Quite often I find myself memorizing things using my “gut feeling” as dual coding. While this is not very common, there is some science behind it. In this post, I will try to shed some light on the subject. To some extent I was inspired by this, this, and this articles.
Situation memory
Our body has its own memory, stored in the cerebellum. The same part of the brain that integrates our visual and audio memories also processes our body memory. Is body required for the body memory? Only initially. The body memory is inside the brain, not the muscles. If we loose a limb we will still have a feel of a ghost limb, which is the body memory of a limb in the cerebellum. When we move, sit or lay our muscles send their sensory indications to the brain. These indications are integrated with what we learn. The result is a sort of state memory: if we learn something seating near the computer we will recall it better when seated near a computer. If you cannot make it fake it and visualize sitting near the computer and typing to access the memories. Sometimes visualizing a specific room with the specific computer we used to learn something will “upload” the relevant memories for our recall much faster than trying to use the specific markers for the content we learn. This also works in the other direction: try to recall the materials you learned in a specific situation and you will recall that situation.
Muscle memory
How good is our muscle memory? A dancer or an athlete may have an exceptional memory, a programmist may be less talented muscle-wise. Good muscle memory was required for the survival of countless generations of animals and human beings, so the evolution should have handled this skill exceptionally well. There are specific areas of the brain dedicated to processing muscle sensors that can work parallel to other forms of information we learn. Motor learning is definitely slower than visual learning. What it lacks in speed it gains in very specific and long-term memorization. There is a saying that once we learn to ride a bicycle we will never forget how to do it. How many visual memories are that persistent? We use fine motor memory for music, puzzle cube and other complex activities, so the muscle memory can preserve very fine detail for very long time.
Physical manifestations of emothions
We associate many emotions with physical feelings: pose, face mimics, pulse, gut feeling etc. There are many muscles on our face, and they are typically used to express emotions. The blood flows differently when we experience emotions, making some parts of the body warmer than others. Strange smells and tastes, some nuances in our sensory perception can generategut feelings, which are hard and dangerous to ignore. These memories are basically as accurate and stable as motor memories.
“Visualizing” physical activities
When we sleep or daydream we often visualize ourselves performing physical activities. It is known that constantly visualizing physical activity activates brain paths and generates responses similar to practicing the activity itself. There are many meditative techniques where the practitioner “scans” his own body for various activities or tries to generate various physical activities via specific visualizations. Some practitioners can control the levels of adrenaline to fight pain or speed up the metabolism to control cold.
Using body memory when reading
When we read we can get a strong emotional response, visualize certain activities, empathize with other people. These emotional responses can become stronger or weaker based on the amount of attention we allocate to them. Typically we try to ignore them and perceive them as distractions. This is not always the best strategy. In fact, we could try to integrate them into the markers we generate for what we read. Then we will remember not only visualizations but also some body feeling associated with the particular visualization. Just as a visualization may include many details, the accompanying body memory can be intricate and include face mimics, blood flow, muscle memory. We can then use the relevant muscle memory to activate a specific visualization. Since muscle memory is not very fast, it is best to associate a specific muscle memory to a relatively large part of knowledge equivalent to a section in a book.
Summary
We are extremely good at using muscle memory for long-term memorization. Associating a specific muscle memory with a specific section of the text we read, we will remember it longer and better.
