The claim and where it comes from
The method of loci, often called the memory palace, is a memory technique more than two thousand years old. You choose a place or route you know well, picture each item you want to remember at one spot along it, and later walk the route in your mind to collect the items in order. Ancient handbooks of rhetoric describe it as a way for speakers to memorise long speeches, and tradition credits it to the Greek poet Simonides [1]. Memory champions use it too: nine of the ten superior memorisers in one brain-imaging study did [2].
The research question is narrower than the reputation: what does the method help people remember, how much, after how much practice, and for how long? This review covers the meta-analyses, a classic experiment, the main training study, the research on memory champions and the studies in older adults. To learn the technique itself, see the method of loci guide; for where it fits among other study techniques, see How to improve memory for studying.
What the studies measured
Most of this research shares one design, and that design shapes what the results can tell you. A 2025 systematic review found that the experiments in younger adults were mostly done with undergraduates at European and American universities (weighted mean age about 21), and that most asked people to learn lists of concrete words, most of them 10 to 30 words long, and to recall them straight away [1]. A minority used texts or course material instead [1].
Recall was scored in two ways: serial recall, where a word counts only in its correct position, and free recall, where any order counts. The method was compared with rote rehearsal (repeating the items), with learning without any instructed strategy, or with another memory technique [1].
So the core evidence is about one thing: remembering a list, soon after learning it, when you have been told to use the method.
What they found, and in whom
Two meta-analyses
A 2021 meta-analysis pooled 13 randomised controlled trials, mostly run in university settings [3]. The method of loci improved recall with a medium effect (g = 0.65, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.85), and the estimate stayed at a similar level in analyses that adjusted for publication bias, outliers and the type of control condition [3]. The authors also found a high risk of bias: the vast majority of trials did not report how they generated the random sequence or concealed group allocation [3].
A 2025 systematic review went further, analysing younger and older adults separately [1]. Pooling about 3,000 adults aged 17 to 88, it found a large effect on immediate serial recall compared with rehearsal (d = 0.88, 95% CI 0.47 to 1.25); for younger adults the estimate was medium (d = 0.75) [1]. The same analysis found very high heterogeneity and strong evidence of publication bias. Two corrections for small-study effects disagreed: one reduced the pooled effect to almost nothing (d = 0.04), the other gave an implausibly large estimate [1]. The author rated the certainty of the evidence as low to very low, mainly because of risk of bias, and concluded that the method is a powerful aid to recall but that more rigorous studies are needed [1].
The two reviews agree on the direction: when adults use the method on a list, they recall more of it, and more of it in order, than when they rehearse. They disagree on how sure we can be about the size.
A classic experiment: the method helps most with order
In a 1980 experiment with 150 undergraduates, groups were taught one of four techniques (imagery, linking images, a peg system or the method of loci) and compared with a control group on 20-word lists [4]. All technique groups recalled more words than controls when order did not matter. The biggest differences appeared when a word counted only in its correct position: there, the peg and loci groups did best on an immediate test [4]. The author concluded that memory techniques affect the order of recall more than the number of words recalled [4].
The six-week training study
The main training study, and the one LaserMind's method page cites, was published in 2017 [5]. It recruited 51 men, students at universities in Munich with an average age of 24 and no experience of memory techniques, and assigned them to three groups [5]:
- Method-of-loci training: a two-hour introduction, then 30 minutes a day for 40 days on a web-based platform at home, with one supervised session in the lab each week.
- Working-memory training (active control): a demanding, adaptive dual n-back task on the same schedule.
- No training (passive control).
Before and after the six weeks, everyone learned a list of 72 concrete nouns (a new list each time) and wrote down as many as they could remember 20 minutes and 24 hours later, scored without regard to order; after training, the loci group was asked to use the method [5]. The loci group improved significantly more than both control groups, which did not differ from each other [5]. Four months later, participants learned their first list again and recalled it after 15 minutes, and the loci group's advantage was still there; five of the 51 did not attend this follow-up [5].
Four details limit what this one study can show:
- Who took part. Only young men, recruited among students; 17 of them did the method-of-loci training [5].
