Anthony Metivier's Blog, page 15

Aboriginal And Indigenous Memory Techniques with Tyson Yunkaporta

Are you curious about the memory techniques used in the ancient world?

I’m talking about aboriginal memory techniques in Australia.

But also a lot more.

For example, it’s possible to learn about all sorts of indigenous tools for learning and retaining information used by people around the world.

If this sounds interesting to you, you’re in luck.

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, I sat down with Tyson Yunkaporta, an author and educator who has shared these techniques with many groups of people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_–IA...

 

Tyson’s a huge fan of both the Aboriginal memory techniques and the Memory Palace, so I think you’re going to love how we discuss all the techniques we go over in this discussion.

As the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World, Dr. Yunkaporta is an incredible teacher.

I found this book compelling, useful and the main mnemonic device taught in the book is an obvious win for social change and healing global issues.

As Tyson expresses in this interview, the time for “memory wars” (and all kinds of other wars) is over.

We simply don’t have time for them anymore.

And to help you be part of the solution in your culture, you need to widen your context and bring that back into your community.

Here are just some of the memory techniques you’ll discover in this discussion:

Real places and objectsRelationalHaptic connectionsRiddles and wordplayThe Night skySonglinesPlace and maps of placeSymbols and imagesRhythm and rhymeRepetitionSongRude languageStoriesMessage sticks

In sum, if you were to put these mnemonics into play, you’d be using them as a “way of life.”

For more on the scientific study that inspired this “yarn,” please see my discussion with Dr. David Reser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDgT...

I also recommend you supplement this video with Brilliant Miller’s interview with Tyson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCzlg...

Lynne Kelly and her books The Memory Code and Memory Craft comes up in this interview, so if you’d like to catch up with me and her, please see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jim_c...

Finally, here’s The “Memory Wars” recording with Dr. Reser and Dr. Yunkaporta.

We talk about a number of mnemonic devices in this interview, so please be prepared to write them down. Songlines are part of a larger set that people used who had a ton of knowledge they needed in order to survive.

Make sure you supplement your own survival by digging as deeply as you can into the wide range of techniques history around the world has to offer. And apply the information you acquire to helping the world become a better place.

Thanks for being part of the memory world at large and talk soon!

10 Types of Synesthesia (Examples, Causes, and Symptoms)

With so many types of synesthesia out there, it can be hard to understand exactly what it is.

That’s why it’s important to look at the word itself first: 

It shares a root with anesthesia. This word means “no sensation.” 

“Syn” means that something is joined or coupled together. Thus, synesthesia means the joining or coupling of two or more sensations. 

And because many different kinds of sensations can be joined, that’s why there are so many synesthesia types.

On this page, we’ll go through the definitions of each one. You’ll discover specific examples and interesting tidbits from scientific research. 

That way, you can leave with the fullest possible understanding of this condition. You might even be able to invoke it too using a resource I’ll share below. 

Let’s get started.

The 10 Types of Synesthesia (with Examples, Causes, and Symptoms)

In his book on the topic, neurologist Richard E. Cytowic states that approximately 4% of the population experience some form of synesthesia. 

Exactly how long people experience their synesthesia is unknown, but many seem to drift in and out of it.

In Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia, Cytowic and his co-authors David Eagleman and Dmitri Nabokov found that evolutionary pressures may shape when and for how long a synesthesia condition affects people. 

The condition also tends to be unidirectional. As they point out, a person might experience the letter J as blue. However, seeing blue does not cause them to think about the letter J or experience “J-ness.” 

Most forms of synesthesia belong roughly to what some people call “Projection Synesthesia.” That is, something in the brain causes their minds to project senses that aren’t there for the rest of us. Often they tend to involve colors.

So with these aspects in mind, let’s dig into as many types of synesthesia as we can. 

One: Colored Days of the Week

Here’s how Daniel Tammet discusses his birthday: 

“I was born on January 31, 1979 — a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue.”

In his book, Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Aspergers and an Extraordinary Mind, Tamet says that Tuesday is a “warm color” and Thursday is “fuzzy.” 

This lack of specificity for some days of the week should remind us of the consistency issue raised by Cytowic. Or it’s possible that some days have substances for Tamet rather than colors.

Is this the same as associating numbers with colors. Not necessarily. For that we need to learn more about our next type.

Two: Grapheme Color Synesthesia

When you see or think about the letter “A,” does it have a color? For some people it does. Likewise with numbers.

Some people will read letters and numbers and see them as colors. Others with grapheme color synesthesia will see letters and numbers as black marks on white paper but think about them as colors. 

In The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses, Jamie Ward gives a list of letter-color associations from two research participants.

It is interesting that different people experience these letters in different ways. This suggests just as much nurture in the development of this form of synesthesia as nature. 

Three: Chromesthesia

Chromesthesia, or colored hearing, means that the individual experiences colors connected with sounds. 

Researchers have found that sounds can trigger more than colors as well. A person with this condition might hear music and experience shapes, landscapes or textures. 

Composers who may have drawn upon this type of synesthesia include Franz Liszt and Jean Sibelius. 

Four: Ordinal Linguistic Personification

In this manifestation of synesthesia, the individual will experience numbers, days, months and multiple kinds of words and things as if they were people.

For example, the word “camping” might be experienced as having a gender and a tendency towards grumpiness. A stick on the street might seem to the individual as a happy young man. 

In many ways, this synesthesia condition is a lot like how kids play with objects to keep themselves entertained.

Five: Mirror Touch

Imagine you see two people across the street shaking hands. But you don’t just see it. You feel it as if you were the one shaking hands. That’s what is meant by Mirror Touch synesthesia. 

In a two-year study by Charlotte A. Chun and Jean-Michel Hupé, these researchers found that many kinds of people with synesthesia experience this form. There was no way to predict which kinds of people might have this kind, but they did see some indication that French people were more likely to experience grapheme color synesthesia. 

Six: Spatial Sequence Synesthesia

There are at least two parts to Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, sometimes called “Number Form” synesthesia.

First, the person experiences numbers units as having distinct locations. For example, take an organizational unit like a calendar. Instead of thinking of February conceptually as a group of days, the person will experience it bound up with a location, or as if it had the qualities of a location. 

Mark Price and Jason Mattingly give an example of calendar drawings in Automaticity in sequence-space synaesthesia.

Second, this unit will be experienced with references to other numbers, themselves located in space.

Jamie Ward asked a test participant to draw how she was experiencing Spatial Sequence Synesthesia. 

As you can see, the participant not only has the numbers represented where they appear in space. She has indicated how she can rotate her point of view around their location. 

Another point: 

Part of experiencing this form of the condition might mean that people experience numbers “floating in space at a fixed distance from their body.”

Seven: Auditory-Tactile Synesthesia

Also called “Sound-Touch Synesthesia,” this form of the condition means that common sounds create physical sensations in the listener. These are typically described as “tingling” and may be intense enough to deeply disturb the individual.

Studies in people with thalamic lesions have shown that this part of the brain might be responsible for both physical and sound sensations. This area of knowledge is one place where knowing how to remember the cranial nerves could also be helpful because they contribute to some of our ability to perceive physical and auditory sensations.

Eight: Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia

Imagine tasting the words of this article as you read it.

That’s exactly what would be happening to you now if you had lexical-gustatory synesthesia. 

Researchers have found that amongst the few people who experience this condition, the experience is very intense but lacking in quality. Brain scans show that the parts of the brain involved in emotions light up, which may explain the magnitude of these experiences. 

Sound-gustatory is much the same. However, in this case, the sense of taste is triggered by noises and auditory modulations in the person’s environment. 

We’ve talked about taste. What about smelling colors?

This too is something that happens to people with synesthesia, but seems much less common than some of the other types.

Although subjective feelings are involved in each of these, it’s hard to say if any of them amount to emotional synesthesia as a type on its own. More research needs to be done, some of which is being uncovered by those investigating our next type.

Nine: Misophonia Synesthesia

People with misophonia can be triggered to rage by everyday sounds. 

Researchers have not been able to find out much about it. Some conclude that many people fail to report their symptoms for fear of being stigmatized. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, ASMR has been all the rage over the past few years. Videos featuring all kinds of mundane sounds of racked up millions, if not billions of views on YouTube hoping to induce “auto sensory meridian response.” 

These are pleasant tingling sensations that come from listening to sounds like whispering voices, tapping, blowing bubbles or chewing gum. 

Ten: Ideaesthesia

Of these two images, which would you name Booba and which Kiki? 

