Here’s a weird fact. London taxi drivers actually have bigger hippocampi. That’s because they have to remember how to get around on all of the streets of London. And there are a lot of streets. They actually get tested on it to become drivers. Their hippocampi actually grow as they learn the layout of London.
Now that might all be changing now with navigation and Uber, but you get the point right? If they can grow their brains, so can you. And so can your child.
Here’s another weird fact. The amygdala shrinks as the hippocampi grow. That’s important because the amygdala is where our stress response comes from. When your child throws a tantrum that's the amygdala talking. Stress is very common in dyslexic children because a lot of dyslexics have lost confidence and self-esteem. When a child loses confidence and self-esteem they become very stressed out and that causes their emotions to get out of control sometimes. If that's your child, then you might want to watch our full documentary on emotions in children. It’s called the overly emotional child
But back to the hippocampus. Developing the hippocampus has a lot of benefits. Not only does a bigger hippocampus mean better visual-spatial memory but also fewer tantrums. Kinda cool huh?
Visual-spatial memory is a very powerful tool for remembering instructions. It's also what we use when we use logic, when we troubleshoot, or when we design and create things. Visual-spatial thinking is a superpower. And developing it helps you learn and think better.
Human brains are wired to be visual-spatial first. Think about it. If you see something, you see it in a position in space. If you feel something you feel it in a position on your body. If you hear something you hear it in a position in space. The spatial is where we mentally combine all of our senses. And the spatial is where we formulate plans and remember instructions. If we try to do these things only using other forms of memory it will be extremely challenging.
The ancient Romans knew this well. And they used the tool of visual-spatial memory in astounding ways.
Have you ever wondered how they memorized the long speeches they were famous for? Want to know how they did it? Well, they had an amazing trick that used visual-spatial memory.
They didn’t try to remember the words of the speech. That would have been impossible for most. Instead, they used a technique called the memory palace. Here’s how it works.
When practicing their speech they visualized themselves walking through a palace. Every place on the path through the palace represented a key point in the speech. They associated the key points with places.
As they spoke, they would imagine themselves walking through the palace. As they finished each key point they imagined walking to the next place in the palace. As they mentally got to each place in the palace they were able to remember the part of the speech assigned to that place.
Have you ever said the phrase, “In the first place…” Well now you know where it comes from. The ancient Romans memory palace technique.
Our core and most powerful thinking is visual-spatial. We are wired for it. Even our language is spatial. Listen to language closely and you’ll recognize this. We associate almost everything with direction. Up, down, forward, back. If we are feeling good we are feeling up. If we are feeling bad we say we are feeling down. We “climb the ladder of success” or are at “the peak of our career”. A Scoundrel may do a low-down trick. And you might not believe they could stoop so low. Everything is spatial. It’s how our mind works. It’s how we speak. It’s how we perceive. And that’s why developing our spatial senses such as proprioception have such an amazing effect on our brain.
Let’s go over another example so we can put this all together
Lets say you were given the following instructions: "Go to the store and get bread, mayonnaise, a can of tuna, pickles, lettuce, and milk"
You might tromp off to the store repeating that list over and over in your head. Or you might just visualize a nice tuna fish sandwich lunch and know to get everything for that.
Which of those would be easier?
When you use the first tactic, remembering the list. You are probably using auditory memory. When you use the second you might use a combination of visual-spatial and kinesthetic. You see yourself sitting down to a nice lunch and you might even think about how it tastes. Taste memory is called gustatory memory. Also a powerful form of memory. It’s not hard to remember what a German chocolate cake tastes like,right? Yummmm!
So you had a choice in how to remember the instructions. You could store two pieces of information, the store and lunch. Or seven pieces of information. The list.
You also have a third choice. You could visualize yourself taking each item off the shelf. A visual-spatial journey. And that’s a very powerful method too.
So we’ve learned that there are many ways to remember things. When we talk about working memory, we know it's not just one simple thing. It’s the combination of many types of memory. If you build up each of those components, overall working memory improves. And so does the ability to follow instructions. Or think logically. Or be creative. Or learn new things.