Category: Memory

Men with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were more likely to have a history of this infection.

Candida yeast infections are linked to serious mental health problems, new research finds.

Men with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were more likely to have a history of infection.

Women with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who also had a Candida infection were more likely to have poorer memory.

Dr Emily Severance, the study’s first author, said:

“It’s far too early to single out Candida infection as a cause of mental illness or vice versa.

However, most Candida infections can be treated in their early stages, and clinicians should make it a point to look out for these infections in their patients with mental illness.”

Nevertheless, the study suggests there are critical links between psychiatric disorders, memory problems and yeast infections.

Candida infections can be tackled by washing properly, lowering sugar intake and avoiding unnecessary antibiotics.

Candida albicans is a fungus which naturally occurs in the human digestive tract.

It can cause rashes as well as sexually transmittable yeast infections.

Dr Severance said:

“Although we cannot demonstrate a direct link between Candida infection and physiological brain processes, our data show that some factor associated with Candida infection, and possibly the organism itself, plays a role in affecting the memory of women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and this is an avenue that needs to be further explored.

Because Candida is a natural component of the human body microbiome, yeast overgrowth or infection in the digestive tract, for example, may disrupt the gut-brain axis.

This disruption in conjunction with an abnormally functioning immune system could collectively disturb those brain processes that are important for memory.”

The study was published in the journal npj Schizophrenia (Severance et al., 2016).

Research finds the herbs that can improve mood, memory and induce calmness.

Chamomile, peppermint, rosemary and lavender can all affect mood and memory, new research finds.

Peppermint tea can improve alertness while chamomile does indeed provide a calming effect.

Smelling rosemary, meanwhile, improved the memories of people over 65 by an average of 15%.

Lavender, though, impaired their memory.

The conclusions come from a series of studies which compared memory and thinking skills before and after exposure to various  herbs.

Dr Mark Moss, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Peppermint has a reputation for being psychologically or mentally alerting.

It picks you up and makes you feel a little bit brighter, so we endeavoured to test this out by giving people peppermint tea, or chamomile tea, which is a more calming drink and then put them through some computerised tests.

We found that those people who had drunk the peppermint tea had better long-term memory.

They were able to remember more words and pictures that they had seen.

Dr Moss continued:

“In contrast, the people who had the chamomile were slower in responding to tasks.

Rosemary meanwhile has a reputation about being associated with memory – even Shakespeare said ‘rosemary is for remembrance’ – and it’s also associated with being invigorating.

We have found that people are more alert after being in a room that has rosemary aroma in it.

We tested prospective memory – our ability to remember to remember to do something – on people over 65 years of age, to see if we could improve their ability and we found that rosemary could do that.

This is potentially very important because prospective memory, for example, enables you to remember to take your medication at certain times of the day.

Dr Moss said the varied results for different herbs were interesting:

“It is interesting to see the contrasting effects that different herbs can have on both mood and memory, and our research suggests that that they could have beneficial effects, particularly in older age groups.

If you were otherwise healthy then this research suggests that there is an opportunity to have an improved memory.”

The findings were presented at the annual British Psychological Society Conference in Nottingham (26-28 April 2016).

Study tests effects of mental imagery on memory.

Mental imagery is an effective way to improve memory and reduce some false memories, new research finds.

People in the study who were told to create images for words were better able to remember them.

Images also helped people avoid false memories.

Ms Merrin Oliver, the study’s first author, said:

“Creating images improved participants’ memories and helped them commit fewer errors, regardless of what kind of list we gave them.”

False memories can be related to misremembering the source, Ms Oliver explained:

“We aren’t good at judging the source of our memories.

These lists usually remind people of a word that they didn’t actually study, so they mistakenly recollect studying words similar to those on the list.”

For the research, one group were told to use imagery to remember a list of words while the other were just told to remember the words.

Ms Oliver said:

“Our study suggests more detailed imagery instructions are necessary to help filter out false memories during a recognition test, where false memories are typically very high.

People should create detailed images with unique characteristics to help avoid the endorsement of false memories on recognition-based tests like true/false or multiple-choice assessments, where you are tempted by lures and possible false memories.”

The study was published in The Journal of General Psychology (Oliver et al., 2016).

