Most information that we try to remember usually comes through only two of our five senses, vision and hearing. Interestingly, the memories we make for this information is generally stored in two separate parts of our brain. We tend to store verbal memories from the information that we heard in the left side of the brain. We tend to store visual memories from the information that we saw in the right side of the brain. One way that we can help our memory is by using both sides of our brain during memory tasks.
We can help our verbal memory by taking the information that we hear and creating pictures in our mind of the information. For instance, you might be told three items you need to buy in the store. While trying to remember the words, you can imagine what those three items look like while sitting in your shopping cart. In this way you both have verbal memories from when you heard the items told to you and visual memories from imagining yourself with those items in your cart. Similarly, you can bolster your visual memory with your verbal memory. For instance, you could try to remember where you parked your car at a store and at the same time you were visually looking at the parking spot, you could also verbally describe to yourself where you were parked. In this example, you might look at the spot while telling yourself, “I am parked by the red pole, two spaces from the large concrete block.” Your sight would provide the visual memory and the words would add the verbal memory. In these ways, both sides of your brain can be involved in helping you to remember information. The more places you have information stored in your brain, the more easily you can later access that information.
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