Using Vivid Mental Imagery to Aid Memory by Josephine

Using Vivid Mental Imagery to Aid Memory by Josephine - January 2014 Scholarship Essay

As a pre-med major, I know that science is hard. Perhaps it’s the alien-sounding names and acronyms thrown at us: Oxytocin, thyroxin, calcitonin, Growth Hormone, LH, FSH, ACTH and so on. Trying to remember what gland secretes which hormones and what each does at times seems downright impossible. But one of my friends simplified the task of memorizing this list, and I have adopted her technique to make studying for science exams a breeze. Her secret? Relating each of these arcane names to something both more familiar and vivid so it comes more easily to mind. Warning: what follows may seem shocking. However, this is one of the reasons for its success.

Faced with this list, my friend created images. For example, this is how she remembered oxytocin. Oxytocin is secreted from the posterior pituitary gland and causes contractions during labor and birth. So, my friend associated the name Oxytocin to the drug Oxycontin, due to their similarity in sound, and imagined a pregnant woman hitting a post while taking Oxycontin. Thus, Oxytocin affects pregnant women and comes from the post-erior pituitary gland. She aced the test.

While gruesome – and likely because of this – images like my friend’s actually do help learning. Unknowingly, my friend had stumbled upon a major discovery of memory researchers: the shocking, humorous, absurd, or primal – instances that engage us viscerally and activate our most basic emotions – stick like glue in our memories.

Why do images like this lodge so firmly in our minds? Well, as I learned in psychology class, memory researchers have discovered we have more than one type of memory, including semantic memory, or knowledge of facts; emotional memory; and visual memory. Each type of memory is stored in a different part of the brain. So turning a fact into a shocking or emotional image creates multiple forms of memory. And the more forms of memory of the same item I have, the stronger the overall memory will be. It’s like saving a document on my computer in three different places instead of just one. I’ll have triple the chance of finding it when I’m searching for it again.

After my friend’s success, I started using these memory techniques too. In chemistry, these methods helped me learn the Periodic Chart of Elements: elements on the chart’s left side like to give electrons because left-ist liberals like to give to the poor; elements high on the chart are small, like children, and it is harder to take electrons from them because their electrons are held closer, just like a child holds a prized possession like a stuffed animal close and throws a fit if you try to take it. While these images aren’t as shocking as my friend’s imaginary car crash, envisioning a screaming toddler is enough to make my association last a long time!

To increase my learning power in college, I'll keep using these memory techniques. Vivid mental imagery will bring scientific abstractions to life, and connections to the already familiar will help me learn faster. I'll conjure the bizarre and shocking to engage my primitive, emotional brain and to make information stick. In the middle of the most grueling exams, I’ll be the one smiling and laughing to myself over screaming toddlers and leftist electrons and, hopefully, acing the test as a result.