Power of Image

The usage of images for developing memory and memory techniques has a significant place in the history of human thought.

With that in mind, it is quite strange that today we rarely hear about it, and we do not learn about it at all inside any stage of the educational system.

One of the most important things for the development of the memory process is synesthesia - sharpening and combining two or more of your senses when perceiving an object you want to memorize.

Abilities of our mind, when it comes to memory, are also stimulated with movement, association, sexuality, humor, imagination, symbolism, order…

Thus, the ancient Greeks figure out that the image integrates all the aforementioned qualities.

They used imagination to create various kinesthetic images symbolically connected to the information they wanted to memorize.

One of the easiest techniques that combine lively images within a systematic order is story development.

Let's say for example you have a list of a few items to remember: oranges, milk, fish, chocolate, batteries, bananas, and red wine. Let us use imagination to create a short story:

Imagine while you read: Giant oranges are falling from the sky, and falling into the big bowl of milk (making splashes) in which fishes are swimming and eating little chocolate pieces.

That bowl is picked up by a robot who runs on batteries, and he needs to enter the boat that looks exactly like a banana in order to pass the big river of red wine.

Go through the story in your head, you will notice that you can remember the list easily. This method serves equally well if abstract notions are at hand, but still, it has flaws.

It works only on the list, it is not systematically arranged, you can not approach the content the way you want to, you must always start from the beginning of the story. Keep in mind that this was or is, one of the most basic mnemotechnics.

Another one is having Image symbols already developed, on which you attach the notions you want to memorize by combining them with your symbol image.

However, this type of method was limited and needed further improvements.

By combining these two, and some other methods, ancient Greeks developed an imposing mnemotechnic that will be known as the greek/roman room.