I wish I could find the reference, there's an old Roman (Greek? likely older?) rhetorical trick to public speaking.

The speech flows as you invite people to your home, and walk them through it. So, the front door is like the greeting, welcoming guests into your home. The picture in the front room is the first point, the couch is the next point. the dining room table is the next point. etc.

practice the speech by looking at each item you select, and mapping it to the point.

It's pretty amazing.

Everyone knows what their living space is like, and hopefully it's a safe comfortable space. Anyone can talk for a long time without notes. The memory of home is emotionally calming. Inviting listeners in gives a warmth that's hard to explain.

I mean, rehearsing helps a lot too, but mapping talking points to objects in the home is an amazing trick.

Documented in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates

https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.ht...

Yates' book is a scholarly treatment of memory systems. She is an historian who waded into the subject matter, but isn't a mnemonic practitioner. For a practical treatment, see Memory Craft by the science writer and memory champion, Lynne Kelly.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/memory-craft-lynne-kelly/book/9...

I have heard the trick commonly referred to as 'memory palace' or 'method of loci'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

I understand this is the origin for: "In the first place".

A pretty cool technique, I just used this to coach my son for an english oral to great effect.

An interesting theory as to why spatiality helps so much is outlined in Jeff Hawkins' "1000 brain theory" (https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Brains-New-Theory-Intelligen...). His team's research hints that all neocortical processing happens with reference frames at the core.

I get that weird concept/location thing too, and I usually can't figure out the association.

For example, when I hear "Turbo Pascal" I immediately see the intersection of Lawrence Ave. East and Pharmacy Avenue in Toronto from the perspective of a person standing at the northwest corner of the intersection, looking south. I don't think I've ever been there on foot. It's a pretty unspectacular intersection. I'm quite sure I like Turbo Pascal significantly more than I like the intersection, and yet my brain has decided to link them.

Though I think it's an even more general mechanism of association. And places might also be easy to remember because they also contain many elements we can associate. You can call it the connectedness of a memory. You can also try to repeatedly explain to others something you want to remember or whatever.

Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our brains particularly well.

You're probably on to something there. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution for finding food and avoiding predators. At best: a few thousand for managing linguistic skills. (or possibly hundreds of thousands, when it comes to our ancestor's pre-linguistic abilities).

IIRC research in mice has even found grid neurons that are specifically firing for spatial locations, beyond just mere association.

Would love to check that paper, if you find the link.

It most likely would've been on arstechnica.com/science, which usually has links to original papers.

The seemingly “disconnection” between the concept and spatial memory happens to me a lot either in day time or dream. Most of the scenes occurred in my childhood, and I feel my emotions, i.e. happiness, somber, anger, are associated with them, which pop up when those feelings struck.