Mind Mapping Based Human Memory Management
System
ZHANG Yan-lei1, XIAO Shuang-jiu1, YANG Xu-bo1 , DING Lei1
1
Digital Art Lab, Software School, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China
zhangyanlei@sjtu.edu.cn , xsjiu99@cs.sjtu.edu.cn , xubo.yang@gmail.com
Abstract— Mind mapping is an excellent method for aiding
human memory. But it still has some aspect that needs to be
improved. This paper presents a mind mapping based on
human memory management system. Compared with
traditional mind mapping system, this system establishes
relationships between key words in different mind maps, and
combines existing mind maps into a large knowledge net.
Certain suggestions could be automatically provided when a
user edits his mind maps. The knowledge based mind map
could be reviewed in 2D and 3D mode. The structure of the
knowledge net is defined to make memorizing much more
easily.
Key Words: Mind Mapping; Computer Aided Memory;
Knowledge Net
I. Introduction
Mind mapping, which was brought out by English
Scholar Tony Buzan, the chairman of Brain Foundation, is a
method used to generate, visualize, structure and classify
ideas helping human memorizing. A mind map is a diagram
containing key words and pictures. It can show relationships
between all key words at all levels clearly, and it can build
the memory link from the key words to the pictures and
colors. It fully utilizes both the left and right brain, and can
be used as a memory aided tool in any field of study, work
and life.
The elements of a mind map are arranged intuitively
according to the importance of the concepts, and marked by
different colors and pictures. The elements are classified into
groupings, branches or areas, with the goal of representing
semantic or other connections between portions of
information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing
memories.
But there are still some shortcomings of mind mapping
when it is used to help memory. First, mind maps are
isolated lacking of relations between memory knots in
different mind maps. Each mind map are individual, and it
can show only what has been drawn on it. Therefore, ones'
memory will be cut into small pieces. Second, when a user is
creating a mind map, the computer cannot provide any
information about the current key word, even if the key word
has been used before. Third, the method of reviewing
existing mind map systems is limited in 2D. An improved
mind mapping system will be introduced in the following
part.
978-1-4244-5392-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
II. Mind Mapping
A. Mind Mapping can Enhance Memory
By research, below are the main contents which brain
will remember in the learning process.
• The content learned at the beginning period.
• The content learned at the end period.
• The content has relationship to some already known
knowledge or some current learning knowledge.
• The content has been emphasized or highlighted.
• The content has particularly attracted to one of
human facial features.
• The content of user's interest.
Mind mapping can reflect most of the above features,
especially the association and emphasis. The two elements
are main factors of memory. So mind mapping is an
excellent method for aiding human memory.
B. The Advantage of Mind Mapping compared with
Traditional Memory Method
1) Divergent Thinking
In traditional memory method, the information is
recorded line by line, from top to bottom. It seems that the
knowledge is sorted in order. But actually it does not aid
memory at all.
Mind mapping use the divergent form to record
information, the same way as human brain. Your subjective
intention is naturally shown on the map, the key words are
all arranged in space. You can easily remember the whole
map.
Recalling starts with a series of inspirations and goes
further by the connection between them.
2) Key Words
In mind mapping system, important contents are
expressed by key words. But in traditional memory method
these key words hide among a lot of comparatively
unimportant words. Hence it hampers the brain from getting
the associations between the key words.
When you use key words, they force you to think about
what is the point, what kind of relations between them. It
will help you on systematic integration of knowledge rapidly.
Thus, it can create the extremely favorable conditions for
you on knowledge mastery.
3) Colorful Background and Pictures
In traditional memory method, notes contain texts only,
and the color of the text is usually unchanged. These
monotonous notes make the main points looking similar.
You cannot find the key point immediately. In this way, the
brain may come to a hypnotic state, it will reject and
contradict to absorb any information.
Mind mapping uses a lot of images, shapes. It uses
different colors to highlight the key words and the links.
Then, you can connect the key words with the color and
pictures, it also uses your visual sensors to help memorizing.
The brain will become more and more sober, more and more
willing to accept new information.
4) Utilize both left and right brain
Tony Buzzan said that "The traditional method of taking
notes uses only a small part of the brain, because it mainly
uses the logic and the linear model."Traditional memory
method only use three tools of the cortex.
Mind mapping fully utilizes both left and right brain,
using color, image and symbol to make thinking more funny
and memory more easily.
III. The Memory Management System based on Mind
Mapping and Knowledge Net
As mentioned in the previous section, there are still some
shortcomings of mind mapping when it is used to help
memory. The memory management system will be
introduced in this section. The system is based on Mind
Mapping and use the concept of knowledge net to resolve
those shortcomings.
A. System Innovation compared with Traditional Mind
Mapping System
Nowadays, there are many mind mapping systems in the
market. They are just drawing tools for mind map, not very
clear for the memory aiding target. The main goal of the
memory management system is to help human memory.
This system is designed as following:
• Combining two or more existing mind maps into a
new large mind map. The same key words will be
detected, and treated as only one key word. The
related key words from different mind maps will all
be linked to this one. In this way, old and new mind
maps which have overlapping are connected. It is
very important to combine old and new knowledge,
because human always remember new information
based on the existing information. New knowledge
should be integrated into the existing cognitive
memory structures, then it can change the original
cognitive memory structures to assimilate the new
memory.
• Providing related association of the key word if it
has been used before. All related information of the
key words will be stored in the computer. The
information will construct users' own memory
database — knowledge net in another word. The
database will be larger and larger while more and
more mind maps are created. When the user enter
one key word while creating a new mind map, if this
key word has been used before, in other words, this
key word can be found in the knowledge net, the
computer will provide many related associations of
this key word, like the linked picture, the adjacent
key words and so on. Repeated suggestion will
consolidate human memory.
• Providing multiple review methods of mind map
including 2D map browsing and 3D scene touring.
The key word in 2D mind map will be shown as a
house in the 3D scene, and the links between the key
words will be shown as passageways which can
connected with those houses. Users can walk
through the passageways freely; wander from one
house to another; walk through the whole mind map
if there is a path. It is human nature that human will
remember things much better if he contacts with
multiple senses: For the same story, compared with
reading books, you can remember more by watching
movies. Multiple senses will be used to review mind
map in 3D mode, while only visual sense is used in
2D mode. As a result, 3D mind map brings a much
better effect for human to memorize things.
B. System Architecture
The system provides a platform for user to use mind map.
User can take basic operations like creating and editing mind
map, inserting pictures, using different colors to highlight the
key words, and so on. Besides the basic operations, the
system can combine two or more mind maps; users can
review the mind map in 3D mode and get the suggestion
automatically.
The system applys the concept of knowledge net to
construct personal memory database, so it can provide much
information which traditional mind mapping cannot give.
Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of the system.
Figure 1. System Architecture

