Your daily task lived in, a holiday home, a school
These first crosses will
Discovering lost memories
The nature of memory means
that we can easily get stuck in
repetitive habits of recall. This
means we often have difficulty
thinking beyond a small subset
of our memories. However, it is
possible to exploit the spatial
organisation of our long-term
minds to unlock memories
that haven’t been visited in
years, which can be a thrilling
experience. Here’s how:
1 Think of a familiar place that you
haven’t visited for a long time. It
could be a house that you once
Draw
your map.
or even a whole city.
2 In the space below, draw a
rough aerial plan of the place you
are mentally revisiting. If it’s a
house, you might want to do this
for each floor. Your map doesn’t
have to be perfect – it just needs
to give a rough overview of the
various buildings or rooms.
3 Once you have drawn your map,
rack your brains for everything
you can think of that has
happened at that location. Put a
cross at all of the points where
an event took place. You should
find a smattering of crosses are
clustered in various places across
probably represent relatively
well-practiced memories.
4 Now look at where there are
gaps on your diagram, where
there are no memories that jump
immediately to mind. Imagine
yourself standing at that point
in space and looking around the
area. Hold yourself there, ears
pricked for the distant squeak
of a buried memory. With a little
luck, by searching around these
neglected “spaces” in your mind,
you should be able to stumble
upon something that you haven’t
touched in ages. Such memories
are often unusually emotional.