How Memory Works: 21 Psychological Insights

Brain image from Shutterstock

Study compares writing by hand with real and virtual keyboards.

Writing by hand strengthens memory in comparison to writing on a real or virtual keyboard, new research finds.

The motor feedback from the process of writing along with the sense of touching paper and pen helps people learn.

Areas of the brain vital to language are more strongly activated by the physical activity.

The study compared 36 people writing in three different ways:

• on a conventional keyboard,
• on a virtual keyboard (like an iPad),
• or handwriting.

They were read a list of words which they wrote down.

Their memory for the words was then tested for both free recall and recognition.

The results showed that the method of writing down the words did not effect recognition, but free recall was better for handwriting.

Since it is much harder to recall a word than to recognise it, memory was stronger for handwritten words.

The authors explain the study’s results:

“…keyboard writing per se (whether on a virtual or a conventional keyboard) attenuates or disrupts memory for what is written.

However, with respect to aspects of word recall, our findings indicate that there may be certain cognitive benefits to handwriting which may not be fully retained in keyboard writing.”

The advantage of handwriting is that the attention is all on the same thing at the same time.

The study’s authors think the problem with keyboard writing could be partly down to a split in attention:

“The visual attention of keyboard writers is split between looking at the emerging text and looking at the keyboard on which they write.

From a visual-spatial perspective, a keyboard separates the “motor area” (or input area) where the letters are being produced (the keyboard) from the visual presentation area of the letters (the screen; or output area).

A keyboard thereby provides less real-time sensory and visual information about the writer’s own writing process, a fact which may result in less robust mental representations of the words.

One consequence of such a separation may be that the writer engages less with the written text and consequently is provided with an attenuated visual memory of the word, than in the handwriting condition, where the subject may fixate near the point where the physical writing takes place.”

The study was published in the Journal of Writing Research (Mangen et al., 2016).

Handwriting image from Shutterstock

The experience of distressing, intrusive memories was reduced by over a half.

Inhaling laughing gas after a traumatic event reduces the later intrusion of distressing memories, new research finds.

People who inhaled nitrous oxide experienced fewer intrusive thoughts a day later, the study found.

Dr Ravi Das, the study’s first author, explained:

“The day after they saw the film, the number of intrusions experienced by the group who received nitrous oxide fell by over a half.

By contrast, the decline in intrusions was much slower in the group who received air, where there was not a significant drop in intrusions until the fourth day.

We think that this is because nitrous oxide disrupts a process that helps permanent memories to form.”

The study involved participants watching a distressing video clip.

Afterwards, half were given air, the other half a mixture containing the laughing gas.

Dr Das said:

“On any given day your brain will be exposed to a huge amount of information, some important, but most trivial.

If information is ‘important’ enough to remember, for instance because it produces a strong emotional response, it is ‘tagged’ for storage.

The brain requires N-Methyl D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptors to tag information during the day, which is then filed for long-term storage while we sleep.

We know that nitrous oxide blocks NMDA receptors, so could interfere with tagging.

This might explain why the nitrous oxide group seemed to have weaker memories of the film the day after they watched it.”

Dr Sunjeev Kamboj, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Nitrous oxide is routinely used as a painkiller by paramedics and in A&E departments because it is safe and easy to administer.

Many people who end up in an ambulance will have undergone some form of psychological trauma, and our study suggests that the nitrous oxide is likely to be having some effect on how their brain processes it.

However, whether it helps to prevent symptoms of PTSD or makes them more likely may depend on how dissociated patients feel before they receive it.

Further research is now needed to determine whether dissociation similarly affects the response of trauma victims who receive nitrous oxide or other painkillers such as ketamine.

It is worth noting that our volunteers were given nitrous oxide continuously for half an hour, whereas the amount that hospital patients receive will vary significantly.

Some may only receive small doses in the ambulance whereas others could be breathing it on-and-off for hours in a hospital bed.

Any effects, positive or negative, are also likely to vary depending on the dose.

The amount of nitrous oxide used recreationally in a balloon, for example, would likely be too small to have a noticeable effect on memory formation.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Das et al., 2016).

Sad man image from Shutterstock

The study adds further evidence for the cognitive disadvantages of this body type.

