along your route and really observe it. If your palace is actually a route, such as your drive to work, the storage locations can be landmarks along the way: your neighbor’s house, a crossroads, a statue, or a skyscraper, for example. If the palace is a structure, you can put things in the different rooms. Within rooms, you can identify smaller locations, such as paintings, pieces of furniture, and so on. The key is to make sure the locations you choose are distinct from each other so that no location can be mistaken for another.

4. Memorize your memory palace. For your memory palace to be effective, you need to commit it to memory perfectly. The best way to do this is to actually draw out a blueprint (or a map, if the palace is a route) which shows the landmarks or storage locations you have chosen. Try visualizing the palace when you are not there, and then check your mental image against the map to make sure you have remembered every location and put them in the correct order. Picture the landmarks in as much detail as possible: make sure your mental image includes their colors, sizes, smells, and any other defining characteristics.

5. Place things to be remembered in your palace. Once you have constructed your palace and have it firmly implanted in your mind, you are ready to use it. Put a manageable amount of information in each place. For example, if your palace is your house, and you are trying to remember a speech, you might place the first few sentences on your doormat and the next few in the keyhole of your door. Don’t put too much information in any one place, and if certain things must be kept separate from others, put them in different places. Make sure that you place things along your route in the order in which you need to remember them, if applicable.

6. Use symbols. You don’t necessarily need to put a whole string of words or numbers in a given location in order to be able to remember it, and trying to do so can be unwieldy and counterproductive. Generally, all you need to store in each location is something that will jog your memory, something that will lead you to the actual idea you’re trying to remember. Thus, if you are trying to remember a ship, picture an anchor on your couch. If the ship is the U.S.S. Wisconsin, picture the anchor made out of cheese. Symbols are shorthand and make memories more manageable, but they also can be more effective than picturing the actual thing you are trying to remember.

7. Be creative. The images you put in your palace should, obviously, be as memorable as possible. Generally, images will be more memorable if they are absurd (out of the ordinary)[see warnings] , or if they are attached to some strong emotion or personal experience. The number 124 is not particularly memorable, but an image of a spear shaped like the number 1, going through a swan (which looks like the number 2), and splitting the swan into 4 pieces is. Yes, it’s disturbing, but that’s part of what makes it stick in your mind.

8. Stock your palace with other mnemonics. There are many simpler mnemonics that you can use in combination with the memory palace. As an example, suppose you need to remember a great deal about music composition. As you enter your kitchen, you could see a little boy eating a piece of chocolate fudge, which would evoke the first-letter mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," which would in turn allow you to recall the order of notes on the lines in treble clef (EGBDF).

9. Explore your palace. Once you have stocked your palace with evocative images, you need to go through it and look at them. The more you explore your palace, the more easily you will recall its contents on demand. In your mind you want to see James Joyce, for example, sitting on your toilet as if he belonged there and was really an integral part of your bathroom decor.

10. Use your palace. Once you have memorized the contents of your palace you can recall them simply by mentally walking through it or looking around it. If you need to give a speech, just follow your route in order as you do so. If you need to remember that your girlfriend’s birthday is March 16, simply go into your bedroom and see the soldiers “marching" on the bed to the tune of the 80s cult classic “Sixteen Candles." With practice you will be able to start anywhere in your palace or along your route to recall a specific piece of information.

11. Build new palaces. A memory palace can be reused over and over again if you need only commit things to memory for a short time. Just replace the existing contents with new ones, and you’ll soon remember only the new ones. If you need to remember the contents of your palace for a long time, you can keep that palace as it is and create new ones in which to store other information as needed. If your house contains the phone numbers of everyone you know, you can walk to your workplace if you need to remember the order of a deck of cards.