Most native English speakers will name the image on the left Kiki and the image on the right Booba.

Why?

Because hard-K sounds are conceived as being similar to sharp angles. Softer B-sounds are generally perceived as more like the rounded drawing to the right. According to Derren Bridger, marketers have long known about this tendency and used it to help dream up product names.

Much more research needs to be done on this branch of synesthesia. It’s not yet clear if colors are also involved in how people might experience these conceptual approaches to linking sounds with shapes in a conceptual way.

Can You Give Yourself Synesthesia?

I don’t think so. And I hope you never harm your brain or develop a lesion that might come with unwanted effects just to experience synesthesia.

However, you certainly can increase your ability to experience the world in a multi sensory way. 

To give this a try for yourself, go through this hyperphantasia guided meditation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAz3_...

In the meantime, I hope this rundown of the many different types of synesthesia helped you out. 

If there are any I missed, please pop them into the discussion area so we can all learn about them. And if you’d like to be able to memorize all of these different terms we discussed today, check out my FREE Memory Improvement Kit today: 

Better Than The Memory Palace? A Discussion With Dr. David Reser

Tell me if this sounds like clickbait?

“Ancient Australian Aboriginal Memory Tool Superior to ‘Memory Palace’ Learning”

I mean, I thought so too.

Must be click bait.

I grew even more concerned when Dominic O’Brien tweeted a Neuroscience article and added this statement:

“In short, Link or Story Method combined with Journey Method provide the optimum learning strategy.”

With all due respect to Dominic and acknowledgement of his great accomplishments and wonderful books, this is not precisely what the Neuroscience article says.

Nor is it what the full study says.

Neither the media report or the study even contain the word “Journey.”

An Opportunity For The “Pause” Button

Now, because I’m human too, I decided not to battle about this on Twitter. As you know, Angry Birds just ain’t my schtick.

In fact, I simply retweeted Dominic’s statement with a link to the original study.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDgT...

 

And with sincere humility, let me offer this:

For a memory expert to… shall we say… shape what a study says by promoting it with a quasi-branded term like “Journey Method” should be a wake up call to the human and humanness in us all.

Because as educators, it’s normal to get excited by anything in the world of science that validates what we’ve been saying all along. I’m sure in haste I’ve done something like that too, and in this fast paced world, probably will again.

All the more reason that we must be on our guard and seek to go beyond the headlines and the tweets.

To temper ourselves so that we can truly learn from the research, and hopefully improve how we teach and learn, while avoiding getting territorial in ways that risk placing borders on the wonder.

Territorialism Over Terminology

Because frankly, I noted a small tremor of territorialism in myself at the idea that something could be better than the Memory Palace.

And that happened to me even though I often remind you that this term is just a word for location-based mnemonics, and nothing more.

Knowing that there must be more to this study than anyone could hope to convey in a tweet, I read the full paper myself. And to get even more detail, I reached out to Dr. David Reser at Monash university.

As a neuroscientist with interests in attention, consciousness and many aspects of education, Dr. Reser is the head author on the study that several dozen people have emailed me about since the story broke.

What Does The Study Actually Say?

First off, it’s important that you read it yourself.

The study is called:

“Australian Aboriginal techniques for memorization: Translation into a medical and allied health education setting.”

It turns out, the medical and health education setting matter a great deal. And there are several more nuances that make this study very, very interesting.

For example:

A particular story was important to the studyStudent preparedness and preexisting learning experiences may be key to learning fasterHaving a teacher in the learning space with the students was importantThe Aboriginal approach is shown to have helped the individuals remember the order betterMore research on long term comparisons with the Method of Loci and the Aboriginal technique are required

These are just my tentative bullet points for the time being.

Frankly, Dr. Reser is so good at explaining the science, I really hope you’ll dive into the full conversation.

This Actually Could Be “Better” Than The Memory Palace Technique

For now, I’m happy to say this:

If all of us educators and students can get on the same page, share these findings around and collaborate with those members in the Aboriginal community who hold knowledge we should be very excited about…

Why then, there might just be something many magnitudes of better, better than whatever you want to call the memory techniques you currently use.

But we do have to pay the price of attending to accuracy.

With care and accuracy in mind, I’m grateful Dr. Reser spent this time with us to discuss the study, the nature of its implications and what we all can do to learn, explore.

Links To Dr. Reser

Please spend some time on the reading, share your thoughts in the comments.

And if you’re new to the Magnetic Memory Method blog, please get subscribed because I’m hoping to record a follow-up interview with Tyson Yunkaporta soon.

If you, like me, care about the memory tradition and our quest for the truth about what really works, you’re not going to want to miss a thing.

Dr. David Reser’s Monash University Profile

Dr. David Reser on Twitter

How To Stop Losing Things: 6 Proven Tips

If you want to stop losing things, you’re probably tired of the standard advice. 

Sure, tips like getting more organized, reducing clutter and always placing things in a designated spot make sense.

But everyday life does not make sense. Sometimes we put things down and can’t remember where we put them.

So what really works? 

Well, if you’re sick of constantly losing things, you’re in luck.

On this page, we’ll go through some proven memory techniques you can use. They’ll help you remember where you placed things even when you cannot follow the standard advice. 

How to Stop Misplacing Things

First, we need to start getting more specific. 

Instead of “things,” we need to start using the actual names for what we want to stop losing. 

And the topic of naming leads us to our first major tip.

One: Say Names And Locations Aloud

If you have to set your keys down, say aloud, “keys on the counter.”

This will reinforce the action and help your brain label both the object and the location. 

If you tend to forget whether or not you locked the door, saying aloud “locked” will help. It’s so much easier to remember what you’ve said aloud compared to what you’ve done physically.

Rest assured, there’s no shame in this. I’m a memory expert and I say “locked, locked, locked” in my mind almost every time I go out. It eliminates the worry that I might have forgotten to do so. 

Two: Make A Fist

Let’s say you set your glasses down on a table. 

Rather than simply walk away, close your fist as if you still have your glasses in your hand. 

You can combine this technique with saying the object and the location as you walk away. 

This physical sensation will help you carry the memory with you. Later, you can think back to your fist and where you made this gesture. This action will help lead you back to the location. 

I suggest you squeeze vigorously. Don’t make this a passive action. Put some drive into it. 

Also, if you’re leaving one room to go find scissors and don’t want to forget before you reach the kitchen, make a fist. By pretending you’ve got the scissors in your hand before leaving the room, you’ll remember what you were seeking.

Three: Make Multi Sensory Associations

Next time you put your wallet down, imagine hearing a massive explosion – just as if you’d dropped a bomb. 

Let your imagination soar by making it as loud as possible.

Include a visual flash of light. Feel the ground rumble. Think to yourself, my wallet just blew up the kitchen counter. 

Add some emotions, like shock at the explosion.

Follow these simple steps and misplacing things will be difficult for you from now on.

Four: Use Rhymes

We’ve already talked about using names. But there are more ways we can use language to help us remember objects and their locations.

Let’s say you have difficulties finding important books on your shelves. 

Instead of arranging everything alphabetically (which is not a bad idea), you can remember where books are like this:

My important bookie-wookie is next to Stephen King-a-ling. 

Silly, right?

That’s exactly the point. It makes it easier to remember where you stuck that book you always keep misplacing.

Five: Learn The Major System And Pegword Method

People ask me all the time, Why do I keep losing things? I even lose my car at the shopping mall!

I would too if I didn’t use memory techniques. 

Two of the most powerful for finding your vehicle in parking lots are:

The Major SystemThe Pegword Method

Basically, they help you assign an image to each digit from 0-9 and to every letter of the alphabet.

Then, if you park in B4, you’ll be able to imagine a bee attacking a sailboat. Since “bee” starts with the letter ‘b’ and 4 looks a bit like a sailboat, remembering this location will be a breeze. 

Just as imagining your wallet dropping like a bomb needs some multi sensory visualization, you want to enhance this kind of association. 

When I use this technique, it’s not the bland idea of a bee attacking a sailboat. It’s a full-scale Hollywood movie with emotions, sounds, intensity and energy.

The trick is to spend a bit of time creating these systems and practicing them. Luckily, they’re easy, fun and provide incredible brain exercise. And when you add the multi sensory aspects, the location of your car leaps instantly to mind.

If you feel a little unusual doing this in the beginning, don’t stress about it. With a small amount of practice, creating associations like this will become second nature.

