Whats the underlying concept of the Mind Map?
Buzan: It’s a pleasure to talk with you. If you look at all the research on human memory, it shows that the primary way we remember is by imagination and association. For example, if you imagine your best friend, or a computer, what happens in your mind? You don’t see words, but an array of images. The words trigger the images, but the way we think is in those images and their associations. All the great ancient memory systems were based on this imagistic view. The Greek system of mnemonics, for one, had this concept at its core. If you want to remember a page of notes, for example, words will help to some extent, of course, but more important for fixing them in your memory will be images, pictures, symbols, codes, colors, associations and connections. And the best way to connect images on a page is by using arrows, spacing, size, dimension or whatever symbols work for you. So, for your notes to be memorable, they need to be an image-rich network, and that’s the essence of a Mind Map.
