Mnemonics

When asked to name the facial nerve branches would you go “to zanzibar by motor car”? If so, you've used a mnemonic and probably increased your chances of answering the question correctly. Chibuzo Odigwe and Sarah Davidson explain Among the many uses of mnemonics is the recollection of the branches of the facial nerve (temporal, zygomatic, buccal, mandibular, and cervical), as above. Although modern medical students employ numerous mnemonics, the idea of tying one thing to another to facilitate recollection is not new. The ancient Greeks and Romans had a system of mnemonics, that used the loci et res, method. This combined a familiar structure (locus) and the thing to be remembered (res), allowing information to be remembered in a serial order. 1 The word itself can be traced to Mnemosyne, the Greek personification of memory.1