Six: Turn Your Home Into A Memory Palace

If you can assign a memorable image to a parking spot, you can do the same thing in your home. 

Let’s say you’ve developed your skills with the pegword method. You can then assign a letter and object to each room. 

Let’s say you call your bedroom “A” and imagine a grouchy apple lives in it. If you take your watch off in your bedroom, you can think about the grouchy apple complaining about it.

By combining the alphabet with the Memory Palace technique, you will never forget where you placed your items again.

Because the apple is your image for the bedroom, you’ll remember the location. After all, it’s memorably absurd for an apple to be grouchy about you leaving your watch on the bedside table. 

If you assign ‘b’ to your living room with Batman, there are all kinds of possible ways to have him interact with your glasses, keys, wallet or anything else you want to remember as you set it down.

If you want to learn more about the Memory Palace technique, check out this free course:

There are many more ways to use your home to remember information. I hope you’ll check it out. 

These Tips Will Prevent You From Saying, “I Always Lose Things”

You now know how to use associations to remember where you placed important objects.

The benefits of removing this problem from your life include:

Saved timeReduced stressImproved memory

The more you practice these techniques, the stronger your memory will become. 

Of course, the standard advice about reducing clutter and creating reminders for yourself still has its place. 

But because life can get incredibly hectic, your best bet is to become a “Warrior of the Mind,” and make using association a habit. 

As always, the best app on the planet is the software you’re running in your head. Please use it, and if I can help you further in any way, just post below and I’ll get back to you a.s.a.p.

Don’t worry – I haven’t missed (or lost) a comment yet! 🙂

What Is Prospective Memory? Everything You Need to Know

[image error]Prospective memory is fascinating. Your entire future relies on it working well. 

Why?

Well, let me ask you this:

How do you know that in the future you will remember to remember? 

To test our ability to remember the need to remember in the future, researchers S. L. Penningroth and W.D. Scott asked a bunch of university students the following question:

“Imagine that your friend has asked you to make a call tomorrow morning to provide a personal recommendation for a full-time job. You must wait until morning to call because that is when the potential employer will be in the office.”

As Beatrice G. Kuhlmann discusses in the excellent book of essays, Prospective Memory, different students listed different strategies. To remind themselves of this future event, they might remember to make the call by:

Mentally rehearsing the call Using an app for notificationLeaving a note where they would be sure to see itSetting a specific time to make the call

These are all examples of metacognition that helps us remember future intentions. Without both intention and metacognition, we are all at risk of some serious prospective memory failure. 

That’s why being able to remember to do things and perform actions in the future is so critical. 

Let’s look more at this important type of memory and make sure you understand its importance, how to preserve it and even how to make it better. That way you can stop missing so many appointments and forgetting to do the things that matter. 

What Is Prospective Memory?

Prospective memory is literally defined by remembering to do things in the future. This means that it is primarily linked to tasks. 

Attending a classGoing to an appointmentCompleting a task at work on timeTaking medicationRemembering to pack a lunchThe Two Main Prospective Memory Tasks

There are at least two kinds of tasks that prospective memory influences:

Time-based tasksEvent-based tasks

Taking medicine at a particular time of day is a time-based task because it happens at a specific time. Another example would be baking. If you warm the oven for 10 minutes before putting the cookies inside, that task is time-based and your prospective memory operates in accordance. You can also think about these kinds of tasks in relation to procedural memory.

By contrast, event-based tasks involve some kind of cue in your environment.

If you see a grocery store on your way home, this might remind you that someone in your family asked you to pick up some apples or tea. In other words, this kind of prospective memory comes to mind when something you see, hear or feel cues you to think about the task. 

Seeing a grocery store can trigger your memory that you need to do some shopping.

How Do Researchers Study Prospective Memory?

In order to analyze how people engage in prospective memory tasks, researchers create models. They do this by finding volunteers to participate in research studies that involve time-based or event-based tasks.

For example, S.J. Gilbert devised a study testing how people “offload” their future tasks. By creating a model of how people behave, he noticed an interesting difference in leaving reminders for yourself that you might recognize:

“I might write the details of an appointment on a piece of paper, which reminds me of where I need to go, but only after I have remembered that I need to go somewhere and consulted this record.”

In other words, making a note about an appointment in the future is no guarantee that you will remember to look at the note. You might even be confused by notes that you left for yourself. Thus, the implication of this study is that:

We often need more than written remindersWe need to be very clear about the written reminders we do leave for ourselvesWhat Does A Model Of Prospective Memory Look Like? 

They’re pretty fascinating, actually!

A typical model of prospective memory shows that there’s a process that is divided into three categories:

A simple model of prospective memory showing three phases with several steps in each. From the book, Prospective Memory (Current Issues In Memory).

Prospective memory, which involves:Intention formationIntention retentionIntention retrievalMonitoring, which involves:Predictions, “Will I remember this?”Experiencing blanks, “What was it I needed to do?”Assessing your memory for any reminders you might have left, “Didn’t I write the time down?”Control, which involves:Consciously using encoding strategies (like using a Memory Palace)Consciously reminding yourself about the task (rehearsal)Correcting for any errors (checking that an appointment was 4 p.m., not 4:30)Does Prospective Memory Worsen With Age?

The answer depends on the nature of the experiment. Some have shown that older individuals do just as well as younger people. Others show that there can be issues, especially in cases where Alzheimer’s is present.

Here’s an example from Dr. Dawn McBride discussing a study that reveals the difference between younger and older individuals:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/529860739

(McBride, D. (Academic). (2016). What is prospective memory? [Video]. SAGE Knowledge.)

“In a study we conducted in my lab a few years ago, we compared prospective memory for older adults, people who are 55 or older, and younger adults, college students. 

What we asked them to do was a common everyday task. We gave them a postcard and asked them to mail it back to us after a particular period of time had passed. In other words, a time-based task. Some subjects were asked to mail it the next day. Some, two days later. Some, five days later. All the way up to a month later. 

We asked the subjects not to use any reminders. Like, not to put it up on their refrigerator to remind them, not to put it in their calendar, not to set an alarm, anything like that. Because we wanted to know how good their prospective memory was without any of these reminders. 

We sent the subjects off, asked them to mail back the postcard without these reminders. And then we compared the performance for the older adults, those who are over 55, and the college-age students. And what we found is that, over time, the longer the period of time was before they were supposed to mail it back, the college students’ performance declined. 

[image error]

So if it was the next day, they did pretty well with the task. We got most postcards back on time. But if it was a month later, we got very few of the postcards back for the college students.

The older adults, however, did really well at this task. They in fact, almost all of them, sent the postcard back on time, even if it was a month later. 

However, what we found is that, even though we asked them not to use external reminders, the older adults did in fact tend to use external reminders, based on a questionnaire that we sent to them after the study had ended. So in this particular study, we showed that older adults do actually perform prospective memory tasks very well, but they rely a lot on external reminders to do those prospective memory tasks.”

Note: In case you haven’t observed this point for yourself already, the older participants in the study either did not pay attention to the guidelines, or forgot to follow them.

Prospective Memory Examples

Pablo Picasso reportedly said, ““What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.” 

This is important because examples of prospective memory are really examples of intentions people have for the future. The key difference is whether or not they successfully remembered to do what they intended. 

[image error]

Why is this important? 

Simple:

The more goals you complete, the better your retrospective memory becomes. In other words, you enjoy going through your past so much more because you can be proud of all that you accomplished.

With that point in mind, here’s a list of examples from prospective memory psychology textbooks:

Setting a New Year’s resolutionJoining a pre-scheduled fitness program at the gymBuying a concert ticket and remembering to attendTaking out the trash in time for collectionPaying a bill on timePre-planning a reaction (if x happens, I will respond with y)Watering plants on a scheduleRemembering a birthday or anniversaryReturn borrowed books to a libraryFollow safety procedures (pilots, ship’s captains, etc.)Can You Improve Your Procedural Memory?

Yes. And you do this by improving on what scientists call “implementation intentions.”

As Anna-Lisa Cohen and Jason L. Hicks point out in their book, Prospective Memory: Remembering to Remember, Remembering to Forget, “ implementation intentions can create habit-like behavior.”

They suggest that it is possible to create plans with an “if-this-then-that” structure broken into two phases:

Planning phaseExecution phase

The planning and execution phases of prospective memory. From the book, Prospective Memory: Remembering to Remember, Remembering to Forget.

Basically, you need to add clarity to what you’re doing to strengthen the link between perception and action. With enough focused attention and repetition, you will be able to practice the habit of being clearer in a way that promotes better procedural memory in the future. 