- How the groups were formed. Assignment was "pseudo-random": baseline reasoning and memory scores were used to make the groups start out similar [5]. The 2025 review classed the study as a non-randomised trial [1].
- What was tested. Word lists, with the trained group using its technique. The study shows that novices can learn to apply the method well; it did not include tests of other kinds of memory or of memory in daily life.
- The dose. The gains came after about 20 hours of practice, not after a single lesson [5].
The study also scanned participants' brains. After training, the loci group's patterns of functional connectivity became more like those of memory athletes, and the closer the resemblance, the larger the memory gain [5]. That is a finding about brain activity, which we cover in What is neuroplasticity?. It is background, not separate evidence that the method works.
Memory champions: strategy, not special brains
A 2003 study compared ten people with superior memory, eight of them high-ranking competitors in the World Memory Championships, with ten matched controls [2]. On tests of general verbal and non-verbal ability, the superior memorisers scored in the high-average range, like the controls, and structural MRI showed no differences between the groups [2]. They did score higher on verbal memory tests similar to those used in memory competitions [2]. Nine of the ten said they used the method of loci for some or all of the tasks, and they had practised memory techniques for about 11 years on average [2]. While learning, they engaged brain regions involved in spatial memory, including the right posterior hippocampus, more than the controls did [2].
The 2017 study gives a sense of what that practice achieves: 17 of its 23 memory athletes recalled on average 70.8 of 72 words after 20 minutes, against 39.9 for matched controls [5].
Both studies are small, and comparing groups at one point in time cannot show what caused the difference. The 2003 authors called for studies of people newly taught the method [2]; the training study above is one.
Older adults
Older adults benefit from the method too, but this research also shows how easily it is dropped. The 2025 review found that strong instructions, extended practice and explicit prompts improved older adults' recall with the method, but that older learners tended not to use it of their own accord and often chose simpler techniques. In one three-year follow-up described in the review, only one participant was still using it consistently [1].
The ACTIVE trial, a large randomised trial of cognitive training in older adults in the United States, taught the method of loci as one of several memory strategies [6]. Participants learning it were told to skip a word they could not recall and come back to it, which left gaps on the answer sheet of a later word-list test. Over five years, about a quarter of the 703 memory-trained participants left such gaps, while fewer than 2% of the 698 controls did so at any one visit [6]. Those who did had improved more after training than other memory-trained participants (d = 0.84) [6]. Two cautions apply. Nobody was assigned to use the strategy, and those who did were younger and better educated than the other memory-trained participants. And the authors note that skipped lines are neither a sensitive nor a specific sign of the method [6].
In the trial as a whole, only 26% of memory-trained participants showed a reliable improvement in memory right after training, while 74% of reasoning-trained and 87% of speed-trained participants improved reliably in the abilities they had trained [7]. At ten years, memory training no longer had an effect on memory performance [8].
Looking at memory techniques in general, not only the method of loci, a meta-analysis of 21 randomised trials in healthy adults aged 50 and over found gains in episodic memory (g = 0.41 after training and 0.42 at follow-up, a median of four months later) [9]. The authors recommended that future studies measure more real-world outcomes [9].
Conflicting evidence and open questions
- How big is the effect? The 2021 meta-analysis found its estimate robust to publication bias [3]. The larger 2025 review found strong evidence of publication bias, and its corrected estimates ranged from almost nothing to implausibly large [1].
- Lists, not learning. Most studies tested lists of words recalled soon after learning [1]. A minority tested texts or course material, and very few looked at memory in daily life [9]. A review of training research in older adults found that strategy training, such as the method of loci, often produced large and long-lasting effects on the trained task but only limited evidence of transfer [10].
- Practice and upkeep. The large gains in the training study came after 40 sessions [5]. Older adults often stopped using the method [1], and in ACTIVE the memory-training effect had gone by ten years [8].
- Who was studied. Mostly undergraduates in Europe and North America [1]; the training study included only young men [5].
What the research says
What this means at LaserMind
We grade the method of loci E1 (strong evidence) for remembering ordered lists. The grade covers that one outcome: across many experiments and two meta-analyses, the method improved recall of studied lists, especially in order. It does not mean the size of the benefit is settled, since both meta-analyses found a high risk of bias, and it is not a grade for everyday memory or for memory in general. How we review evidence explains the grades.
