Why the brain remembers images so well, and how turning any information into pictures is the key to every memory technique
Try to remember a list of ten random words, and most people manage five or six.
Now try to remember the face of someone you met yesterday, the colour of your childhood home or the scene of a film you watched years ago. Most of us can recall these instantly, and in surprising detail.
The difference is not luck. It is how the human brain is built.
Our brain is extraordinarily good at remembering pictures. It is far less good at remembering abstract words, numbers and lists. Memory Science starts from that simple observation, and memory techniques are the practical tools that make use of it.
The Brain Remembers What It Can See
For most of human history, survival depended on remembering places, faces, paths, dangers and food sources. Our ancestors needed to recall where the river was, which berries were safe and which animal tracks meant trouble. Written words and numbers arrived only a few thousand years ago.
So the brain became a remarkable visual memory system long before it ever had to learn a telephone number.
Psychologists call this the picture superiority effect: people remember pictures far better than words. In a well-known study in 1973, the psychologist Lionel Standing showed volunteers 10,000 pictures over several days. When tested afterwards, they could still recognise the large majority of them.
Nobody could do the same with 10,000 random words.
Two Ways Into Memory
The Canadian psychologist Allan Paivio explained part of the reason with his dual coding theory. Information can be stored in two ways: as words and as images.
A word such as "apple" can be stored as a word. But the moment you picture a shiny red apple, it is stored as an image too. That gives the brain two routes back to the same memory, and a memory with two routes is much easier to find again.
Abstract information has no picture of its own. Words like "justice", numbers like 7,429 or a date like 1857 give the brain almost nothing to hold on to.
Unless we give them a picture.
Converting Information Into Images
This is the heart of Memory Science.
Almost any information can be converted into images, and images are what the brain remembers best.
- A number can become a picture: 2 looks like a swan, 8 looks like a snowman.
- A word can become a picture: "justice" can become a judge's hammer.
- A name can become a picture: "Rose" can become a flower pinned to that person's collar.
- An idea can become a scene: a chemical reaction can become a little story acted out by the elements.
Once information is turned into vivid pictures, and those pictures are linked together or placed in familiar locations, recall becomes far easier and far more reliable.
The methods that do this conversion are called memory techniques.
The Main Memory Techniques
The Memory Palace
The oldest technique of all, used since ancient Greece. You picture a place you know well, such as your home, and place the images of what you want to remember at points along a route through it. To recall them, you simply walk through the place again in your mind.
The Story Or Link Method
Each image is connected to the next in a vivid, often funny little story. A shopping list of milk, keys, bananas and a newspaper becomes a cow reading a newspaper while juggling bananas and keys. The story holds the list in order.
Number Systems
Numbers are turned into images using a fixed code, for example by shape, by sound or by the Major System, which turns digits into consonant sounds and then into words. A long string of digits becomes a short sequence of pictures.
Names And Faces
A person's name is turned into an image and attached to a striking feature of their face, so that seeing the face brings back the name.
A Quick Example
Suppose you need to remember that the Battle of Plassey was fought in 1757.
On its own, "1757" is just four digits. Now convert it: 17 could be a young man of seventeen, 57 could be a bottle of ketchup (a famous brand once used "57" on its label). Picture a seventeen-year-old soldier at Plassey, pouring ketchup over his sword before the battle.
It is a silly image. That is exactly why it works. The brain remembers what is vivid, unusual, emotional and visual.
Trained, Not Born
Many people believe that a great memory is a gift you either have or do not have. Research says otherwise.
In a study published in the journal Neuron in 2017, researchers led by Martin Dresler compared the world's top memory athletes with ordinary people. The athletes' brains were not built differently; what differed was how they used them. When ordinary volunteers practised the Memory Palace for about 30 minutes a day over six weeks, the number of words they could remember from a list more than doubled.
This matches what Squadron Leader Jayasimha, President of the Indian Memory Sports Council, has long said:
“There is no such thing as a good or bad memory, only trained and untrained memories.”
Memory Science In Everyday Learning
Memory techniques are not a replacement for understanding. A student still needs to understand a concept before it can be used. But once something is understood, it still has to be remembered, and that is where converting information into images helps.
Students can use images for formulas, dates, definitions, diagrams and long answers. Professionals can use them for names, numbers and presentations. Senior citizens can use them to keep the mind active and sharp.
The principle is the same for everyone: see it, and you can remember it.
Start Seeing Information Differently
The next time you need to remember something, do not simply repeat it. Ask yourself one question:
What does this look like?
Turn it into a picture, make that picture vivid and connect it to something you already know. That small habit is the first step into Memory Science.
To learn how memory works in more detail, visit our Memory Science page, or explore our Training Programs to learn these techniques step by step with IMSA trainers.