We’ve already seen an example of this above: 

Instead of writing cryptic notes to yourself, like “4.p.m.” you want to include as much information as you can: Specific names, dates, locations and the purpose of the reminder. 

You can also memorize future events using a “Mnemonic Calendar.” 

Memory expert Jim Samuel helps senior citizens remember to take medication by helping them turn their homes into a Memory Palace.

For example, if you have to take a certain medication on Monday, this day of the week can be linked to your kitchen sink. If you imagine a giant moon in the sink and visualize it swallowing that pill, every time you enter the kitchen, you can think about this and it will help you remember:

To check what day it isIf it’s Monday, to take the medication

You can have these mental reminders all throughout your home. To learn more about this technique, check out:

Remember To Do Things: It’s Life Or Death

As you’ve seen, prospective memory is pretty clear once you get into the details. 

Whether you’re an airline pilot or someone enjoying your retirement, you need to be able to remember future events. 

All in all, being able to remember what to do and when to do it is what makes us human. And the quality of our lives really do come down to how we’re able to perform both in the now and in the near and distant future. 

Obviously, science is not done studying this form of memory. But it’s pretty clear that intention is the key to improving it and there are some quick wins I’ve shared with you today.

So what do you say? Is your future looking brighter now that you know the ins-and-outs of this form of memory?

Anterograde vs Retrograde Amnesia: A Simple Guide

[image error]Amnesia is a tricky term to understand because it is used in so many ways.

For example, it has become popular to talk about “political amnesia” to explain the “crisis of memory” in various parties. Movies and streaming series also often feature characters suffering some form of memory loss and calling it “amnesia.”

But using the term amnesia in these ways muddies the waters of an already complicated topic.

So let’s bring some light to the field of forgetting as we explore retrograde vs anterograde amnesia in full, including some specific case studies from scientific literature.

Anterograde vs Retrograde Amnesia: What’s the Difference?

The difference is found in the prefixes. 

Something that is anterior is situated in front of another object or event. 

“Retro” as many of us know, refers to the past. 

Therefore, anterograde amnesia refers to having difficulties forming memories after amnesia sets in. 

Retrograde amnesia, on the other hand, refers to experiencing issues with accessing memories before the onset of amnesia. 

Let’s dig a bit deeper and look at some specific examples. That way you can truly learn the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia.

What Is Anterograde Amnesia? 

Christopher Nolan’s Memento, released in the year 2000. 

According to clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale, this movie’s representation of anterograde amnesia is fairly accurate. As she explains:

“The film documents the difficulties faced by Leonard, who develops a severe anterograde amnesia after an attack in which his wife is killed. Unlike in most films in this genre, this amnesic character retains his identity, has little retrograde amnesia, and shows several of the severe everyday memory difficulties associated with the disorder. The fragmented, almost mosaic quality to the sequence of scenes in the film also cleverly reflects the ‘perpetual present’ nature of the syndrome.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vS0E...

“Perpetual present” is a key term here because people suffering anterograde amnesia cannot lay down new memories. 

Why does this happen? 

Traditionally, scientists have thought that anterograde amnesia is likely caused by something interrupting the consolidation of new memories. Here’s how Dr. Michaela Dewar puts it in her contribution to the excellent book, “Cases of Amnesia: Contributions to Understanding Memory and the Brain”:

“During consolidation, new fragile memo­ries become increasingly resistant to disruptions.”

Dr. Dewar’s research at Heriot Watt University’s Memory Lab suggest that more rest can help people suffering from anterograde amnesia. 

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Research findings from Dr. Dewar’s Memory Lab project on distinguishing retrograde and anterograde amnesia.

Exactly what it is that interrupts consolidation remains unclear. Dewar suggestions it could be:

A general malfunction in the automatic consolidation of new memoriesA lack of intention by the patient to voluntarily rehearse new memoriesSituations where the patient faces overwhelming amounts of sensory inputOther, as yet unknown interruptions between encoding and retrieval of memoriesA Specific Case of Anterograde Amnesia

Dewar herself reports the specific case of a patient with severe anterograde amnesia caused by limbic encephalitis. For privacy purposes, the patient in question is referred to as PB.

“The severity of his anterograde amnesia is perhaps best illustrated by a couple of anecdotes: when we first met, PB’s wife reported that a close family friend from abroad had recently been staying with them for several days. However, within minutes of the friend’s departure, PB had no recollection of the friend’s visit.

More strikingly, after an hour of interviews and neuropsychological assessments, I left the room for a couple of seconds and then re-entered to examine informally PB’s ability to remember me after a brief delay. When I returned, PB had no recollection of ever having met me before.”

Dewar found after working with PB that rest improved his ability to remember certain kinds of information. 

“I was both excited and perplexed by these findings! How was it possible for people with severe anterograde amnesia to be able to retain so much new infor­mation over periods of up to one hour?”

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Is There A Cure For Anterograde Amnesia?

Dewar’s best answer as of 2020 has been rest, something which seems to have enabled PB to recall certain kinds of information even when his attention was diverted to other topics. 

She is not the only researcher to conclude that rest is a potential solution for anterograde amnesia. It may even be possible to promote memory consolidation without patients needing to sleep. This was reported in a Neuropsychology journal article called “Minimizing interference with early consolida­tion boosts 7-day retention in amnesic patients.”

Finally, a lot of the answer depends on what exactly the patient is trying to remember. There’s a difference and it matters. 

For example, according to senior lecturer Anshok Ansari, some people with anterograde amnesia will struggle with laying down new: 

Episodic memories (stories about life, events, etc)Semantic memories (facts, vocabulary, etc)

As Dr. Ansari has explained in a video for Sage, you can ask a person with anterograde amnesia for facts about France. They’ll be able to answer them correctly (semantic memory), but not be able to tell you what happened to them personally last week (episodic memory).

Can An Actor With Anterograde Amnesia Still Perform?

Further along in Cases of Amnesia, researchers Michael D. Kopelman and John Morton discuss the case of an actor with severe autobiographical memory issues. This case is especially interesting because many actors use their personal memories as the basis for forming their roles. 

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The autobiographical memory issues harmed this patient’s anterograde memory:

“His antero­grade memory deficit was evident at the first learning trial, where he consistently performed worse than controls but, thereafter, he was able to learn and retain (for

use at subsequent learning trials) longer and much more complex material (in terms of syntax and semantics) than has been demonstrated previously.” 

The research is very interesting because they challenged him with contemporary theater acting tasks and older texts, like Shakespeare. 

Regardless of the text, the actor still did well in recalling his lines. However, he still could not remember much about his life:

“He said that he practised for approximately an hour to an hour and a half each day. He did not commit all the lines to memory, and did not carry out word-by-word learning. Instead, he said that he ‘thinks about the per­formance . . . how it will work best. . . . By reading aloud, I work on it.’ “

Despite this accomplishment, AB still had a severe amnesia in everyday life.

“For example, he could not recall at all a therapist whom he had met on approximately 12 occasions previously, and he had only vague recollection about another therapist, whom he had met on more than 20 occasions.”

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As sad as this case of anterograde memory is for the actor’s personal memory, it is fascinating that he could still learn enough complicated material to perform in a play. This shows the importance of rehearsal in forming new memories. 

What Is Retrograde Amnesia?

In Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation: Analogous Processes on Different Levels, researcher Thomas Anastasio defines retrograde amnesia as:

“Any loss of memory for events that occurred before the insult that caused the amnesia, and it may be induced in individuals through various neurologic or psychologic pathologies.”

In other words, with this form of amnesia, you can forget large amounts of your past, but still be able to learn and remember new information.

This form of amnesia can be caused by:

Damage to brain structures from collisions Harm to the brain from substances like toxinsMedicinal side effectsHippocampal damage from tumorsBrain damage from conditions like encephalitis and meningitisOxygen deprivationPsychological harms, such as trauma or even insults

In this form of amnesia, patients may suffer different effects. For example, they may forget: 

Many things or everything from before the onset of amnesiaMaterial from a few hours before the onsetLonger periods of time

To help distinguish these kinds of retrograde amnesia, scientists use the terms “recent” and “remote.” The patient might suffer full or reduced forgetting. 

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Retrograde amnesia can be distinguished as being recent and remote. Both categories can have full memory loss or some level of memory loss that many not be complete.

