3 brain exercises to improve your memory
3. Make memorization easier by using mnemonic devices
Mnemonic devices are very old, but useful and interesting technique that will challenge you to improve your ability to remember something. It’s a creative memory exercise that will help your brain better encode and recall important information.
These mnemonic techniques will teach you how to associate the information you want to remember with an image, a sentence or a word.
Popular mnemonic devices:
– Sentence – Create a sentence in which the first letter of each word is part of or represents the initial of what you want to remember.
For example: The sentence “Every Good Boy Does Fine” it helps music students to memorize the lines of the treble clef, representing the notes E, G, B, D, and F.
– Visual image – This brain exercise works best with smaller pieces of information. Associate a visual image with a word or a name. Let your brain create a visual image which is positive, pleasant, colorful, and three-dimensional. This will help you remember what you need even better. For example, if you need to remember the name Rose Parks, imagine a woman sitting in a park, surrounded by roses.
– Acronym – is a word that is made up by taking the first letter or first few letters of each word in a phrase, title or idea. In order to remember them you need to create the new acronym.
For example, the name of the 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA is an acronym derived from the first names of the group’s members: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid.
– Method of loci – This method relies on visualizing mental images to associate with the things that need to be remembered. Imagine placing the things you want to remember along a route you know well, or in specific locations in a familiar room or building. For example, if you need to memorize a shopping list imagine apples on the street to your home, a puddle of milk in the middle of the sofa, carrots going up the stairs, and bread on your bed.
– Rhyme – is a repetition of similar sounds (or the same sound) in two or more words, most often in the end of each line in poems and songs. They are easier to remember because they can be stored by acoustic encoding in your brain. This could be fun and creative exercise for your brain which in the same time will improve your memory. For example, “in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue”.
– Chunking – it breaks a long list of numbers or other types of information into smaller, more easily-managed chunks. The telephone numbers in US are perfect example for chunking. Remember a 10-digit phone number by breaking it down into three sets of numbers: 345-567-4561. This is very useful technique because the human memory is limited to approximately 7 items of information and when you are placing larger quantities of information into smaller containers helps your brain remember more, and more easily.
We hope that these 3 brain exercises will help you to keep your mind fit!
If you already use another interesting brain exercises to keep your brain in a good shape share them with us in the comments bellow!
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