In 2002, a British study scanned the brains of ten "superior memorizers" — eight leading contenders in the World Memory Championships, and two individuals previously studied for their extraordinary memory accomplishments — all people that had demonstrated truly impressive feats of memory, in...

When considering what will be the most effective strategies for you, don't forget the basic principles of memory:

(1) Repetition repetition repetition

The trick is to find a way of repeating that is interesting to you. This is partly governed by level of difficulty (too easy is...

The story method (sometimes called the sentence mnemonic) is the most easily learned list-mnemonic strategy, although it is not as widely known as the other simple methods we’ve talked about so far.

As its name suggests, the story method involves linking words to be learned in a story....

This is a somewhat specialized technique. Dichotic listening refers to a technique used in the psychology laboratory, whereby a person wearing headphones hears different messages in the left and right ear. The technique has been used with some success in teaching foreign language words - the...

Find out about the pegword mnemonic

Here are pegwords I've thought up in the Italian language.

As with the original example, let's try it out with our cranial nerves.

In italiano, sono i nervi cranici:

1. olfattorio
2. ottico
3. oculumotore...

Song is a wonderful way to remember information, although some songs are better than others. Songs that help you remember need to have simple tunes, with a lot of repetition -- although a more complex tune can be used if it is very familiar. Most importantly, the words should be closely tied to...

Let's look a little deeper into the value of mnemonics for knowledge acquisition. By “knowledge acquisition”, I mean the sort of information you learn from textbooks — information that is not personal, that you need for the long-term.

In this context, I believe the chief value of mnemonic...