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National Geographic

Use this ancient technique to remember (almost) anything

In Orlando, Florida, a dozen seniors gather in a YMCA twice a week. Some push walkers, others roll in on wheelchairs. After some light exercise and corny jokes, they get down to the real workout—flexing their memory muscles. Most are battling early-stage dementia, hoping to hold onto their memories a little longer. They're learning an ancient technique called the method of loci, which transforms any familiar space into a storage system for new information. Want to remember your grocery list? Link milk to your sister's senior photo in the living room—visually, and in a way that feels almost absurd. Maybe imagine it pouring out of her nose? Link apples to the window—a volley of Golden Delicious smashing through the pane. The Roman orator Cicero used the same method to memorize speeches two millennia ago. Today's competitive 'memory athletes' use it to cram thousands of data points into their brains. And now the ancient technique is helping people in surprising new ways —slowing cognitive decline, treating depression and PTSD, even aiding recovery from traumatic brain injury. As researchers are only just now discovering, this tool works in startlingly complementary ways with how our brains naturally function. The palace of the mind At the USA Memory Championship, seemingly ordinary people show off extraordinary recall. Competitors memorize hundreds of random words, dozens of strangers' life histories, and the order of shuffled card decks—all at lightning speed. These are the kinds of folks who might rattle off a thousand digits of pi without breaking a sweat. They all use variations on the method of loci, also known as the 'memory palace' or 'Roman room' method. The basics are straightforward: Make a mental map of a familiar place, then create associations between items and specific locations along a route. But is it easy? Not necessarily. The trick is using your imagination to make those mental connections memorable—the weirder, more vivid, and more outrageous, the better. Legend credits the method's invention to the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, who escaped a collapsing building in the fifth century B.C.E. As victims were pulled from rubble, Simonides identified them by remembering where each had sat around a banquet table. But indigenous cultures worldwide tapped into similar techniques long before. Native American pilgrimage trails, Australian Aboriginal songlines, and Pacific Islanders' ceremonial roads all follow a similar pattern: Elders would sing, dance, or tell stories at specific locations, making information stick by pairing information with location and context. 'It's shocking to me that this is so understudied when this was the dominant form of information storage for literally all of civilization, until the printing press,' says MIT neuroscientist Robert Ajemian, who has studied how the brain uses the method of loci. The event finalists are given instructions during the 2023 USA Memory Championship at Full Sail University, Winter Park, Florida. Photograph by Phanindra Pavuluri Why the memory palace works Neuroscience is catching up to what ancient cultures seemed to know instinctively. The method of loci taps our natural strengths in spatial navigation and visual memory—abilities that evolution has honed over thousands of generations. While almost no one is naturally great at remembering abstract information, like numbers or words, the human brain is built to remember what we've seen and where we've been. Recent brain-imaging studies show that using the method of loci creates more robust networks by linking multiple parts of the brain involved in memory: the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and visual cortex. Memory palace practitioners are literally rewiring their brains to be more efficient at memory. And after mastering the technique, they can develop elaborate systems of personalized imagery to represent, say, numbers, individual playing cards, or other hard-to-remember info. Despite their effectiveness, variations on the method of loci are neither widely taught nor widely researched, Ajemian says—much to his frustration. We've been too quick to dismiss it as a neat trick, he argues, instead of regarding it as a valuable learning tool that's sustained human knowledge for millennia. Perhaps nowhere is its potential more poignant than in the fight against dementia. New hope for aging minds For Michael Dottino, memory is the family business. His father founded the USA Memory Championship, and Michael trained businesspeople and students in memory techniques. Then the local Jewish Community Center asked him to try something new: develop a class for seniors with early-stage dementia. The Memory Institute program he created meets twice a week at the Dr. P. Phillips YMCA in Orlando. The four-hour sessions combine memory training with physical activity, social interaction, and cognitive exercises like using the method of loci. The goal, Dottino says, is to slow participants' rates of decline. Three years in, he finds the program's results encouraging. Some of the earliest participants are still showing up twice a week, keeping up the regimen. Dottino calls out one of them, Karen Vourvopoulos, who has retained all of her cognitive function. 'The class has given my mother a new lease on life,' says Matina Vourvopoulos, Karen's daughter. 'She's more energized, inspired, creative, and enthusiastic about life. I wish there was a Memory Institute for every senior in every community.' Clinical neuropsychologist Erica Weber is putting similar approaches through rigorous clinical trials. Memory programs are few and far between, she says, and patients often pay out of pocket. But if such strategies can be proven genuinely effective, insurance companies might start covering them. One current challenge, Weber says, is that the main sources of funding for rehabilitation research—the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research—are facing large cuts (and, in the latter case, outright elimination). But so far, the research looks promising. One massive study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, showed that cognitive training can help healthy older adults maintain and improve their mental skills. Though there's no need to wait until retirement age to put memory strategies like the method of loci to use. 'Try to practice using the strategies before you need to rely on them,' Weber advises. Think of it as a cognitive gym membership—better to start lifting mental weights before the muscle gets weak. Applications beyond aging Which is to say, seniors aren't the only ones who can benefit. Weber adapts the method of loci to help people with traumatic brain injuries—suffered in car accidents or falls, for example—to recover cognitive function. What she calls the modified Story Memory Technique breaks down memory palaces into simpler components, like transforming verbal information into mental imagery. The range of patients she works with keep expanding, including those suffering from multiple sclerosis, HIV-related cognitive impairment, and spinal cord injuries that impact brain function. Perhaps most intriguingly, mental health experts are exploring the memory palace as a therapy tool. People with depression or PTSD might create palaces filled with positive memories, mental refuges to revisit during tough times. The concept makes intuitive sense: if you can train your brain to efficiently store and retrieve any information using spatial memory, why not train it to access calm, positive states when you need them most? In our smartphone age, when we've outsourced so much memorization to Google and GPS, ancient mnemonics are reminders of what our remarkable brains can do. As MIT neuroscientist Ajemian puts it, engaging these techniques is 'fundamental cognitive exercise, in the same way that aerobics is fundamental physical exercise.' Our ancestors carried entire libraries in their heads. With a little practice, we can at least make sure to pick up the milk. This article is part of Your Memory, Rewired, a National Geographic exploration into the fuzzy, fascinating frontiers of memory science—including advice on how to make your own memory more powerful. Learn more.