Several people face every day in their lives problems with their memory. Memory is a very important brain function that impacts life quality in general. It is very annoying when you happen to be in the middle of a very important examination and you forget what you had studied for so many hours the previous days. In some cases it not only irritating but also destructive. Good or bad, memory is the mind's property responsible for the evolution of our species. How to improve memory is an issue that all we should care about.

The great news are that fortunately there are lots of mnemonic techniques that can aid us seriously improve memory capacity. The majority of these memory techniques require the visualization skill of the individual. This is because mental imagery leave a lot more powerful mark in the human memory than just words and sentences. It is also scientifically proven that images are remembered more easily than words, especially if the images have something exceptional, weird or uncommon. This is the first principle that the most memory techniques are based on.

Do this tiny experiment if you want to prove to yourself this fact of the human brain. Try to remember what you have eaten for lunch 3 weeks ago. You can't remember? Don't worry it is normal. You would be able to remember clearly and straight away what you were eating 3 weeks ago if you had found a cockroach in your meal...The disgusting bug might have ruined your appetite but it was this unique moment that marked the experience to be stored with every single detail into your long term memory.

The other truth that you can also confirm is that the human brain cannot distinct a mental experience from a real one. Do this quick experiment at this point. Close your eyes and think with as many details you can, a lemon. See its rough skin, zoom in and zoom out, smell it. After that visualize that you hold the lemon and you slice it in the middle. Observe its juice, smell it again. Finally, take the lemon and sink your teeth into it strongly and feel all of its juice within your mouth. If you've done it right your mouth must be full of saliva right now. Although this was a mental experience, your brain did not recognize the difference and reacted to the lemon bite with the saliva production.

Combining these two essentials about the human brain many memory strategies have been invented. In most of them you form mental pictures and link those with the stuff that you desire to remember. The following list is a list of some common mnemonic techniques that are based on these principles:

• Chaining or Linking or Story Method: It is used to remember short lists. You create mental images and you connect them using the items that you want to keep in mind. Each mental picture can contain two or more items from the list. The mental pictures you invent may form a weird and silly experience.

• Peg system: The peg system is a mnemonic practice for remembering lists where order is important. You must build a peg list once and learn it really well. A peg list is a mixture between numbers and words that can be effortlessly visualized. The characteristic of these words is that when you pronounce them they sound like the corresponded number. So, as you count you recall immediately the related word with each number. Next, you create a mental image between the peg word and the list thing. You can also use the alphabet instead numbers for remembering longer lists or you can use number-shape peg lists where the linked images have a similar shape with every number.

• Method of loci: It is used to remember lengthy lists as well. You create a mental journey in a very familiar place such as your home and you connect the objects of the list to different places in the house. As you walk in the house you witness the items you want to memorize. Visualizations may be unreasonable to enhance memory.

• The Major System: This memory technique is used for memorizing long numbers. It is actually a conversion between numbers to consonant letters. The vowels can be used freely and so you can form words or phrases that correspond to the number that you want to keep in mind. This technique requires from the individual to learn very well the conversion table. This table is a standard one and you don't create it by yourself as you do with the mental images in the previous systems. That's why this method is considered more complex and tricky than the previous ones.

These mnemonic techniques are very efficient and popular. Actually there are plenty of such techniques and variations that can help you improve your memory.

The usual learning style is time consuming and ineffective. I never understood why learning strategies such as the above never introduced to our educational facilities. We have the potential, we know it and we don't use it...

However never is too late to learn and change the learning way. If you found this article useful then please visit my web site where you can find more details about memory improvement.