What is a Memory Palace?

A memory palace - also called the method of loci - is one of the oldest and most effective memorization techniques in recorded history. It was used by ancient Greek and Roman orators to memorize hours-long speeches, and it remains the preferred method of competitive memory champions today.

How it works

The core idea is simple: take a physical space you know well - your home, your commute, a building you visit regularly - and mentally walk through it, placing each piece of information you want to remember at a specific location along the route. Later, when you need to recall the information, you simply replay the mental walk and "pick up" what you left at each stop.

The technique works because human spatial and episodic memory is extraordinarily powerful. Our brains evolved to navigate and remember places. By anchoring abstract information - like words, numbers, or ideas - to concrete, vivid locations, we convert something difficult to recall into something our memory systems handle naturally.

The more vivid, unusual, and emotionally engaging the image you associate with each location, the stronger the memory trace. A plain word sitting in a room is forgettable. A word transformed into a strange, impossible scene at a specific corner of a building you know - that stays.

Why it is powerful

Studies consistently show that the method of loci produces recall rates far above baseline - sometimes two to three times higher than simple rehearsal. It is not just a trick for exceptional memorizers: ordinary people with no special training show large gains after a single session of instruction.

The technique is especially suited to ordered lists, because the spatial route naturally preserves sequence. Walking through your palace in order means your memories come back in order.

How we use it in this study

Our memory palace is the UPF Poblenou campus in Barcelona. We have defined a fixed route through the campus with 30 specific locations - loci - each tied to a distinct, recognizable spot: an entrance, a staircase, a courtyard, a corridor, a room.

During encoding you will be shown words one by one. Depending on the condition, you will either form your own mental images, or you will be shown an AI-generated image that already depicts the word embedded into one of the campus locations. Your task is to place each word - or the image of it - at its corresponding locus as you move through the palace in your mind.

During recall, you walk through the palace mentally, revisit each location in sequence, and type in whatever word you find there. The spatial route is your retrieval cue.

This only works if the campus route and its locations are genuinely familiar to you before the trials begin. The next step is to learn that route.