Concept
Associative Memory
memory learning neuroscience
Deliberately linking a new, hard-to-remember fact to an existing, vivid, or emotionally-resonant image or story makes it substantially easier to recall — the brain retains associative, story-shaped connections far better than dry, isolated facts. London taxi driver Tom Hutley leaned on this heavily while learning "the Knowledge": a memorable pub name ("The Laughing Gravy") sticks immediately, while a plain grid of visually-similar street names (Marylebone's Baker Street/Gloucester Place area) doesn't, so he actively built links between street names and local history to make otherwise arbitrary names stick — for instance connecting "Threadneedle Street" to a nearby "Merchant Tailors" guild via the image of threading a needle.
Neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki's research on associative learning and the hippocampus found specific neurons change their firing activity specifically when the brain is forming a link between two previously unrelated things (e.g. a person's name and a scent) — and this associative-learning-specific neural activity is part of why building deliberate links measurably strengthens memory (see Suzuki Hippocampus Associative-Learning Research).
The technique scales to arbitrary factual recall. Applying the same method — spaced repetition plus deliberate association — Phill Agnew memorized all 202 world capital cities in around four hours of practice, building links like "Georgetown, Guyana" (George is a common man's name) and "Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire" (a yam's white flesh looks like ivory) (see Nudge Podcast Capital-Cities Memorization Test).
Taxi drivers may have physically larger memory centers. Prior research (and an ongoing UCL "Taxi Brains" study Hutley took part in) has found working London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus — the brain region associated with memory and navigation, and the same region that shrinks in Alzheimer's disease — than non-taxi-drivers, a difference researchers believe develops because of, not merely correlating with, the years spent doing the Knowledge and driving professionally (see London Taxi Driver Hippocampus Study).
Discussed in
- Episode 128 — 128-how-black-cab-drivers-memorise-every-road-in-london