Memory - Page 23 of 28

Five-Day Diet Could Rejuvenate Memory and Learning

Plus this short-term diet reduces belly fat and slows aging.

Plus this short-term diet reduces belly fat and slows aging.

A diet which mimics fasting could boost neural regeneration, leading to improved memory and learning, a new study finds.

In addition, just five days dieting per month is enough to steadily reduce belly fat and slow aging, the study found.

The diet involves eating around 50% less calories over five days in a month.

Professor Valter Longo, an expert on longevity who led the study, said:

“Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be dangerous, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body.
I’ve personally tried both, and the fasting mimicking diet is a lot easier and also a lot safer.”

The effects of the diet were tested on both mice and humans.

Cognitive rejuvenation was seen in the mice.

The pilot study on 19 people found the diet reduced biomarkers of aging, diabetes, cardiovascular risk and cancer.

Professor Longo said:

“It’s about reprogramming the body so it enters a slower aging mode, but also rejuvenating it through stem cell-based regeneration.
It’s not a typical diet because it isn’t something you need to stay on.”

For the remaining 25 days of the month people ate their normal diet.

Professor Longo believes that most normal people would only need to do the diet every three to six months to see the benefits.

Those who are obese could do it more often, if their doctors considered it safe.

Professor Longo said:

“Not everyone is healthy enough to fast for five days, and the health consequences can be severe for a few who do it improperly.
Water-only fasting should only be done in a specialized clinic.
Also, certain types of very low calorie diets, and particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of gallstones in women at risk.
In contrast, the fasting mimicking diet tested in the trial can be done anywhere under the supervision of a physician and carefully following the guidelines established in the clinical trials.”

The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism (Brandhorst et al., 2015).

Image credit: Liz Jones

Alcohol’s Unexpected Effect on Memory and Learning

Surprisingly, alcohol is not bad for all types of memory.

Surprisingly, alcohol is not bad for all types of memory.

Alcohol can actually help some areas of the brain learn and remember.

While it’s true that alcohol is generally bad for conscious memory, it can boost unconscious memory.

This may help explain why alcohol — and other drugs — can be so habit-forming.

Dr Hitoshi Morikawa, an addiction researcher, said:

“Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory.
Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague’s name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning.
But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or ‘conditionability’.”

Dr Morikawa and colleagues reached this conclusion by exposing mice to alcohol and examining synaptic plasticity in key areas of the brain.

They found that with repeated exposure, the plasticity increased — indicating learning.

The unconscious, though, is learning more than just that drinking feels good.

It is learning a whole constellation of behavioral, environmental and social triggers.

For example, it is learning that particular music, people and places are linked to a surge of pleasure.

Neurobiologically, this means the brain is releasing dopamine, says Dr Morikawa:

“People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it’s a learning transmitter.
It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released.”

As the drinking is repeated again in the same context, the brain becomes more sensitive to this situation.

In other words: it learns to enjoy the drinking more and more.

Treating alcoholism, and other addictions, is partly about picking apart this web of situations and emotions.

Dr Morikawa said:

“We’re talking about de-wiring things.
It’s kind of scary because it has the potential to be a mind controlling substance.
Our goal, though, is to reverse the mind controlling aspects of addictive drugs.”

The study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience (Bernier et al., 2011).

Beer image from Shutterstock

Take The Apple Logo Test: Explains Why Everyday Memory Is So Poor

Which of the images above is the Apple logo?

Which of the images above is the Apple logo?

If you selected “B” then you did better than 84 out of 85 UCLA students who were asked the same question.

All 84 got it wrong.

And this was in a group in which 52 were exclusively Apple users, while fully 75 owned Apple products.

They were presumably seeing the logo multiple times each day: on their computer, iPads and iPhones.

And yet they couldn’t pick it out of this line-up.

This was despite being very confident beforehand that they would be able to draw it from memory.

Dr Alan Castel, one of the study’s authors, said:

“There was a striking discrepancy between participants’ confidence prior to drawing the logo and how well they performed on the task.
People’s memory, even for extremely common objects, is much poorer than they believe it to be.”

The reason for this discrepancy is that our minds focus on information that’s really important to us, although we don’t realise it.

