quote:
Originally posted by bhenry:
AlexK, right now I am studying the skull which has so many bones with complicated names, such as the parietal bone, lambdoid suture, zygomatic process, mandibular ramus, maxilla, lacrimal fossa, olfactory foramina and much much more. It is hard to create word patterns and associations with such weird names. Any suggstions? What method of studying would you suggest? I am expected to know all of this for an upcoming test. I really appreciate any help.

Well my approach would be.

parietal bone - parrot bone or paris-tail-bone I'd draw an image of either of those critters and draw the connector line to that particular bone on the head. (along with the correct name) I'm using the image word play to trigger the recall of the word. If I see the diagram of a head I would expect either the image or the word to come back to mind to help me write the correct word.

lambdoid suture - lamb-droid...would you trust a robotic lamb to suit ya? Do you look better in checks or poka dots? Perhaps dots you can connect them to the medical aspect.

zygomatic process - why go (auto)matic; for process I come up with a princess dress and acting like a pro basketball player.

mandibular ramus - man-did-your (ram) ram-us - image of me asking someone if it was their ram that butted me and left me splat.

maxilla - Max the gorilla.

lacrimal fossa - la-criminal force. (a dandy looking group of crims trying to force their way into jail)

olfactory foramina - (an) old - factory for me? (I'd have preferred flowers, kick a stone at it and watch it fall down.)

I'd be drawing some sort of diagram or image for these words because somehow that would create an additional link in my mind and naturally they would have to be linked to the real thing too. On a mind map with an image of the skull the location of each diagram will help trigger the recall of the correct name of the bone.

Yes it might seem to take a lot of work to prepare but after the first round (where you create it) you are more than likely to discover that 80% of it is already etched in your memory and a quick 1 to 2 minute review every day for a week will keep it fresh.

I used this technique poorly when I first needed to remember some anatomy for a test (1 weeks notice). It wasn't a major goal in my life and the course wasn't important to my career so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. Couple of days before I created some memory links and then just reviewed (looked at the diagram I drew with the correct terms and remembered the associations I made for those terms. Doing it again I would draw some sort of image to help trigger the associations.

In all work it in chunks. Top middle bottom etc.

Alex