How It Works

TIPS TO MAKE A GREAT MIMAGE

  • Be outrageous – the crazier the better, exaggerate things, make it a little gross or dreamlike or surreal even*
  • Make it dynamic – have the elements in your image doing something active and bizarre
  • Make a story – if you have multiple things going on have the images tell a story (again, make it strange, something unforgettable)
  • Use famous people and landmarks and events (for your Mimages you should try to use imagery everyone or most people would know… but you can always say, “I used my grandfather for this image, so you guys gotta change this one to something else)
  • Try to use the sound of things to make connections to images (E.g. Pavlov might be a Padlock, or something)
  • Personify it: Don’t just make Pavlov a Padlock, make him a Padlock with arms and legs, like a “Padlock Man” (this allows him to do more things and be more dynamic in your images)
  • Use different parts of the body or building to signify different things (For instance, when studying neuroanatomy and the Internal Capsule, you might use an ICU to represent the Internal Capsule (images don’t always have to sound like the thing, but they must link in your mind). The Internal Capsule has different things going on in different parts… so you can use the ceiling, the floor, the walls, the roof, the basement of the ICU. For a person you can use their head, hands, stomach, mouth, ears, heart, rear-end lol, or anything.
  • Don’t be afraid to change your Mimage. Also, sometimes your fellow users will have better Mimages for you to use! Take them and use them!
  • Don’t be afraid if some Mimages don’t stick, feel free to change until you find one that works for you!

*We do not allow overly sexual, excessively violent, or anything racial/ethnic for our images. We ask our users to flag and downvote such content.

HOW TO STUDY?

  • Review the Mimages you like
  • Go over them in your head, maybe even sketch them out yourself
  • Feel free to print them out, or to screenshot them
  • Review them like any other material – but make sure you are really seeing the images in your mind
  • Then try to test your yourself
  • You’ll find there are certain things where you forget the Mimages, just come back and review them – it’s normal
  • Be willing to change the images until you find something that works
  • Above all, get ready to be amazed how fast you learn and how much you keep in long-term memory
  • We find, if you want to remember things super long term, review the material every month or every other month

WHAT ABOUT OTHER STUDY METHODS?

We will be adding something like Spaced Repetition in the future, but you’ll find you can decrease the time it takes with something like Anki considerably by using mimages.

Again, ycan always use other memory methods (mnemonics, text and image flashcards, etc.) as well. Usually a combination of things works best, but I think you’ll find Mimaging is by far the most effective. Incorporating them into flashcards can be really powerful, for instance.