Mnemonic games |
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Dreaming and dreamsDreaming, whatever this may be or whatever is taking place during REM sleeping periods, is likely to perform an essential function as otherwise the brain would not be paralysing the body to enable dreaming to take place. Important also because it takes place regularly as a matter of routine and as all individuals are normally subject to this procedure. In other words, there must be an important reason for sleeping in this way and for dreaming. CONTENT OF DREAMSThe content of an individual`s dreams normally corresponds with that individual`s language and memories, beliefs and culture, depends on an individual`s day-to-day life, experiences, preoccupations, likes and dislikes. But at times dreams seem to originate from an unknown apparently internal source which has been given labels such as the `unconscious` or the `subconscious`. Occasionally dreams contain information beyond the experience, knowledge or understanding of the dreamer. The dreams of the blind do not include sights or scenes but include noises, the sense of contact and emotional experiences. Lavie found that there were only single eye movements during their nonpictorial dream sleep. The longer they had been blind, the sparser the eye movements of blind people and so Lavie showed that grouped eye movements indicate dream pictures. {10} Lavie records that early-REM-period dreams deal with the present, and in most cases lack story or central character. But "dream reports made in the early hours of the morning are richer in detail, central characters, and feelings, and, compared with dreams from the first half of the night, they tend to deal more with the dreamer`s early childhood". First dreams are not remembered in the morning but last dreams are, and it is these last dreams which the psychiatrist is most likely to hear. Dreams may deal with what happened during the day which has just passed, or are about what took place more than a week ago, but do not as a rule deal with the events of the seven days or so which come in between. This gap seems to show that two kinds of memory are involved, a short-term working memory and a more permanent long-term memory, and that it may take a week or so before at least some of the information which reached the working memory is processed and stored in the long-term memory. ROLE OF DREAMSAccording to Jouvet "dreams arise from bursts of activity in biologically ancient parts of the brain, and both animals and humans get up and act out their dreams when the brain centres responsible for inhibiting movements during sleep are incapacitated". Theta rhythms have been observed not only in REM sleep periods in humans but also in animals when performing activities such as hunting on which survival depends. "Instincts are an innate form of behaviour - in other words, patterns of motor behaviour which are not learned but stamped on the nervous system before birth. The behavioral patterns of numerous species which involve attack, defense, or copulation are instinctive, and the animal performs these actions from birth, without being trained to do so." {10}
Major Memeory SystemThe major system, or phonetic mnemonic is one of the most powerful memory systems. The system works by converting number sequences into nouns, nouns into images, and linking images into sequences. These sequences can be very complex and detailed. This system takes more time to master than the others. Digit Consonant sounds hints
Each digit is represented by one family of consonant sounds. Some sounds are not used: `w`, `h`, and `y` (remember as `why`). Vowels do not carry any meaning, so that they can be used as `fillers` when composing words. At the first level we code each number into a short noun. This is made up of the consonant coding for the number, and vowels that turn the consonant into a word. Some examples are shown below:
You can use these words in association much like the other peg technique memory words. Moving to the second levelSimilar rules apply to creating a standard word from two numbers. It is best not to try to use a single number word as a root, as this can confuse the image. Write down the numbers 01 to 99, and apply the rules to create memory words for yourself. A few examples are shown below: Taking the Major System Further Just using double number words may be enough to make this a sufficiently powerful mnemonic for you. Alternatively you may decide to use triple number words, using the same construction rules as double number words. Examples are: Using Words to Remember Long Numbers Once you have come up with words and images to link to your numbers, you can start to apply the technique to remember, for example, long numbers. A good way of doing this is to associate Major System words with stops on a journey (see 7.1.5). Example: The number Pi is 3.14159265359 (to 11 decimal places). Using the major system and the journey system (see example) together, I can remember this as:
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