Hacker News Reader

Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

I was told ages ago that humans divide our spatial memory into discrete spaces, and then store our memories of objects relative to the space in which we saw or thought about the object. That's why when you need to get something from another room, and you walk through a doorway to get there, so often you'll realise you've forgotten what it was that you needed to get. And then you walk back through the doorway and you'll remember.

I'd guess this is also why memory palaces work - you're basically allocating a data structure to store your facts in.

View on HN

You can almost think of memory palaces more as maps or pointers than the data structures themselves. You're piggybacking off of existing neural connections in your memory circuits and placing new connections in between or at the ends, and activating those new synaptic connections by activating the ones you're already familiar with which are connected to them.

The reason we use memory palaces specifically is because our visual memory is incredibly strong. Many techniques take this a step further and add an element of time, allowing you to make use of your chronological memory as well, filling in the gaps between "scenes". It works exceedingly well, I can memorize a pack of cards in about 2-3 minutes with this technique.

Yeah, I was thinking after I wrote it that it's more an index than the actual data itself.

Memory palace works essentially by storing arbitrary things in your spatial memory. Most people have well developed spatial memory, as there is no practical method that could replace it. It's much better long term if you actually push yourself and train to use your textual or whatever memory properly, instead of using your spatial memory for storing things that don't belong there.

There’s a psychotherapy approach called Internal Family Systems, IFS, that is the theory that we’re all naturally made up of individual, multiple personalities. Each part of you having it’s own anxieties, fears, goals.

It’s why you could seemingly be one personality when you encounter love, hungry, horny, etc and seemingly different person while in a different context.

https://youtu.be/LuJLv98ks-I

Is this psychotherapy approach generally respected among therapists, or is it kinda fringe?

Because from that description, it sounds like it would probably be a fringe thing, but I don't know the field in the slightest, so I can't be confident in that.

Also, that description at the end of the post, that you say it explains, doesn't seem to match my experience.

Also, I don't think I see how it relates to the parent comment?

I don't work in neuroscience, but I've taken a few courses in undergrad. I'll chime in until a professional can answer your question more definitively.

There's some evidence that the left and right brain hemispheres have their own desires and goals, based on some studies conducted by Roger Perry in the 1960's. Sperry received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his split-brain research.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-exper...

Aside from the left-right split, I think there's a large category of well-supported models that conceive of the mind-brain as modular, but with sub-units dedicated to basic processing tasks (memory retrieval, sensory integration, etc.) rather than being fully-formed, discrete "personalities" in themselves.

It's called the doorway effect and I also believed it to be established science already. Perhaps this study drills more into the details and particulars of the effect.

Related comedy bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XjUFYxSxDk

The book "moonwalking with Einstein" is about this very concept and how it's used in memory competitions

I would recommend Kevin Horsley's Unlimited Memory[0] over Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein.

Foer is a lot of hype and unfocused, whereas Horsley almost immediately gets down to brass tacks after a brief introduction meant to energize you, and provides a great general overview that leaves you with the knowledge of how to continually improve beyond what the book provides.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Memory-Advanced-Strategies-...

Do memory palaces work? I thought that was a Sherlock Holmes invention.

I've never had luck, but they are very much a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Never pushed the investigation but I had managed to remember several poems and songs verbatim using this method. Something that I otherwise really struggle with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com