(Newer)
– Sherlock Holmes fans will likely be familiar with something called the “method of loci,” Live Science notes. It is a device used by the famous detective to remember things, also known as a ‘memory palace’ or ‘mind palace’. Now a new study in Science Advances researchers from the Netherlands, Austria and Germany have discovered that the method does indeed work – and for at least months. In this method, people imagine a place or path they know well and drop bits of information about it to be found later as they retrace their steps. Here’s how Medical Xpress explains it: “Someone could assign a bottle of milk to the front step, for example, a bag of seeds at the rose garden just off the path on the way to a sidewalk, and a bag of some kind of nuts just next to it. a tree in the garden, if they wanted to memorize their shopping list. ‘
For part of the study, researchers trained participants in the loci method or another method, or provided no training at all. After 20 minutes, those in the “loci” group recalled about 62 words from a list, compared to 41 and 36 words in the other groups. At four months, the corresponding results were 50, 30, and 27. An intriguing portion of the results: brain scans showed that people using the loci method – including people skilled in the technique considered ‘memory athletes’ – had less brain activity. in regions typically associated with memory during the experiments. Researchers theorize that the technique makes their brains work more efficiently, or as Medical Xpress puts it, “it was easier for them to memorize the list.” (Having super memory isn’t necessarily a good thing.)