A Specific Example Of Retrograde Amnesia

Here’s a very clear example of retrograde amnesia given in the book, Amnesia: Clinical, Psychological and Medicolegal Aspects.

“A woman of 34 began to show disturbances of behaviour while on a cycling holiday with her husband. She lost her way on familiar routes, would stop and wander off the road for no reason, and on two occasions temporarily lost her bicycle. 

However, it was not until three weeks later that she developed headache, slight fever and a gross confusional state, at one time with hallucinations. 

On examination at this time, she had some swelling of her optic discs and a marked lymphocytic pleocytosis in her cerebrospinal fluid, but no localized signs in the central nervous system. 

As the general confusion and hallucinations subsided, mental examination showed a gross fixation amnesia with florid confabulation. 

She recovered slowly, but it was over two months before she was fit to resume her household duties. 

When seen nine months after her illness, she had a permanent retrograde amnesia which involved some six weeks of her stay in hospital and the preceding three weeks, with a sharp end-point at one particular incident of her cycling holiday. 

Her memorizing was also persistently defective. She would lose things easily, forget household details and had difficulty in remembering acquaintances. 

However, these defects were minor ones and she was able to lead a normal life and look after her home satisfactorily. She died some two years later of an unrelated condition. 

At autopsy the brain was macroscopically normal. Histological examination showed evidence of localized perivascular cuffing in the floor of the third ventricle and extending a little into the periaqueductal region. No other abnormalities were found.”

Attempts To Understand And Cure Retrograde Amnesia

To understand how memory works, scientists often use models. 

As with anterograde amnesia, the basic model requires understanding memory consolidation. It is a time-based process that transfers short term memory into long term memory.

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You can think of memory consolidation as involving at least three “buckets.” The more effectively information is transferred from one bucket to the other, the more you’ll remember. Many researchers think that amnesia interferes most with the consolidation period between buckets two and three.

You can think of memory consolidation as laying bricks. First you have a foundation, then you put down some cement. Into this cement, you align bricks and allow the cement to set. 

Memory consolidation is the setting process. The more it functions in a stable way, the more you’ll be able to retrieve each individual brick in your “wall of memory.” 

But when retrograde memory takes place, it’s not entirely clear what goes wrong, especially since some people are able to recover from it.

For example, in the book Amnesia cited above, people with retrograde amnesia from meningitis have recovered their memories when the illness was resolved. And as we’ve seen, they can still lay down new memories even while suffering from retrograde amnesia. 

Other Causes Of Memory Loss

Sigmund Freud talks a lot about forgetting in his 1901 book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. In brief, he suggests:

Social forces cause us to repress things we wish to expressForgetting is one of the mind’s ways to prevent us from expressionForgetting may be “incomplete” leading to other problems, like resentment

Was Freud correct about these things?

Although he has fallen out of favor, many people can probably relate to efforts they’ve made to “forget” things that have irritated them. We have all gone out of our way to avoid launching our various criticisms for fear of “rocking the boat.”

But when you think about it, the Internet has made it possible for people to air any number of complaints, particularly through social media. 

This form of collective activity has caused many people to wonder if we haven’t seriously reduced our collective attention span. In fact, it’s led to one German researcher coining the term “Digital Amnesia.”

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Does using a computer cause “Digital Amnesia”?

There is definitely something to these factors and how our technologies have changed human memory. And there may well be a political price to pay. 

As a collection of essays called Geopolitical Amnesia: The Rise of the Right and the Crisis of Liberal Memory argues, we may have entered an “age of forgetting.” 

Part of the problem Vibeke Tjalve finds in the conclusion to this book is that we have externalized or offloaded so much human memory to machines that history has been “re-shaped, and re-circulated to an extent that ultimately threatens to render history itself without meaning.”

This is a serious criticism worthy of criticism. But is it really amnesia? 

Let’s Stop Confusing Amnesia With Cultural Issues

At the end of the day, amnesia is a condition that harms individuals. It prevents you from either accessing your personal past or laying down new personal memories. 

This condition must be devastating for the people who experience it. And all the more so when it becomes increasingly difficult to find clear definitions and extended examples.

Although I appreciate that there probably is such a thing as “cultural amnesia,” history is a big place. The Internet really hasn’t been around long enough for us to start calling its few historical disruptions by the name of what is effectively a serious disease. 

I hope this article has helped you understand the differences between retrograde and anterograde amnesia. I also hope the examples have given you deeper insight into the nuances of each.

As we move into the future, let’s work together to use terms like “amnesia” very carefully. Real people with real issues need the best possible help they can get and definitions matter.

What Is Autobiographical Memory: A Simple Guide

The term “autobiographical memory” sounds straightforward enough, doesn’t it? 

In reality, this aspect of human memory is pretty complex.

And the way scientists write about it can be hard to penetrate.

So let’s take a step back and get a working definition of autobiographical memory and some examples that are easy to understand. 

Once you understand the different levels of autobiographical memory, you’ll be able to understand yourself and others better. 

And those psychology exams? Consider them aced when this term comes up. 

Let’s get started. 

What Is Autobiographical Memory?

In a word, this type of memory is a “system.” 

Even cooler, it’s a system that draws upon other systems.

You see, memories are spread all over the brain. Or as memory expert Dr. Gary Small describes it, memories are distributed into what you can think of as “neighborhoods.”

This means that when your brain serves up autobiographical memories about your life, it might be drawing upon: 

Episodic memorySemantic memoryIconic memorySensory Memory

If you think about these different aspects of memory as cousins and uncles who live in different neighborhoods throughout your brain, then experiencing an autobiographical memory is like an event. 

In other words, if you’re trying to remember something about yourself, you will gather all those different kinds of memories into one “room,” the same way you gather your family members for Thanksgiving dinner. 

And because autobiographical memory is something you can deliberately call upon and experience consciously, it belongs to a larger level called explicit memory. This is different than implicit memory, which involves unconscious processes. 

Do Some People Have Superior Autobiographical Memory?

Yes, and the scientific term for superior autobiographical memory is hyperthymesia.

This form of memory is sometimes confused with eidetic memory, which is itself mistakenly associated with photographic memory.

Superior autobiographical memory or hyperthymesia isn’t understood well by scientists. In fact, some scientists think that there might be OCD or obsessive levels of self-reflective repetition involved. If this finding proves correct, then it would be elaborative encoding that explains the high levels of recall these people experience. 

Jill Price is one such notable case where people have noticed that obsessive levels of journaling have featured across her life. But whether or not repetitive journaling explains this level of recall or not, here’s the easiest way to think about it:

Researchers have noticed that some people with superior autobiographical memory tend to journal much more than the average person.

People with hyperthymesia are simply more efficient at calling all those different types of memory into the same “room” to help produce the experience of personal memories. 

In fast, it is very telling that superior autobiographical memory is really the only kind of memory that has shown this feature. As the personal suffering seen in the Price case shows, there might be such a thing as too much reflective thinking.

The 3 Levels of Autobiographical Memory

There are three levels and four “types” of autobiographical memory. It’s useful to distinguish them because they involve different kinds of autobiographical information. 

Type One: Lifetime Periods

This literally means the memories you have to distinguish childhood from your adolescence, early adulthood, middle age and senior year.  Jean Piaget described these periods in great detail in his theory of cognitive development.

Some scientists include other categories in this type of autobiographical memory. For example, they would include how your memory divides:

Elementary schoolHigh schoolCollegeType Two: General Events

General events are much less fluid and don’t have distinct borders like “grade seven,” which has a beginning, middle and end. 

A time-based event like the fact that you attended grade seven at school is a general autobiographical memory.

This level of autobiographical memory refers to those kinds of memories when you basically remember a set of days, weeks or perhaps entire seasons gathered around a theme. 

For example, when you tell someone a story about a fascination you had, you might say, “I studied that topic for a good couple of weeks. I couldn’t get enough.”

But whereas lifetime periods have more specific beginnings and endings, you would not be able to say when exactly those weeks of a general event took place.

Type Three: Event Specific

When experiencing this level of autobiographical memory, you can literally remember things that happened down to the second. This might be a memory of the first time you saw the person you married, or a flashbulb memory of a tragic event.

The 4 Types of Autobiographical Memory

There’s some crossover between “types” and “levels” of memory, but it’s still useful to separate the two so you have the fullest possible picture. 

Level One: Personal Information

Examples of autobiographical memory here include:

Your name and the names of your parentsWhere you were bornWhere you went to school

Remembering where you went to school is an example of autobiographical memory.

