Memory Science -Moonwalking with Einstein(Summary)

Moonwaliking with Einstein by Joshua Foer is a book which tells about how memory champions train and that they are not any different than any of us.

These champs use memory techniques given in the book.

These techniques are given in this app for easy access.

We recommend that you buy and read the book Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer in case you haven't.

Foer describes his book as participatory journalism in the world of competitive memorization and attempts to delineate the capacity of the human mind. He sets out to investigate the underpinnings of those with enhanced memory, soon finding himself at the 2005 U.S. Memory Championship. He covers the scientific basis of memory creation and historical attitudes towards memory, including its negative reputation in the Western educational system, a perception which Foer is largely opposed to. He explores common mnemonic tools for improving memory: the techniques of Roman rhetoricians and the tannaim ("reciters") of Judea, the Major System and the PAO System for memorizing numbers and cards, and Mind Mapping, a note-taking technique developed by Tony Buzan. These methods are all a form of the method of loci, in which data is stored in a sequence of memorable images that can be translated back into their original form. He espouses deliberate practice as the path to expertise, and declares psychological barriers as the largest obstacles to improved human performance.

Learn About:

#Long-term memory

#Working/Short-term memory

#Chunking 🡪 A method used to remember more than 7 things in your working memory by chunking the information up

#Declarative

a. Semantic Memories

b.Episodic Memories

#Nondeclarative

#Natural Memory

#Artificial Memory

#Method of Loci 🡪 Create a space in the minds eye, a place that you know well, then populate that imagined place with images of what you want to remember (MEMORY PALACE!).

#Major system 🡪 A simple code to convert numbers into poetic sounds

#PAO 🡪 Person 🡪 Action 🡪 Object

#Three stages a person goes through when acquiring a new skill 🡪

i. Cognitive stage

ii. Associative stage

iii. Autonomous stage

#Mind Mapping 🡪 Drawing lines off main points to subsidiary points, which branch out further to tertiary points, and so on