Category: Memory

Studies find that sex, doorways, social media and the correct supplements can all help boost your memory.

Here are 7 everyday ways to boost your memory.

(Click the links for longer descriptions of the studies.)

1. Tell someone else

Telling someone else a piece of information helps you to remember more, psychological research finds.

People in the study who immediately told others a piece of information could remember more later and they remembered it for longer.

Dr Melanie Sekeres, the study’s lead author, explained:

“This has to be actively replaying or re-generating the information — for example, by telling someone the particulars, as opposed to just simply re-reading the textbook or class notes and studying it again later.”

2. Regular sex

Regular sex is linked to a better memory in women, new research finds.

Other research has also hinted that the same may well be true for men.

The theory is that regular sex helps to grow new brain cells in the region of the brain linked to memory.

The type of memory tested in the study was working memory.

Working memory is our ability to hold and process information in the conscious mind.

It is considered one of the most important aspects of memory.

3. Avoid doorways

When passing through doorways, our brains ‘file’ memories away, making it difficult to recall what we were doing, research finds.

It is as though doorways are unconsciously signalling: “That’s enough of that, now we’ll do something different.”

As a result, active memories are shunted out of consciousness.

If you have previously been blaming this on poor memory, then think again.

4. Post to social media

Posting everyday, personal experiences to social media boosts memory for them, new research finds.

Professor Qi Wang, who led the research, said:

“If people want to remember personal experiences, the best way is to put them online.

Social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and others alike — provide an important outlet for us to recall memories, in the public space, and share with other people.”

5. Omega-3 supplements

Even healthy young people can improve their memory by increasing their omega-3 intake, research finds.

The six-month study showed that omega-3 supplements increased people’s working memory.

Working memory is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.

Better working memory has been linked to improved learning, attention and other vital outcomes.

6. Practice tests

It’s natural for memory to break down under stress.

Except, if you do certain types of learning, even stress cannot hurt memory.

Retrieval practice — the sort where you take practice tests — builds surprisingly robust memories.

Dr Ayanna Thomas, the study’s senior author, said:

“Typically, people under stress are less effective at retrieving information from memory.

We now show for the first time that the right learning strategy, in this case retrieval practice or taking practice tests, results in such strong memory representations that even under high levels of stress, subjects are still able to access their memories.”

7. Pink noise during sleep

Sounds played during sleep can enhance memory and may even benefit sleep, recent research finds.

The sounds, though, need to be in sync with the brain’s natural oscillations to work.

In the study 11 people were played ‘pink noise’ while they slept.

This sounds like gentle hissing that goes up and down — much like the lapping of waves on the beach.

Here is some pink noise to try out.

This exciting activity may boost growth of new brain cells in the region of the brain vital to memory.

Regular sex is linked to a better memory in women, new research finds.

Other research has also hinted that the same may well be true for men.

The theory is that regular sex helps to grow new brain cells in the region of the brain linked to memory.

The type of memory tested in the study was working memory.

Working memory is our ability to hold and process information in the conscious mind.

It is considered one of the most important aspects of memory.

For the new research, 78 young women were asked about their sex lives and given memory tests.

The memory tests involved looking at faces and words to recall them later.

The results showed that women who had more frequent sex had better scores on the memory tests.

The link to sex was particularly strong for remembering words.

The theory is that sex helps to boost neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) in the hippocampus (region of the brain vital to memory.

The study’s authors write:

“Neurogenesis in the hippocampus is higher in those women with a higher frequency of intercourse.

These results suggest sex may indeed have beneficial effects on memory function in healthy young women.

They support the hypothesis that frequency of sex is positively associated with memory scores.”

Sex may boost the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain, which in turn helps the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus.

The physical exertion involved in sex, along with increased blood flow to the brain, could also be important to boosting memory.

Sex and dementia

This is not the first time sex has been linked to brain benefits.

Previous research has also found that men and women in mid- to later life who are more sexually active have a lower risk of dementia (Wright & Jenks, 2016).

Both men and women in that study scored better on word challenges designed to test memory.

The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (Maunder et al., 2017).

How to totally block the effects of stress on your memory.

It’s natural for memory to break down under stress.

It happens to everyone.

Except, if you do certain types of learning, even stress cannot hurt memory, according to new research.

Retrieval practice — the sort where you take practice tests — builds surprisingly robust memories.

Dr Ayanna Thomas, the study’s senior author, said:

“Typically, people under stress are less effective at retrieving information from memory.

We now show for the first time that the right learning strategy, in this case retrieval practice or taking practice tests, results in such strong memory representations that even under high levels of stress, subjects are still able to access their memories.”