To help you dig up more of this kind of memory you might not have experienced for a while, here are 3 Memory Games You Can Play With Your Childhood.

Level Two: Copies and Reconstructions

Remember when I talked about superior autobiographical memory being poorly understood?

One reason why is that just because the person thinks they remember their lives exceptionally well, doesn’t mean that they really do. Studies have shown that we all reconstruct our memories, and autobiographical memories are often highly inaccurate.

Why?

Think back to Dr. Gary Small’s neighborhood analogy. 

Each time a memory is recalled, it changes location in the brain. Anything that moves is transformed, so by the time you’ve recalled the memory, it is now: 

Located somewhere else in the brainChemically different than it used to be

This doesn’t mean that we’re all liars. But it’s just a fact that memories change over time and by recalling them, we are literally “reconstructing” them. 

To make things more complicated, copies can be incredibly vivid and deliberately amplifying them can increase their accuracy. The act of vivifying your memories so you can recall them with greater accuracy is greatly assisted by using a Memory Palace. Learn more here:

Level Three: Generic Vs. Specific

This level is basically the same as the second and third type described above. 

The difference here comes down to the conscious effort to “relive” the memories. 

For example, we can often call up generic memories about our lives without thinking too much about them. “Oh yeah, I remember doing that,” is easy to say about the time you went for ice cream on a date. But you don’t actually have to relive it because going for ice cream is a generic event.

However, if someone asks you to remember a specific time you went for ice cream when something special happened, you might have to press them for more specific details. For example, they might need to give you the street name or general neighborhood to help you remember the exact ice cream excursion they have in mind. 

Sometimes researchers think of this level differently in terms of the remembering vs. knowing dynamic, but the topic is far from decided upon.

Level Four: Perspective

This level of autobiographical memory is especially interesting. 

For example, you can remember going for ice cream from your first person point of view. This is called the “field” perspective.

But you can also think of the same event from either a second or third person perspective. For example, you can imagine looking down at yourself having ice cream from the sky. Or you can see yourself through the eyes of the person you were with. This is called the “observer” perspective. 

Autobiographical Memory Examples

Memory expert David Berglas gave the ultimate autobiographical memory example in his book, A Question of Memory. 

He calls it “The Kennedy Effect.” During his era, people used to ask each other all the time: “Where were you when John F. Kennedy died?”

These days, people ask “Where were you when 9/11 happened?” much more often, but the principle is the same. 

If you observe people when asking this question, you will see how most people will frame their explanation from the field level of autobiographical memory. If you want a fun exercise, pick a major historical event like this and try to see yourself while it is happening through the eyes of others. 

As you think about doing that, here are some other autobiographical memory examples:

Your wedding dayGetting your driver’s licenseTaking a trip to a foreign countryHaving a childGraduating high schoolReceiving an awardRetirement day

Of course, autobiographical memories aren’t always positive. Here are some negative autobiographical memory examples some of us might experience:

A traffic accidentCourt datesLosing a loved oneA home invasionWar

The good news is that studies have shown that people tend to recover from such events quite readily. 

Best Books To Read On Autobiographical Memory

I find this branch of memory so fascinating, that I thought you might like to know some of the books I’ve read on the topic over the years. 

First up is The Organization and Structure of Autobiographical Memory by John Mace. This book brings together over 30 years of empirical findings from multiple researchers. Its strongest point is how it shows the cultural influence on how autobiographical memories form. For example, some cultures remember more about their personal lives than others based on their political leanings. 

Autobiographical Memory Development: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches is a recent volume edited by Sami Gülgöz and Basak Sahin-Acar. The strength of this book is how it has incorporated the relatively new field of trauma studies into the conversation.

Everyday Memory, edited by Svein Magnussen and Tore Helstrup is a great book I want to mention specifically for one chapter. It’s the chapter called “Memory Sensitivity in Autobiographical Memory,” co-authored by Cesare Cornoldi, Rossana De Beni and Tore Helstrup.

In this chapter, the authors point out how rewarding engaging with the memories of your life can be. As they suggest, it can readily become a self-reinforcing practice that serves you many times over in life:

“Having experienced positive and rewarding effects of searching one’s past, one is more likely to engage in new attempts. Reminiscing develops into a cognitive style that can be backed up by knowledge about different pathways to one’s own episodic memories.” 

Autobiographical Memory and Your Cognitive Style

Personally, my cognitive style used to be horrible. In fact, I used to find thinking about my past a horrifying experience. 

But as I shared in this TEDx Talk, I found that thinking addressing the experience of memories in a slightly different way “defanged” them and made all memories much more positive in the ways that Cornoldi, De Beni and Helstrup suggest. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYj...

As you’ve already seen, this post is packed with resources to follow-up on.

And for more exercises that can improve how you access your personal history through memory, give these visualization exercises a try next. The fourth exercise in particular brings your personal memories together with the places you used to live.

Now that you know all about autobiographical memory, what do you say? Are you ready to explore the aspect of your memory more as a means of enhancing your experience of life?

How To Use Image Streaming To Improve Your Memory

If you want to improve your ability to visualize, think clearly and remember more, proper image streaming is important. 

The best part is that you can learn to do it even if you do not have a strong “mind’s eye.”

So just imagine being able to experience more of your inner genius on demand.

You’ll enjoy reading much more (including complicated books).

Plus, your mind won’t feel so overwhelmed when you can instantly use mental imagery to focus on demand. 

In this post, I’ll actually teach you two different kinds of image streaming: passive and active.

Let’s get started.

What Is Image Streaming?

A lot of people attribute the streaming image concept to Win Wenger. 

Sure, he wrote about it in a book called The Einstein Factor. Wenger defines the practice like this:

“Image-Streaming consists of describing aloud, in as much detail as possible, to a live listener or an audience, or to a tape recorder as potential audience — while observing the ongoing stream of sensory imagery of all kinds.”

Although there are some great things about Wenger’s book, it’s also packed with pseudoscience. 

Perhaps more alarmingly, there’s a stunning lack of awareness about Einstein.

For one thing, Einstein is not known to have considered himself a genius. He probably had no time for such imprecise terms. If you’ve read The Unexpected Einstein, you’ll be aware of just how humble Einstein was about his discoveries. 

As Walter Isaacson shows in Einstein: His Life and Universe, Einstein had every reason to be modest. He’d actually borrowed the imagery he “streamed” from Aaron Bernstein.

This was the influential author who “took his readers on an imaginary journey through space.” He also “asked readers to imagine being on a speeding train” as a bullet was shot through the window.

Was imagine streaming part of how Einstein formulated the equations involved in general relativity?

Absolutely not.

“Image streaming” is a term Wenger apparently invented. If anything, Einstein was mentally replaying images and concepts from Bernstein.

This does not diminish Einstein’s accomplishments. Rather, it places them in context and allow us to ask a better question:

Did Einstein use an image visualization technique to arrive at his conclusions? Absolutely. 

And you can too. We just want to be a bit more historically accurate and scientific about the process so we can get started on the best possible footing.

The Deep History Of Image Streaming

I don’t want to go back to the beginning of time, but we know that humans have been visualizing for a very long time.

And if you are visualizing for more than a few seconds, that experience is… “streaming” from one second to the next. 

Who has streamed imagery perhaps more than any other group? 

Ancient Indian yogis. Buddhist monks. Dominican priests and practitioners of hermeticism.

For each of these groups, the ability to sit and focus on mental imagery has been key to allowing ideas to arise and for expanding the mind. 

For more details on how visualization was used in different periods of history, you can check out texts like: 

Pratyabhijñā (see The Recognition Sutras , a translation with commentary by Christopher Wallis and specific exercises that involve image streaming from Shaivism)The use of Mandalas and visualization sutras in a number of Buddhist schools and some koans in various schools of ZenArs combinatoria in Hermeticism 

And there is so much more.

Image Streaming And Pseudoscience 

Now, you might be thinking… didn’t you just accuse Win Wenger of pseudoscience? Aren’t all of these ancient traditions also linked with woo-woo?

Well, yes and no. For one thing, Wenger says image streaming will increase your IQ. This claim is highly dubious, and I doubt that any of the traditions listed above have ever claimed image streaming will help in this regard. 

Second, we have tons of research demonstrating just how powerful practices like deity meditation are for enhancing the efficiency of your visuospatial processing. You’ll also want to check out the summaries of many scientific studies and brain scans in Andrew Newberg and Robert Waldman’s How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain. 

