display
The idiosyncratic detective Sherlock Holmes can remember even the smallest details and always recall them exactly when he needs them.
Pakistani Emma Alam memorizes 410 words in just 15 minutes - that's a world record.
But you don't have to be a genius for such amazing memory performance, as a team of researchers from the University of Vienna and Radboud University in the Netherlands has now discovered.
With the so-called loci method, even laypeople can train their memory and bring their memory to peak performance in just six weeks.
Source: Getty Images / Yuichiro Chino
This technique is not new, on the contrary.
The ancient Greeks and Romans already used them.
Books and manuscripts were expensive at the time.
Many scientists could not afford them and therefore learned the texts by heart.
Cicero used the loci method - derived from the Latin locus for place, place, place - to learn his speech.
He is said to have walked the forum in Rome in his mind.
Because that's exactly how the strategy works: to link the things you want to remember with places.
For example, you can memorize your shopping list based on the walk to the supermarket.
Imagine a sack of potatoes falling down the hallway so that the individual tubers roll down the stairs.
You put the milk carton at the entrance to the house, you put the butter in the neighbour's front yard and the eggs under the oak tree on the side of the road.
On site in the supermarket, you walk this path in your mind and see in front of you what you want to buy.
Source: Getty Images / Dougal Waters
display
Geniuses like Sherlock Holmes or Emma Alam build such a “memory palace” so that they can quickly memorize hundreds of terms or combinations of numbers.
The researchers around Isabella Wagner from the University of Vienna wanted to know whether the loci method also improves the memory of normal people and also improves long-term memory.
For their study - published in the journal "Science Advances" - they carried out two experiments.
In the first, the cognitive psychologists compared the performance of a total of 17 memory athletes, who are among the 50 best in the world, with 16 control persons of similar age and IQ scores.
For the second attempt, they put 50 laypeople to the test who had either practiced for six weeks with the loci method, with another memory training, or not at all.
In both experiments, the brain activity of the study participants was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging - while they were learning words by heart, had to remember them and in the rest phase afterwards.
Four months later, the scientists tested the subjects' long-term memory.
The results: Not only memory athletes, but also normal people were able to keep more objects thanks to the Loci method - and that after just 30 minutes of daily training over a period of six weeks.
Source: Getty Images / Peter Dazeley
display
The laypersons remembered an average of 50 words, the group that had completed other memory strategies only about 30 and the untrained subjects 27 words.
Basically, we were able to determine that this method has led to more efficient processing in brain regions that are related to memory and spatial orientation.
Isabella Wagner, psychologist at the University of Vienna
This was also evident in the MRI images.
The brains of athletes and those who had used the loci method worked more efficiently and strategically.
For example, in areas of the frontal lobe and near the hippocampus, they showed less activity during memorization and remembering.
A brain that is in exercise can perform better with less activation.
Isabella Wagner, Head of Studies, University of Vienna
Long-term memory had also improved thanks to the memory palace.
Even after four months, the study participants were able to remember more than the control group without training.
The conclusion: With the Loci method we can not only train our memory performance, but also remember for a long time.