Overweight people have worse memories for times, places and specific emotions they have experienced, a new study finds.

The higher people’s BMI, researchers found, the worse their episodic memory.

Episodic memory is the collection of memories that occurred at a particular moment in time.

It is often contrasted with semantic memory, which is our general knowledge about the world.

The study adds further evidence for the cognitive disadvantages of being overweight.

Dr Lucy Cheke, who led the study, said:

“Understanding what drives our consumption and how we instinctively regulate our eating behaviour is becoming more and more important given the rise of obesity in society.

We know that to some extent hunger and satiety are driven by the balance of hormones in our bodies and brains, but psychological factors also play an important role — we tend to eat more when distracted by television or working, and perhaps to ‘comfort eat’ when we are sad, for example.

Increasingly, we’re beginning to see that memory — especially episodic memory, the kind where you mentally relive a past event — is also important.

How vividly we remember a recent meal, for example today’s lunch, can make a difference to how hungry we feel and how much we are likely to reach out for that tasty chocolate bar later on.”

The study tested 50 people with a range of BMIs from 18 to 51.

The normal range for BMI is 18-25, 25-30 is considered overweight and over 30 is obese.

Researchers found that the higher people’s BMI, the worse they performed on a memory task.

Dr Cheke said:

“We’re not saying that overweight people are necessarily more forgetful, but if these results are generalizable to memory in everyday life, then it could be that overweight people are less able to vividly relive details of past events — such as their past meals.

Research on the role of memory in eating suggests that this might impair their ability to use memory to help regulate consumption.

In other words, it is possible that becoming overweight may make it harder to keep track of what and how much you have eaten, potentially making you more likely to overeat.

The possibility that there may be episodic memory deficits in overweight individuals is of concern, especially given the growing evidence that episodic memory may have a considerable influence on feeding behaviour and appetite regulation.”

Dr Jon Simons, who co-authored the study, said:

By recognising and addressing these psychological factors head-on, not only can we come to understand obesity better, but we may enable the creation of interventions that can make a real difference to health and wellbeing.”

The study was published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Cheke et al., 2016).

Brain image from Shutterstock

We can only recall a very small proportion of the memories we make each day.

New research finds that rewarding memories are recalled preferentially because the brain replays them automatically when we are at rest.

The brain prioritises rewards as they are important cues about future behaviour.

Professor Charan Ranganath, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Rewards help you remember things, because you want future rewards.

The brain prioritizes memories that are going to be useful for future decisions.”

In the study people looked at various pictures of objects on different backgrounds.

Some were associated with a higher reward for later recall.

When given a surprise memory test afterwards, unsurprisingly people were better at remembering the objects with higher levels of reward.

Dr Matthias Gruber, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“Also, when an object was associated with high reward, people remembered better the particular background scene that was on the screen during scanning.”

The interesting finding came from a series of brain scans conducted just after people had looked at the objects, while resting.

These suggested that people were replaying the high-reward memories to help mentally fix them in place.

Their brains were doing this automatically, without volition, since they didn’t know a test was coming.

The people who replayed the memories the most did the best on the surprise test.

Professor Ranganath said:

“It speaks to a memory process that is normally hidden from us.

Are you remembering what you really need to know?

It could depend on what your brain does while you are at rest.”

The study was published in the journal Neuron (Gruber et al., 2016).

Brain image from Shutterstock

New research suggests people’s cognitive abilities are affected by the seasons.

Brain scans show that people’s short-term memory is generally best in fall (autumn) and worst in spring.

In mid-December, though, people’s attention skills are at their lowest ebb.

Attention doesn’t come up to full strength until June.

Dr Gilles Vandewalle, one of the study’s authors, said that the causes are likely down to multiple factors, but:

“…we may be tuned to lower brain activity in winter, and that could cause changes in brain activity.

But in modern society we are similarly active throughout the year.”

It could also be that people who experience seasonally affected disorder may be particularly vulnerable to changes in cognition over the year.

Brain Scans Reveal Why Up To One in Six People Get SAD in Winter

The new research had 28 men and women visit the lab at different times of the year to take various tests.

Both brain scans and behavioural tests were used.

Only the brain scans showed the differences, not the behavioural tests.

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Meyer et al., 2016).

Image credit: Noukka Signe