Finally, the positive experiences I had with image streaming using the Memory Palace technique have been confirmed many times over.

See for example the exhaustive research conducted by Dr. Tim Dalgleish.

Dalgleish has shown how “streaming” positive memories can relieve clinical depression – which is exactly what happened to me years before I knew such studies existed.

How To Do Image Streaming

As Wenger describes it, image streaming involves observing and describing mental experiences. 

I would rename this process “passive image streaming.”

All you have to do is: 

Find a quiet place to practice, either seated or lying downUse a device to record your voiceTalk about what you’re experiencing in detail, perhaps while performing these visualization exercisesUse as many multi-sensory aspects of experience as possibleReview the recording for any additional ideas it might trigger

I often use image streaming in real time when I can’t concentrate. For example, I will repeat in my own mind what people are saying and really make an effort to mentally experience their references. 

In other words, if someone mentions a suspense novel, then I will think about a movie in the genre and an actor like Harrison Ford. The image streaming resulting from this simple practice has been tremendous for feeling more connected in conversations and remembering more about them.

What if you have aphantasia? You might want to try some of the processes I shared with AphantasiaMeow when we talked about using mind mapping as a potential aphantasia cure.

How To Do Active Image Streaming

At the end of the day, streaming imagery with a goal works a lot better. 

And as I tell many people who ask me about this kind of visualization, the Memory Palace technique is one of the best ways to combine a goal with image streaming. 

To get started:

Choose something you want to remember (like vocabulary, songs, numbers or )Use associations in the Memory Palace to help you memorize the informationUse Recall Rehearsal to “stream” through the Memory PalacesUse multi-sensory associations as you proceedHow To Make Active Image Streaming Multi-Sensory

To enact this tip on multi-sensory image streaming, I like to follow a pattern I call KAVE COGS:

KinestheticAuditoryVisualEmotionalConceptualOlfactoryGustatorySpatial

As you go through a Memory Palace or just think through things, always try to touch on each of those sensory experiences.

One of my favorite ways to stream in real time is to recite a long piece of literature, like the Ribhu Gita. I live streamed my recitation as a memory demonstration here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgNQ9...

As you can tell, the process is very peaceful and rewarding.

And one reason why is that I am experiencing multiple sensations using KAVE COGS as I go along. You can literally stream those sensations in that order, which is especially useful when trying to remember things you’ve memorized.

If you’d like to learn how to memorize anything, learn how to master the Memory Palace for this kind of image streaming here:

 

The Real Benefits Of Streaming Image After Image

Some people might think I’ve been a bit sour in this post by pointing out issues in Wenger’s use of the term “image streaming.”

However, I think it’s important, and maintain that skepticism is one of the great keys to remembering better. 

I rarely use passive image streaming myself because it happens to us all the time anyway. Our minds wander and we get lost in fantasy. Sure, you can initiative this kind of mind wandering intentionally during a visualization meditation, but typically we want to develop our focus, not weaken it.

So I prefer to switch the strange habit of “mind wandering” into a tool. When I notice I’m drifting during a conversation, I pull myself back by using the conversation itself as a catapult into image streaming.

And as I’ve hoped to show, many traditions stream imagery. They have done so for thousands of years. And as Lynne Kelly has shown in The Memory Code, the use of the Memory Palace is prehistoric. People have been using active image streaming for thousands of years. 

So what do you say? 

Are you ready to start experimenting with these two kinds of image streaming, passive and active? 

How to Memorize the Books of The Bible: 7 Easy Steps

There are a number of ways to memorize the books of the Bible.

But few are as direct and streamlined as the approach you’re about to discover.

It’s also incredibly robust, far more so than using a song or flash cards to memorize them.

Does the technique you’re about to learn require a bit of setup?

Yes.

But that’s going to feel like a drop in the bucket when you realize you can use the same technique to also memorize any verses from the Bible you wish. 

Let’s get started. 

How to Memorize the Books of the Bible in Order

There are 66 books in most modern Bibles. You can find them in order based on the Old Testament and the New Testament using this handy list.

Some of the names will be familiar to you already, but memorizing even the most well-known names in order can still be a challenge.

Other names will be difficult, but I’ll also show you how to deal with harder words like Zephaniah. Soon, they will be very easy to remember. 

But let’s focus on memorizing the order first. 

One: Learn The Memory Palace Technique

Learning to use a Memory Palace is essential for all learning tasks that involve large amounts of information.

I do have one student who memorized 66 Psalms in a way he felt was without a Memory Palace. However, as we spoke, it was clear that the same basic use of spatial memory was still in place. Logically speaking there’s no getting around the method of loci for this kind of goal.

To use this technique, you will create a journey throughout a familiar location. This journey will have space for 66 units of information, one spot for each book of the Bible. 

Depending on the room you choose, you can fit this journey into one room by using four walls something like this:

This is one example of how you can start structuring a Memory Palace for memorizing the name of every book in the Bible.

If you’re just beginning with this technique, this amount of information crammed into a single room might be too cramped. 

That’s okay. Just make the Memory Palace journey more spaced out. You’ll need more rooms, but that’s okay. This memory skill is a marathon, not a race. 

Also, I would suggest you consider having two Memory Palaces. One for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. In this way, you can work on memorizing their books as two separate learning projects. It will make this learning project more manageable. 

Two: Learn to Place Memorable Associations

The next step is to use your imagination to “pair” an association with a location in your Memory Palace.

For example, you would place an image or association that reminds you of the word “Genesis” in position one of the Memory Palace. It could be a Sega Genesis, or perhaps you remember the Genesis Device and Genesis cave from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 

If those references don’t work, you could even think of someone you know named “Gene,” such as Gene Simmons, the bassist for the rock band Kiss. Even better, you can combine all three of these associations for striking effect when you revisit the Memory Palace journey. 

By placing a few words that sound like “Genesis” or are spelled in a similar way in a Memory Palace, it’s easy to remember all the books of the Bible.

Coming up with associations really just means looking at the letters of the words you need to memorize and thinking about similarities.  

For example:

Exodus brings to mind Exxon oilLeviticus brings to mind Lev GoldentouchNumbers brings to mind the numbness you feel after a trip to the dentist

To start thinking up associations like this rapidly, have a look at the pegword method.

Three: Elaborate Your Associations

It’s not enough to assign associations. You also want to make them strange and striking using a process memory scientists call elaborative encoding.

So let’s say that you use the example of a dentist numbing your gums to help you remember that the book of Numbers is at position four in your Memory Palace. 

To elaborate it, you want to imagine:

Feeling that numbness as a physical sensationHearing your voice trying to speak through numbed lipsImagine what it looks like to have a syringe injecting “Numbers” into your gumsExperience the emotions involvedInclude any tastes or smellsThink about the size of the needle and make it exaggeratedly huge

Using everyday life experiences like the “numbing” effect you experience at the dentist helps you remember the Book of Numbers.

These exaggerations only take a second per each book of the Bible. They will help you remember them with greater ease when you think back to where you stored them in the Memory Palace. 

Four: Link Your Associations

How do you know the Book of Deuteronomy follows Numbers?

Often, the Memory Palace journey is more than enough. You just mentally move from station to station. 

However, it also makes sense to use the link and story method.

One way you could help yourself memorize the order of the books of the Old Testament is to have the associations act upon each other. 

In other words, it’s not just that you have Gene Simmons using a Sega Genesis controller to start the Genesis Device from Star Trek II.

You have this image interacting with the Exxon image. For example, you can have Gene Simmons firing the Genesis device at an Exxon station.

This mnemonic example shows you have you can use the linking method in a Memory Palace to memorize the books of the Bible.

Likewise, you can have someone named Lev or Lee or any “Le” image that makes sense to you fleeing from the Exxon station. By linking the associations from station to station throughout the Memory Palace, you give yourself an extra layer of “recall power.”

Five: Review For Long Term Retention

Once you have all 66 books assigned with associations, you want to revisit the entire journey a few times to get all of them into long term memory.

We need to do this because memory and learning always require some level of repetition. The Memory Palace helps us manage the repetition and reduce the amount we need. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nOwZ...

Basically, you want to follow these patterns:

Forward through the Memory PalaceBackward through the Memory PalaceSkipping the stations

These patterns will give primacy effect and recency effect to each station in your Memory Palace through a process memory scientists call serial positioning. It’s basically the same thing as using spaced repetition software, but much more powerful.

What makes it more effective than software are flashcards is what is called “active recall.” When we put a little bit of “pressure” on our memory to recall facts we’ve learned, our memories develop much faster. 