The researchers compared taking practice tests with the most common way of trying to learn: by reading and re-reading the material.

Those who learned by retrieval practice remembered over 50% more than those who just reread the material.

Ms Amy Smith, the study’s first author, siad:

“Our results suggest that it is not necessarily a matter of how much or how long someone studies, but how they study.

Even though previous research has shown that retrieval practice is one of the best learning strategies available, we were still surprised at how effective it was for individuals under stress.

It was as if stress had no effect on their memory.

Learning by taking tests and being forced to retrieve information over and over has a strong effect on long-term memory retention, and appears to continue to have great benefits in high-stakes, stressful situations.”

Dr Ayanna Thomas, senior study author, said:

“Our one study is certainly not the final say on how retrieval practice influences memory under stress, but I can see this being applicable to any individual who has to retrieve complex information under high stakes.

Especially for educators, where big exams can put a great deal of pressure on students, I really encourage employing more frequent more low-stakes testing in context of their instruction.”

The study was published in Science (Smith et al., 2016).

Memory test image from Shutterstock

Young people are the most pessimistic, on average, with people’s negative thinking reducing as they get older.

Working memory plays an important role in how people cope with negative events in life.

Working memory is our ability to process information in the conscious mind.

For example, if I give you a series of 10 numbers and then ask you to add up the second and fourth one, you are using your working memory.

Our working memories can also be used to refocus our minds away from negative thinking.

Dr. Tracy Alloway, the study’s first author, said:

“There is a growing body of research supporting the role of working memory in emotional regulation.

We know that those with clinical depression have difficulties in suppressing irrelevant negative information, while those with high working memory are able to ignore negative emotions.

But we wanted to investigate whether you see a similar pattern in healthy adults across the lifespan.”

Testing of over 2,000 people revealed a number of interesting findings:

• The young are the most pessimistic and people get more optimistic as they get older.
• The more pessimistic people were, the more prone they were to depression.
• Working memory can help refocus the mind from depressing thoughts.

Negative events tend to attract our attention more than positive ones, because it helps us survive.

Of course, it is easy for this bias towards negative thinking to go too far and send us into a spiral of depression.

Dr Alloway said:

“Human behavior is goal-directed and when we face an impediment to achieving a goal, we can respond with either a pessimistic outlook or an optimistic one.

A strong working memory can counter a pessimistic outlook.

This is good news, especially for younger individuals (teens and those in their 20s), who had higher pessimism scores compared to their older peers.”

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, (Alloway & Horton, 2016).

Study tested which sex has a better memory for events, words, faces and meanings.

Women may well have a better memory than men, new research concludes.

Certainly middle-aged women outperformed men of a similar age on all tests of memory, in a new study.

The results come from a study of 212 men and women aged between 45 and 55.

It tested all different types of memory including memory for:

• events
• meanings
• words
• and faces

Women showed they had a better memory on all measures.

The results should not come as a shock to men, who apparently know their memory is worse, on average, than women.

Here’s how I described a previous study on the subject of women having a better memory:

“…men, on average, think they are more forgetful than women.

In the study, people were asked nine questions about how good they think their memory is.

The questions asked included:

• Whether they had problems remembering names and dates.
• How good they were at remembering details of conversations.
• If they could remember what they were doing one year ago.

For eight of the nine questions men reported more problems with their memory.”

Menopause and memory

The researchers also looked at the effect of the menopause on memory.

They found that after menopause, women’s memory declined.

Lower levels of estradiol, the primary female sex hormone, were linked to lower levels of performance on the memory tests.

This is probably why women often report a ‘brain fog’ descends over them when going through the menopause.

On top of this, women are at a higher risk of dementia and memory problems than men.

Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, the executive director of the The North American Menopause Society, commenting on the study, said:

“Brain fog and complaints of memory issues should be taken seriously.

This study and others have shown that these complaints are associated with memory deficits.”

The study was published in the journal Menopause (Rentz et al., 2016).

Our sense of self is tightly bound up with how and what we remember.

Posting everyday, personal experiences to social media boosts memory for them, new research finds.

Professor Qi Wang, who led the research, said:

“If people want to remember personal experiences, the best way is to put them online.

Social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and others alike — provide an important outlet for us to recall memories, in the public space, and share with other people.”

Just by posting on social media we are constructing our past and ourselves in a particular way.

The study’s authors write:

“The process of writing about one’s experiences in the public sphere, often sustained by subsequent social feedback, may allow people to reflect on the experiences and their personal relevance.”

For the study, participants were asked to keep a diary for a week describing their daily routines.