LaserMind's Memory Palace walks you through the method. You choose a route: one of three ready-made ones (your home, a route over your own body from feet to head, or a classroom or office, with ten stops each), or your own route of 5 to 20 places, which is saved only on your device. Then you practise with up to ten random, easy-to-picture words, or type in your own list. At each stop the tool shows the place and the item, with an optional box to describe your image (it is not saved) and a tip: make the image big, moving, odd or funny, and make it touch the place. Finally you walk the route in your mind and type what is at each stop. The score counts the items you put at the right stop.
The immediate score is the easy part. You can also choose to be tested on the same list again from the next day, which shows how much of it stuck. This is practice, not a memory test, and nothing is ranked: the tool shows your score and, if you take the next-day test, the two results side by side.
Try it on LaserMind
▶ Memory Palace BuilderPut ten items on a route you know, walk it in your mind, then take the next-day test.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to learn? You can start with a short introduction: in the classic 1980 experiment, undergraduates taught the method of loci were among the best at recalling 20-word lists in order on an immediate test [4]. Using it well takes longer. In the training study, novices practised for 40 sessions of 30 minutes [5], and the memory champions in the 2003 study had used memory techniques for about 11 years on average [2].
Can I use a memory palace for exams? It suits material that comes as an ordered list, such as the steps of a procedure or the points of an answer. Most research tested word lists rather than understanding [1], so combine it with testing yourself on the ideas, as our study guide explains.
Will it improve my memory in general? Research has not shown that. The memory champions in one study did not stand out on tests of general ability [2], and reviews of strategy training find large effects on the trained task but limited transfer beyond it [10]. Practising memory palaces makes you better at using memory palaces.
What the research says
Last evidence check 2026-10-17Across trials, adults who used the method of loci recalled more of a word list, especially in the right order, than people who simply rehearsed the words. Both meta-analyses rated the risk of bias as high, so the size of the benefit is uncertain. Trained & similar tasks [3][1]
In a six-week training study of 51 young men, assigned by matching rather than at random, those new to the method who practised it daily recalled significantly more words from a list than two control groups, and the gain was still there four months later. Trained & similar tasks [5]
References
- Ondřej, J. (2025). The method of loci in the context of psychological research: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 116(4), 930–986. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12799
- Maguire, E. A., Valentine, E. R., Wilding, J. M., & Kapur, N. (2003). Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience, 6(1), 90–95. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn988
- Twomey, C., & Kroneisen, M. (2021). The effectiveness of the loci method as a mnemonic device: Meta-analysis. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(8), 1317–1326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021821993457
- Roediger, H. L. (1980). The effectiveness of four mnemonics in ordering recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6(5), 558–567. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.6.5.558
- Dresler, M., Shirer, W. R., Konrad, B. N., et al. (2017). Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory. Neuron, 93(5), 1227–1235.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.003
- Gross, A. L., Brandt, J., Bandeen-Roche, K., Carlson, M. C., Stuart, E. A., Marsiske, M., & Rebok, G. W. (2014). Do Older Adults Use the Method of Loci? Results From the ACTIVE Study. Experimental Aging Research, 40(2), 140–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361073x.2014.882204
- Ball, K., Berch, D. B., Helmers, K. F., et al. (2002). Effects of cognitive training interventions with older adults: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 288(18), 2271–2281. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.288.18.2271
- Rebok, G. W., Ball, K., Guey, L. T., et al. (2014). Ten-year effects of the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly cognitive training trial on cognition and everyday functioning in older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 62(1), 16–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.12607
- Chen, S., Cai, Z., Hou, J., Lang, M., Zheng, Z., Zhu, X., & Li, J. (2022). Long-term effects of mnemonic training in healthy older adults: A meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 37(8), 954–971. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000712
- Lustig, C., Shah, P., Seidler, R., & Reuter-Lorenz, P. A. (2009). Aging, Training, and the Brain: A Review and Future Directions. Neuropsychology Review, 19(4), 504–522. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-009-9119-9