What's the best way to memorize the muscles of the arm? Cathy discusses her two-step approach to developing adaptive expertise in anatomy, which will play a big role in our future careers—scroll to the bottom to find out where we're headed next year!
Read moreHit the Ground Running: A Quick Guide to Mastering the Memory Palace Before School Starts
We’ve received a few messages recently from people who are starting a professional school this year. While we love the memory palace technique, there can be a significant barrier to use, especially if you're about to enter a high-stakes learning environment. Here's an easy one-month ramp up to mastering the palace technique before you start a new learning adventure.
Read moreThe Body Palace: Memorizing the Review of Systems
A key tool in the physician’s arsenal is the review of systems, or ROS—a run-through of pertinent symptoms while taking a patient history. To the novice clinical student, it can feel overwhelming. Medical students often first learn the ROS as Alex did—as a giant, inscrutable list of symptoms. Here’s how he uses a memory technique to tackle it painlessly.
Read moreIt's in the Genes: How to Memorize Tricky Number/Letter Associations
Our newest question comes from a reader who’s a medical student in Italy: “I use a lot the memory palace for my studies but I was wondering if you can help me to memorise in an easy way the genes, because they are made with letters and numbers for example: BRCA1, FGFR1, HLA, Cn3D.... something like this! I hope this can be helpful for all the other medical students.”
Read moreHIIT Study Session: Maximize Your Time
We’re big fans of high-intensity interval training or HIIT. Effortful retrieval is actually a well-studied learning technique that can help you "HIIT" your studying.
Read moreMemory Tips for Medical Students (Live Seminar) [Video]
A short seminar we recently gave to the first year class at our medical school. It covers some science-backed tips we think every learner should know.
Read moreHow to Memorize the Entire Facial Nerve Using a Memory Palace [Video]
In this 20-minute video, Alex walks through how to memorize the entire facial nerve (cranial nerve VII) using a memory palace. The facial nerve is a key player in neuroanatomy and pops up during gross anatomy in medical school.
Read more3 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Memory Palaces (and Not Only Standalone Images)
Standalone mnemonics are also a relatively simpler yet still effective way for, say, an absolute beginner to pick up new foreign language vocab. When it comes to carefully learning structured material, however, I’ve found there to be three main arguments in favor of palaces.
Read moreHow to Use Memory Palaces to Learn Chinese: Putting the System into Practice [Video]
In this video, I walk through a memory palace-based learning session, focusing on examples and the different tools I use. This one builds on my earlier two blogs describing the system. Here's how to make tricky tones and endings really stick. (26:02)
Read moreHow to Use Memory Palaces to Learn Pharmacology: Tetracyclines [Video]
In this video, I discuss my memory palace-based mnemonics for learning high-yield facts about the antibiotic class tetracyclines, as taken from the medical student review book First Aid. Here's how to make pharm really stick. (18:09)
Read moreHow to Use Memory Palaces to Learn Chinese: Part 2
In Part 2, I discuss the memory palace-based Chinese system in more detail—complete with examples, tweaks I made to Serge’s approach, and issues I faced. I'm over a year in and still loving it.
Read moreMy Home for Spaced Repetition: What My Anki Setup Looks Like
My Anki is broken into three parent decks: Medicine, Languages, and Memory Sports, each with a few subdecks (e.g. Pathology, Chinese). Here's what my day-to-day home for spaced repetition looks like.
Read moreDo Memory Palaces Hinder Learning? Our Top 3 Don't-Miss Tips
If you're someone struggling to apply memory palaces, look no further. Here I discuss my top 3 realizations about memory techniques as they pertain to learning—the ones that took my approach from frustratingly ineffective to invaluable.
Read moreNever Forget What You Learn: 4 Reasons You Should Be Using Anki in Medical School and Beyond
Anki, powered by spaced repetition, is a powerful tool for making things stick long-term, and I can't imagine learning without it—even with the aid of memory palaces. Here's why you should be combining spaced repetition with memory palaces to get the most from medical school and beyond.
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