For each item they rated its importance to them and whether they had posted about it on social media.

After a week they were given a surprise quiz on the number of events they could remember.

The results showed that posting an event on social media made it easier to recall later.

It didn’t matter how important the events were: even relatively insignificant things were better recalled if posted online.

Professor Wang said:

“We create a sense of self in the process of recalling, evaluating and sharing with others memories of personal experiences in our lives.

That’s happening when we use social media, without us even noticing it.

We just think, ‘Oh, I’m sharing my experience with my friends.’

But by shaping the way we remember our experiences, it’s also shaping who we are.”

The study was published in the journal Memory (Wang et al., 2016).

Men had better memory for a woman’s hobbies, education, age, job — even her name — when she had this body shape.

Women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 are most memorable to men, new research finds.

Men remembered the most number of details about women who had this curvy shape.

They were better at recalling her hobbies, education, age, job — even her name!

The study’s authors write:

“Many studies have shown that a female’s waist to hip ratio influences men’s perceptions of her attractiveness.

However, our studies provide the first evidence to our knowledge that an attractive waist to hip ratio leads men to have superior overall memory for her appearance and biographical background.”

In the US and Europe a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 is considered, on average, the most attractive shape.

Examples of women with this ratio include both Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss.

For the research 218 men took part in two studies.

They were shown pictures of one women whose waist-to-hip ratio was digitally manipulated to increase and lower it.

They were also presented with biographical information about her.

Across the two studies, men could recall more information about the woman when her waist-to-hip ratio was between 0.6 and 0.8.

The evolutionary explanation for why this ratio is attractive is that it signals high ‘reproductive potential’.

The study’s authors write:

“It has been theorized that human memory evolved to serve our survival and reproductive goals.

Attractive target cues, in particular, may trigger superior episodic processing in perceivers because they can signal the quality of the target’s genes or reproductive potential.

Indeed, an attractive female face and waist to hip ratio appear to stimulate brain regions in males linked to the processing of rewarding stimuli.

Our results are consistent with previous research showing that the perceivers’ memory may be superior for information of greater adaptive value to them.

However, our findings extend this research by showing that males’ enhanced memory extends beyond the specific cue of high adaptive value to other cues of potentially adaptive value that are also linked to the female target who possesses the desirable waist to hip ratio.”

The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (Fitzgerald et al., 2016).

Psychological exercises can help to improve this beneficial outlook.

Being optimistic about the future is linked to fewer memory problems and better problem solving and judgement.

The new research on people aged over 65 is the latest scientific endorsement of an optimistic outlook.

Optimism has already been linked to eating better and exercising more.

People who are more optimistic are also less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.

One way to increase optimism is to try writing about your ‘best possible self’.

This exercise has been shown to increase optimism.

The conclusions come from a national survey by the US National Institute of Aging.

Ms Katerina Gawronski, the study’s first author, said:

“We felt like this was an important topic to investigate and to our knowledge, it’s the first study to examine the link between optimism and cognitive impairment in older adults.

We found that optimism was indeed associated with better cognitive health over time.”

Mr Eric Kim, the study’s co-author, said:

“Therefore, optimism may be a novel and promising target for prevention and intervention strategies aimed at improving cognitive health,”

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Gawronski et al., 2016).

Image credit: annamo

Exercise does more than just boost mood.

Long-term memory is boosted by exercise four hours after learning, a new study finds.

Exercising directly after learning, though, provides no boost to memory whatsoever.

The study split people into three groups, all of whom learnt a series of picture-location associations.

One carried out exercise just after learning, another four hours later and the final group did no exercise.

The exercise involved 35 minutes of interval training on an exercise bike.

Two days after learning they returned to the lab to see how much they could remember — and to have their brains scanned.

It was those who had exercised four hours after learning who displayed the best recall.

In addition, brain scans revealed that exercise lead to more precise representations of memories in the hippocampus.

The authors write:

“Our results suggest that appropriately timed physical exercise can improve long-term memory and highlight the potential of exercise as an intervention in educational and clinical settings.”

The scientists are not sure yet why exercise after learning boosts memory.

However, they write:

“Considering that the exercise intervention took place after learning, delayed exercise most likely affected memory retention through an impact on memory consolidation.

[…]

…previous research suggests that exercise triggers the release of BDNF, plasticity-related products (PRPs), noradrenaline, and dopamine, among other substances that promote neural plasticity.

Such factors are critical for the consolidation of synaptic potentiation, as proposed in the synaptic tagging and capture (STC) hypothesis, and are also important for later stages of memory consolidation.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology (van Dongen et al., 2016).