Good news for people who have difficulty in remembering things. A memory technique invented by the ancient Greeks has recently been proved to be able to greatly improve ordinary people’s memory ability. You may even become a memory champion if you practice hard enough.
对于记忆力不好的人来说，有这样一个好消息。古希腊人发明的一个记忆法在近期被证实能够大大提升普通人的记忆力。如果你肯努力练习，或许还能成为记忆冠军。
This is according to a study published in the journal Neuron. Researchers from Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that memory champions aren’t all that different to us. People with an average memory can greatly improve their memory ability by using what’s known as the “mind palace” method.
以上观点来源于科学期刊《神经元》上发表的一篇研究。荷兰拉德堡德大学医学中心的研究人员发现，记忆冠军们并非与我们有很大差别。通过此种被称为“思维殿堂”的方法，普通人也能极大地提高自己的记忆力水平。
The method is the secret weapon (武器) of the fictional (虚构的) character Sherlock Holmes.
该方法是虚构人物夏洛克·福尔摩斯的秘密武器。
In order to do this, you need to picture a place you’re familiar with, such as your living room. Then, you have to remember this place in as much detail as possible as this is your own mind palace.
为了提高记忆力，你需要想象一个你熟悉的地方，比如你家的客厅。然后，你要尽可能多地回想起这里的细节，因为这就是你自己的思维殿堂。
Suppose you want to remember a shopping list. You can start by spreading out all the items around your living room in your mind. This means each item on your list is connected with a remembered place in your living room. You travel to that remembered place as you recall the list.
假设你想记住一个购物清单。你可以先把清单上的所有物品都分散在你想象中的客厅里。这便意味着清单上的每个物品都和记忆中的位置产生了联系。前往记忆中的地点就能想起清单上的内容。
To explore the effects of this method on the brain, researchers gathered 51 participants with average memory levels and no previous memory training. After 40 days of daily 30-minute training sessions (一段时间), participants doubled the amount of words they could remember – they went from recalling an average of 26 words out of 72, to an impressive 62. Four months later, even without continued training, their recall performance remained high.
为探索这个脑力方法的效果，研究人员召集了51名记忆力在平均水平的实验参与者，这些人先前都未经过记忆力训练。参与者们每天都接受了30分钟的记忆力训练，40天后，他们能够记住的单词数量增加了一倍 —— 在72个单词中，他们从一开始平均只能记住26个单词，上升到后来十分可观的62个。而四个月后，就算没有继续参加训练，他们的记忆力表现依然十分出色。
“Once you are familiar with these strategies and know how to apply them, you can keep your performance high without much further training,” Martin Dresler, assistant professor from Radboud University Medical Center, told the Daily Mail.
“一旦你熟悉了这些策略，知道怎么去运用它们，你就能在不进行更进一步训练的情况下，保持着出色的记忆力，”拉德堡德大学医学中心副教授马丁·德莱斯勒在接受《每日邮报》采访时表示。
In addition, the training also affects the way our brain cells connect. After training, the way that the participants’ brain cells connect began to be like those of memory champions compared to scans (扫描检查) taken before training. Researchers believe this could be responsible for their increased memory.
除此之外，训练也同样影响了我们脑细胞的连接方式。和参与训练之前的脑部扫描相比，训练之后参与者们脑细胞的连接方式变得与记忆冠军们的大脑相似起来。研究人员认为，这与他们增强了记忆力有关。
But what makes this research so fascinating is that it seems to prove that the talent to store things in your mind isn’t down to genes. Dresler found there was no difference in brain structure between memory champions and normal people, which means memory champions are not born with different brains.
但这项研究最吸引人的地方在于，它似乎证实了在记忆才能并非与基因有关。德莱斯勒发现，记忆冠军们的大脑构造和普通人的并无区别，这意味着记忆力冠军们并非生来就有着不同的大脑。
“They, without a single exception, trained for months and years using methods to achieve these high levels of performance,” Dresler told Science Daily.
“无一例外的是，他们都用了一些方法经年累月地进行训练，从而练成了出色的记忆力，”德莱斯勒在接受《每日科学》采访时表示。
It’s clear that more studies are needed to find out what’s going on here, but the “mind palace” method might be your best bet to never forget an important name, date or appointment ever again.
很清楚的一点是，我们需要进行更多的研究来弄明白原理，但“思维殿堂”这一方法或许是你记住一个重要的名字、日期或是邀约的最佳方法。
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