The details of a corporate logo are not that important in our daily lives.

Our memories tend to store the ‘gist’ of information rather than the specifics.

You’d easily be able to tell the Apple logo from the Windows logo, but drawing both accurately would be a challenge.

The study’s authors write of the classic example that…

“…people often have difficulty recognizing the correct locations of features on a penny.
Although pennies are common objects, people may not have a functional reason for encoding the specific features of currency.
However, people often fail to recall the location of previously seen fire extinguishers, despite the fact that fire extinguishers are in high-visibility locations and are associated with high-risk situations.
Explicit memory is also poor for items that people interact with daily, such as the keypads of calculators, telephones, computer keyboards, the layout of frequently-used elevator buttons, and aspects of road signs.”

So if you feel your memory is poor, then take heart from this study — it just means the stuff you can’t remember isn’t that important to you.

The study is published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Blake et al., 2015).

Image credit: Adam Blake, Meenely Nazarian, Alan Castel/UCLA Psychology

Memory: 5 Amazing New Facts You Should Know

New research reveals how to ‘turn on’ your memory, how to flush out useless memories and more…

New research reveals how to ‘turn on’ your memory, how to flush out useless memories and more…

Rounding up some of the latest research on memory, here are five recent studies revealing new insights into how memory works.

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

‘Turn on’ your memory

Paying attention isn’t enough to commit things to memory.

Memory has to be ‘turned on’ in order to remember even the simplest details, a recent study f0und.

When not expecting to be tested, people can forget information just one second after paying attention to it.

But, when they expect to be tested, people’s recall is doubled or even tripled.

Dr Brad Wyble, one of the study’s authors, said:

“It is commonly believed that you will remember specific details about the things you’re attending to, but our experiments show that this is not necessarily true.
We found that in some cases, people have trouble remembering even very simple pieces of information when they do not expect to have to remember them.”

Classical music enhances memory genes

Listening to classical music enhances the activity of genes involved in learning and memory.

At the same time it reduces the activity of genes involved in neurodegeneration.

The conclusion comes from the first study to show how music affects the transcription of genes across the whole genome.

Transcription is the first step in how genes are expressed — in other words, how our genetic code is turned into proteins.

Improve memory five-fold

A power nap of under an hour can improve memory performance by five times.

New information normally disappears from memory quite rapidly as people naturally forget.

But, after a 45-60 minute nap, participants in one study had forgotten little.

In comparison those who had remained awake had forgotten a lot.

Flush out useless memories

Clicking ‘save’ on a digital file makes your memory worse for that information, but improves it for what you learn subsequently, a new study has found.

The trick probably works because taking a photo or saving a file flushes the information out of consciousness, freeing up cognitive resources for the next task.

Dr. Benjamin Storm, who led the study, said:

“We tend to think of forgetting as happening when memory fails, but research suggests that forgetting plays an essential role in supporting the adaptive functioning of memory and cognition.”

Recall leads to forgetting

Recalling one memory actually leads to the forgetting of other competing memories, research has confirmed.

It is one of the single most surprising facts about memory, now isolated by neuroscience research.

Although many scientists believed the brain must work this way, this is the first time it has been demonstrated.

Dr Maria Wimber, a cognitive neuroscientist and the study’s first author, said:

“Though there has been an emerging belief within the academic field that the brain has this inhibitory mechanism, I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that recalling memories has this darker side of making us forget others by actually suppressing them.”

Image credit: A Health Blog

How To Improve Memory Five-Fold in 45 Minutes

How to improve memory with very little effort.

How to improve memory with very little effort.

A power nap of under an hour can improve memory performance by five times, a new study finds.

New information normally disappears from memory quite rapidly as people naturally forget.

But, after a 45-60 minute nap, participants in the study had forgotten little.

In comparison those who had remained awake had forgotten a lot.

The study had people learning unconnected pairs of words, and afterwards some slept while others watched a DVD.

Professor Axel Mecklinger, who led the study, explained the results:

‘The control group, whose members watched DVDs while the other group slept, performed significantly worse than the nap group when it came to remembering the word pairs.
The memory performance of the participants who had a power nap was just as good as it was before sleeping, that is, immediately after completing the learning phase.
Even a short sleep lasting 45 to 60 minutes produces a five-fold improvement in information retrieval from memory.”

