Dive into the rabbit hole on Wikipedia.
You’ve got 2 hippocampi, one in each hemisphere of your brain. Your hippocampi are responsible for long-term memory.
Hack your Hippocampi
If you want to learn and remember things more effectively, there are ways to enhance your learning process. By “hacking” your hippocampi, I mean using their existing systems and reactions in your favor. Your hippocampi decide what information is worth keeping. If something doesn’t make the cut, you’ll forget it. Lucky for you, your hippocampi have a system for this you can utilize. Factors that improve the likelihood of retaining information are: connecting it to existing information, adding experiences, and repeatedly exposing yourself to it. This approach works because your hippocampi always consider whether or not you might need some bit of information again or not. Something that doesn’t connect to anything existing, has no experience behind it, and you’ve only seen once probably won’t make the cut. When it connects to existing knowledge, knowledge you’ve only retained because your hippocampi considered it relevant, the new information becomes more relevant as well. When connecting it to experiences, preferably intense ones, your hippocampi will consider the information more important as well. And when you’re exposed to it over and over again, your hippocampi will start to assume that you’ll keep needing it in the future as well. Some proven and personally recommended learning methods are therefore:¹
- Spaced Repetition
- Visualization
- Memory Palace