A good memory is a useful tool to have by your side, no matter what your occupation is. Students, in particular, tend to encounter difficulties in memorizing a large amount of content, and that’s quite natural. Going through extensive reading material can be quite daunting, let alone memorizing it all. Medical students have to learn and memorize new things day in and day out. Memorizing material that you’ve never come across before and are learning for the first time is a neurochemical process that could be accomplished with ease with a few simple tips. So, if you’re a med student who can’t quite remember all individual different components of the human anatomy or intricate side effects of drugs, fear no more. Prepare yourself before getting down to brass tacks: Make sure the environment you choose is one with minimum distractions. Background sounds can create unnecessary extra sensory input along with what you need to learn. Eat almonds! Almonds are a good source of monounsaturated fats that are very healthy. Our neurons are insulated with a sheet made of fat called the Myelin Sheath. This insulates the electrical impulses and prevents them from escaping. Almonds strengthen this neural insulation and ensure your neurons fire rapidly without a loss of signals and this is one of the keys to recall something quickly. Auditory input We humans have five senses. How many times has it occurred to you that a familiar smell takes you back to a vividly formed memory? Or a particular sound that reminds you of a retrospective memory. This is because we remember things well when we use various sensory inputs to memorize something. Our brain associates one sensory input with another. In this case, a smell with a particular event – a strong connection is formed to instantaneously remind you of that something. Use this to your advantage and read aloud so you can hear what you’re reading. This couples the visual input with auditory input so, now you’re employing two sensory inputs in place of one, and this means various neurons will be firing at once. This forms connections between them (synapses) quicker, hence you learn quicker. If it’s a lecture, record the audio so you can listen to it later. Use cumulative memorization When reading, make sure you repeat everything a few times until that text is etched into the back of your mind. Repeating something over and over again will fire the same neurons over and over and, as a result of that, the neurons will form new synapses to form shortcuts so that the nervous impulse can now reach its destination quicker through an alternative route. This technique ensures that your short term memory is relocated to your long term memory, so you can easily retrieve that memory in future which is exactly what medical students direly need. Chunking Chunking is the process of dividing what we have to memorizes into smaller and easier to memorize pieces. Phone numbers are separated by a hyphen (-)due to the same reason. Breaking a 10 digit number down into three “chunks” becomes significantly easier for us to memorize. This technique works best with texts and numbers that could be organized into portions, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing when Edward Jenner invented the vaccine or when Robert Koche came up with his postulates.Source