C. System Design
The amount of information people received every day is
quite huge. One single mind map can onle record a very
small part of it and there must have some information
overlapping between different mind maps. So it is definitely
not enough to save the single mind map only. The data
storage of the system is divided into two parts: individual
mind map files and the large personal knowledge net.
1) Personal Knowledge Net
The knowledge representation of mind mapping is key
words and the connection between them. The record of the
key words and their connection is the record of the mind map,
and it is the record of person's memory.
The personal knowledge net is used to store the entire
information which user entered. It composes of two parts:
key word library and multimedia library. The key word
library stores all key words and the connections in all mind
maps user created. The multimedia library stores all
multimedia related to all mind maps, like pictures, videos
and so on.
Personal knowledge net is the raw database. It stores
massive data and provides the basic information for the
individual mind map files. So the data structure in personal
knowledge net is the simpler the better. Below Figure 2 and
Figure 3 shows the data structure.
Figure 2 Data Structure of Key Word
Figure 3 Data Structure of Multimedia
In the system, key words in different mind maps will be
treated as the same if the key word contents are the same. So
when user created a new mind map, the system will detected
in the key word library whether the key word already exists.
If the key word isn't in the library, the system will create a
new one; if the key word already exists, the system just
needs to modify the related key word part, appending the
related key word ID. In this way, the knowledge net is
updated.
It takes longer time to compare two strings than two
integers. That's why system hashes the keywords into an
integer. The system just needs to compare the hash code to
detect whether the key word already existed in the library.
2) Individual Mind Map Files
The focus of individual Files is to store the details of
each mind map. It does not need to store the information of
every key words, these basic information can be found in the
key word library.
Besides the key word and their connection, the outward
appearance of each mind map is also very important.
Background color, text color, line color and variety pictures
can provoke human brain and help memorizing things. The
information cannot be ignored, this information will be
stored in the individual mind map files. Below, Figure 4
shows the data structure.
Figure 4 Data Structure of Individual Mind Map File
D. Implementation of the Innovation Functions
Combining different mind maps: Each single mind map
file is stored in the memory database. When combining the
mind maps, system compares the key words' ID, then link all
the connected key words to the same one, then the new large
mind map is created.
3D scene touring: The 3D scene is rendered by OGRE,
and the information all provided by the memory database.
When you review one key word, the key words content, the
multimedia related to the key words, the connected key
words, all this information can be found in the database.
Certain suggestion: All relationships of the key words are
stored in the key word library. When you create a new mind
map, if the key word you entered already exists in the key
word library, the system can read all the information about
this key word and provide you the related key words.

IV. Conclusion
The paper presents a new way to manage data of mind
map. The memory management system uses mind mapping
to enhance human memory and uses knowledge net to
construct its memory database. Many derivative functions
can be implemented by using the database. These functions
make the system more useful on aiding human memory.

References
[1] T. Buzan, “The Mind Map Book”, The Writers Publishing House,
Beijing, 2009. (in Chinese)
[2] T. Buzan, “How to Mind Map”, Foreign Language Teaching and
Research Press, Beijing, 2005.
[3] Yu-Tien Cheng, Huan-Ming Chuang, Chan-Chao Wen, “A Study on
Applying Mind Mapping to Build a Knowledge Map of the Project
Risk Management of Research and Development”, 2009 Fourth
International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and
Control, pp. 30-33.
[4] S. Li, C. Huanhuan, “Research Development of Knowledge Map at
Home and Abroad”, Library Journal, Vol 27. No.8, 2008, pp. 13-17.
[5] J. Girratano, G. Riley, “Expert Systems: Principles and
Programming” Fourth Edition, Course Technology, 2004.
[6] M. Hopfner, D. Siepel, “Visualizing Rules and Reasoning About
Rules”, Technical Report, Department of Computer Science,
University of Wurzburg, July, 2005.
[7] C. Grabowik, R. Knosala, “The method of knowledge representation
for a CAPP system”, Journal of Materials Processing Technology,
133. 2003. pp. 90-98.
[8] T. Heinis and C. Pautasso. Automatic configuration ofan autonomic
controller: An experimental study withzero-configuration policies. 5th
Intl Conf on Aut Comp, pages 67–76, 2008.
[9] A. Gepperth, J. Fritsch, and C. Goerick. Cross-module learning as a
first step towards a cognitive system concept. 1st Intl Conf on
Cognitive Systems, 2008.
[10] G. Tesauro, N. Jong, R. Das, and M. Bennani. A hybrid
reinforcement learning approach to autonomic resource allocation.
3rd Intl Conf on Aut Comp, pages 65–73, 2006.