Six: Follow Up With More Than Memory

Learning how to memorize scripture at any level is fun and easy.

But to really go the distance and get the material deep into memory, you want to learn it in context.

To make that process riveting: 

Read as much as you can and also memorize facts about each bookWrite summaries of each book and your thoughts about themDiscuss often with othersListen to lectures about each book in order

During this stage, you can also add facts to the names of the books you’ve already memorized. For example, if you want to remember that Zephaniah is prophetic literature, you can add an image of a prophet profiting to the core image in the Memory Palace. 

Seven: A Bonus Step For Those Who Prefer Flash Cards

If the Memory Palace technique is not an option for you, here’s the best possible way to use flash cards.

Instead of feeding yourself the answer on the back of the card, have a drawing that triggers your memory of the word.

A mnemonic example to help you remember a book of the Bible called Zephaniah

For example, you could draw a zipper to help you remember Zephaniah. You could even cut out a picture of Shania Twain or write her name beside the Zipper.

In the mnemonic example above, I have drawn a zipper and a few lines to suggest the letter “Z.” I’m no artist, but I’ve drawn a singer and given myself a clue by adding some of the lyrics from a very famous Shania Twain song.

Then, when looking at the card, the guessing process helps me form memories because it gives my brain a bit of a workout.

In other words, this form of “memory triggering” creates a brain game that promotes learning instead of cheating you out of it. 

But chances are you can learn to love the Memory Palace technique, and this free course shows you how:

Remember All Of The Books Of The Bible With Ease

As you’ve seen, there’s a fast and easy way to memorize each and every book of the Bible. 

Sure, it takes a bit of setup. 

But given the amount of time and hassle it saves in the end, I’m confident you’ll find the frontloaded effort was well worth it. 

The important thing is to embrace the setup. It takes different people different amounts of time, but anyone can do it. And the best part is that each and every bit of information you memorize brings you one step closer to God.

So what do you say?

Do you feel equipped to memorize the books of the Bible in order? Let me know in the discussion or feel free to enter any questions you have. I’ll chime in a.s.a.p.

Memory Recall and Retrieval: The Definitive Guide

Memory recall, sometimes called retrieval, is the experience of remembering information.

Here’s the catch:

It can only happen after at least these other levels of memory have succeeded first:

Noticing and recognizing the importance of information (like someone’s name)Encoding (making an effort to remember)Decoding (making an effort to recall)

Only after these stages have succeeded do you have memory recall. 

And now you know one of the major reasons we forget: Something has interrupted the retrieval and recall process. 

The good news? 

We can improve. 

We just need to know more about how our memory works, so let’s dive in.

The 3 Forms of Memory Retrieval

The challenge of learning about recall is that it’s not just one thing. Memory retrieval happens in several different ways that are related to other stages of memory, but are ultimately different.

These forms are:

Free recallCued recallSerial recall

Free recall allows you to retrieve information in any order. For example, if you watch a movie, you can tell your friend about the middle first, then the end before talking about the beginning. You’ve remembered enough to narrow in on different elements without getting confused or forgetting.

Cued recall, on the other hand, involves triggers. Here’s an easy way to think of this kind of retrieval:

Certain forms or recall can be compared to a chain or set of linking structures.

When memory athletes memorize lists of words, they combine elaborated associations so that one mnemonic triggers the target information in a chain. 

When I did my memory drills this morning, for example, three of the words were blizzard, tea and piano. Tea and piano were easy to recall because I saw Ozzy Osbourne in a blizzard pouring warm tea on his piano. One image “cued” the recall of the others.

Note: Cued recall itself helped me associate Ozzy with the word “blizzard” because he recorded a 1981 album called Blizzard of Oz. When you create all your associations based on links that already exist in your memory, you can remember things a lot faster.

This kind of recall happens in everyday life too, even if you’re not a memory athlete. 

For example, if you’re trying to remember the name of an actor, thinking about movies he’s been in can help trigger the name. 

Serial recall involves recalling information in temporal order. It relates to episodic memory in some circumstances. Think of it as when you’re relating a series of events and talking in a “and then this happened” kind of pattern. 

Does your mind really use just one of these kinds of recall at a time? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Recall is definitely not like replaying a movie. It’s more like assembling actors on a stage.

For example, you might have started giving details from the beginning of a story using free recall but realize your friend isn’t following the plot.

Your serial recall kicks in and that’s when you say, “let me start at the beginning.”

As you relate the plot of the movie, cued recall will likely help you add in nuance and detail that you would have forgotten otherwise. 

What Is Recall Memory?

One thing that defines memory above all is that it is always dealing with the past. Think about it:

Let’s say that you imagine a future scenario, like taking a trip. 

Later, when you want to plan the trip, you are recalling that vision of the future up from the past. 

So whether you’re speaking a language to become fluent or sitting for an exam, improving memory recall involves improving how you access the past.

Recall vs Recognition

Of course, you will have differences depending on the circumstances. For example, you might struggle in an exam because you cannot recognize several key terms.

Or, you could have an advantage because your recognition of some terms help trigger cued recall.

Complex stuff, isn’t it? Well, the devil is always in the details, which is why it pays to learn how to study effectively. You don’t have to memorize everything in order for recognition to help you recall the information you need. 

The 4 Types of Memory Recall

The plot thickens!

The four kinds of memory recall are useful to know about because the brain encodes information in very specific ways.

Did you know that your emotional state dictates how you encode memories? This is just one reason why certain types of memory training can help relieve conditions like PTSD.

Let’s dig a little deeper into:

RecallRecognitionRecollectionRelearning

It’s possible to suddenly recall things without a trigger. For example, a memory of hanging out with your friends can arise for no reason.

Recall happens when you remember something without a cue or trigger.

For example, sometimes you just think about a friend out of the blue. The friend isn’t there, and yet somehow the brain has pulled out memories about her.

The Role of Questions In Remembering

Answering questions relates here as well. If you’re at an interview, you can only prepare so much. You’ll get questions you aren’t expecting, and yet you’ll find that you can remember certain facts without needing a trigger.

Recognition is when you know you’ve seen something before. You might not even remember that you’ve seen it before, but you still recognize it. Take the word “tiger,” for example. You probably don’t remember the first time you learned it, but you recognize it for what it is (a word) and the animal it refers to.

The opposite of recognition is sometimes called Jamais vu and can be deeply disturbing. Normally, however, recognition is positive and useful.

Recollection usually involves piecing things together using logic or objective reasoning. When you’re trying to recall information, you can deliberately follow a trail of information by leaping from one association to another. 

Relearning is required when we forget things we’ve spent time learning. For example, you might have gone through great efforts to memorize vocabulary, but still can’t remember it. 

To establish this form of recall and make learning much more fun, repetition might not be the answer. You might need to try a different approach, such as the Memory Palace technique.

How These Memory Processes Work Together

If your brain is reasonably healthy, I have very good news for you:

Most of what you need for long term memory recall happens in the background. 

Not for all information, of course. But improving memory recall is why memory training was invented by our clever ancestors. When you want to be sure you can recall something, mnemonic devices and mnemonic strategies are a must. 

But there are aspects of life that can interfere even with the best memory training efforts. These include:

Alzheimer’s Disease and DementiaLack of exercisePoor nutritionDehydrationLack of sleep

If you have concerns, it’s always a best practice to consult a qualified medical professional.

How to Improve Long Term Memory Recall

I’m glad you asked, because helping you improve your memory is my passion.

First, I would suggest that you pick a technique and practice it for at least 90 days. You can choose:

The Memory Palace techniqueThe Roman Room techniqueThe link and story methodsMajor SystemPegword Method

Like any skill, consistent practice is needed to develop the foundations and improve over time.

As you practice, have a goal.

Generic memory improvement is possible, but you can really accelerate the process by picking specific information to memorize. Here are some suggestions with training tips:

Memorize vocabularyMemorize scriptureMemorize a speechMemorize a songMemorize a textbook

For best results, I suggest that you add daily meditation. I teach a simple process in my book available through Amazon called The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being.

How Do We Recall Memories On Demand?

In a phrase:

Study your memory and practice the best techniques. 

The more you learn about the science of memory, the more it will inform your practice. 

And simply accept this simple fact: 

Apart from certain situations with disease or brain trauma, retrieval failure is almost always a choice.

But now you are informed and know how to retrieve memory on demand. 

Which of the practices I suggested on this page are you going to try first?