In the early February Vishvaa RajakumarA 20 -year -old Indian university student won the World Memory League ChampionshipAn online competition faces people with each other with challenges such as memorizing the order of 80 random numbers faster than most people can link a cordon cord.
The renowned neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire, who died in January, studied mental athletes such as Rajakumar and discovered that many of them used the old Roman method of loci “, a memorization trick also known as El”Memory Palace“
The technique takes several forms, but generally implies visualizing a large house and assigning memories to the rooms. Walking mentally through the house, shooting through the hippocampus, the engine of the memory in the form of a deep seahorse in the brain that consumed Maguire’s career.
Nyt asked Rajakumar about his memorization strategies. Your answers:
How do you prepare for the World Memory League Championship?
Hydration is very important because it helps your brain. When it memorizes things, it usually subvocalizes, and helps to have a clear throat. Let’s say you are reading a book. You are not reading it out loud, but you are vocalizing within yourself. If you don’t drink much water, your speed will be a bit low. If you drink a lot of water, it will be clearer and can read it faster.
How is your memory palace?
Let’s say my first location is my room where I sleep. My second location is the kitchen. And the third location is my room. The fourth location is my veranda. Another location is my bathroom. Let’s say I’m memorizing a word list. Let’s say 10 words. What I do is, I take a couple of words, I make a story with them and place them in one place. And I take the next two words. I make a story with them. I place them in the second location. The memory palace will help you remember the sequence.
How much can these rooms contain?
A lot. Let’s say I’m memorizing 100 words. I am making a story with every two words. There will be a set of 50 stories. But I can’t remember which one came first or which one came in second place. That would be a problem, right? So, if I use the memory palace, I can remember what was first and what was the second. So, I can remember the 50 stories.
Can you describe one of the challenges in the World Memory League Championship?
They give you 80 random numbers that show on a screen. You must memorize all those numbers as quickly as possible, then click on a button and a recovery sheet appears. I wrote all the 80 digits, and I got everything well. My best time to memorize 80 random digits in the World Championship was 13.5 seconds, so almost six digits per second.
Do you realize how incredible this is?
Yes. I was crying.
What follows?
After completing the university, as in two or three months, I will probably try to be a memory coach and create a memory institution in India to teach other people these techniques. My goal is to make it great. NYT