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Feels hard to believe right now?

Introducing…

In depressive phases it’s hard to keep a positive perspective on life.

MNEMO is a VR based method to keep good memories close — even when you’re hurting.

Enjoy the benefits of one of the oldest memory techniques: The mind palace!

All you need: A bit of time & A VR set!

HOW IT WORKS:

Online Form

Guided by therapy techniques, identify and write down postitve memories that you want to keep available in bad phases.

Mnemo VR App

Build a mind palace in the guided Mnemo VR experience, and anchor your memories inside.

Learn to move through it easily in your mind!

Train and Recall

Refresh your palace with a recall sheet every now and then, and keep your new skill available!

TRY MNEMO (DEMO PROTOTYPE)

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Want to know more first?

Here’s a more detailed run-down:

The Problem

Depression and other mental health conditions limit access to positive memories, even in measurable physical ways in our brain:

The brain stores memories in various layers: The first layer is the most raw, where the actual impressions, sensations, feelings, images and moment-to-moment experience of a memory are stored. All higher layers act like summaries of the first layer, so we can use learnings from memories without completely re-living them every time.

What can happen, is that due to trauma or other kinds of severely negative experiences from our past, our brain learns to fully avoid recalling anything from that first layer, to avoid the potential risk of accidentally also touching on something hard to deal with.

This is a problem, because often we could use these moment-to-moment memories to remember the good things in our lives, that everything does not suck, actually. Since specifically in depression and other mental health conditions, this kind of memory recall is limited, many techniques from psychotherapy try to re-enable access through learning to recall consciously and in detail again.

This is also the point where Mnemo comes in: A study from [year] shows some first interesting results of using the “Mind Palace” technique (also called “Method of Loci”) to re-enable access to positive memories. This is what Mnemo builds on: Enhancing the use of the Method of Loci with VR, and making it more accessible and engaging.

But first, what is the Method of Loci?

Method of Loci is a memory technique, that dates back to ancient greece and is a well established method still used today by the worlds leading memory champions to memorize large lists of items. It works like this:

1. First one picks a mind palace, this usually is a familiar place like the own flat or a childhood home. Any room one can move through in the mind easily.

2. Then a logical route with stops through the space is planned: A walk from room to room or from object to object in order of how they’re placed in the room.

For example, a route could be: Starting in my bedroom, first stop the bed, moving on to the next stop the bedside plant, next stop the window, etc.

3. In the last step then the information one wants to be able to remember is connected to the stops in the route. For that one comes up with connecting images, the more bizarre the better, since the brain remembers weird things more easily.

For example, if i try to remember a shopping list it could be:

At the first stop, the bed, i imagine a gigantic bundle of the spaghetti i have to buy tucked under the blanket. At the next stop i imagine the flowers of the plant replaced with cans of beans, at the next stop the curtains of the window melt into the kecthup i need to get.

It might seem strange at first, but this method is really powerful in keeping things in ones mind effortlessly. It can feel like magic when things one usually has to really concentrate to remember, start feeling like a sequence of images just automatically playing by itself.

More resources on the Method of Loci here.

What Mnemo does

It works like this: First you identify 15 postive memories, that carry some positive truth about yourself, some things that do not feel true or available while you’re doing bad. The web questionnaire for this first step uses some questioning techniques common in systemic psychotherapy, to make you reflect and deepen those memories. The questions make you go onto that deepest memory layer, to recall the images, sensations and actual experience.

Then, in the Mnemo VR app, you’ll be building your own mind palace. It is a virtual space in which you can move and place pre-made rooms and objects to build your own memory journey. This is especially useful for making the Method of Loci more accessible, tangible and engaing, but also helpful to avoid bad associations that familiar rooms that would work for the technique might have for us. The building process is guided, and the available rooms and objects are picked to be bizarre, strange and memorable.

After construction, the memories you identified in step one are brought back in, and they can be placed on your journey, you are guided to come up with connecting images to anchor them inside your palace.

In the last step, you’re back on the website and will recieve a cheat-sheet of your memory palace, that you can use, in case you do need some reminder later. Otherwise, congratulations, you have established the new skill of using your own memory palace to keep positive memories on quick-dial!

For even more detail, read the paper!

Mnemo is a design bachelor project. To learn even more about the theory behind mind palaces, memory and mental health and to look into the documentation of how the process of designing Mnemo looked like, check out the thesis paper!

Life Story

Life Theme

Lifetime Periods

Higher Layers:

Conceptual Self

First Layer:

Episodic Memory

General Events