Improve memory with power nap

The scientists also looked at how sleep might improve memory in an area of the brain called the hippocampus.

This is where new information is transferred into long-term memory.

Sara Studte, one of the study’s authors, explained:

‘We examined a particular type of brain activity, known as “sleep spindles,” that plays an important role in memory consolidation during sleep.
A sleep spindle is a short burst of rapid oscillations in the electroencephalogram (EEG).

We suspect that certain types of memory content, particularly information that was previously tagged, is preferentially consolidated during this type of brain activity.”

Professor Mecklinger concluded:

“A short nap at the office or in school is enough to significantly improve learning success.
Wherever people are in a learning environment, we should think seriously about the positive effects of sleep.”

The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (Studte et al., 2015).

Confused man image from Shutterstock

Classical Music’s Surprising Effect on Genes Vital to Memory and Learning

How 20 minutes of Mozart affects the expression of genes vital to learning, memory and more…

How 20 minutes of Mozart affects the expression of genes vital to learning, memory and more…

Listening to classical music enhances the activity of genes involved in learning and memory, a new study finds.

At the same time it reduces the activity of genes involved in neurodegeneration.

It is the first study to show how music affects the transcription of genes across the whole genome.

Transcription is the first step in how genes are expressed — in other words, how our genetic code is turned into proteins.

The study helps to explain the widespread effects of music on the brain.

Music has considerable power to enhance memory, cognitive performance and development, not to mention the emotions.

Classical music study

For the study, 48 participants listened to Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K.216:

Blood samples were taken just before they listened to it and just after.

To provide a comparison group, some of the same people also had blood samples taken before and after a non-musical activity on another occasion.

The results showed that classical music enhanced the activity of genes involved in synaptic neurotransmission and dopamine secretion, both of which are important to memory and learning.

On top of this, classical music reduced the activity of genes that are known to be involved in diseases like Parkinson’s.

However, the effects were only seen in musically experience people.

Dr. Irma Järvelä, who led the study, said:

“The effect was only detectable in musically experienced participants, suggesting the importance of familiarity and experience in mediating music-induced effects.”

Some of the genes that were affected by classical music suggest an evolutionary affinity with songbirds, Dr. Järvelä suggested:

“The up-regulation of several genes that are known to be responsible for song learning and singing in songbirds suggest a shared evolutionary background of sound perception between vocalizing birds and humans.”

The study was published in the journal PeerJ (Kanduri et al., 2015).

Music image from Shutterstock

Alzheimer’s Treatment Using Ultrasound Completely Restores Memory

Breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatment may restore memory and clear plaques in the brain without drugs.

Breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatment may restore memory and clear plaques in the brain without drugs.

Australian scientists have found an Alzheimer’s treatment that can restore memory using ultrasound technology.

The Alzheimer’s treatment — which has been successfully tested on mice — does not involve drugs, but high frequency sound waves.

Professor Jürgen Götz, the director of the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research in Australia, and one of the study’s authors, said:

“We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics.
The ultrasound waves oscillate tremendously quickly, activating microglial cells that digest and remove the amyloid plaques that destroy brain synapses.
The word ‘breakthrough’ is often mis-used, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach.”

Potential Alzheimer’s treatment

The study trialled the ultrasound technique on mice whose brains contained amyloid beta, a toxic plaque seen in Alzheimer’s sufferers.

It uses high-energy ultrasound to clear the build-up of toxic plaques.

After using the Alzheimer’s treatment for several weeks, the researchers restored memory and cleared the plaques in 75% of the mice.

Professor Götz said:

“This treatment restored memory function to the same level of normal healthy mice.
We’re also working on seeing whether this method clears toxic protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases other than Alzheimer’s and whether this also restores executive functions, including decision-making and motor control.”

The research is still at a very early stage and it will likely be years before it can be tested on people.

The researchers need to see whether it will work in other animals — sheep are next — and whether any side-effects exist.

Nevertheless, the scientists think it could be much more effective than any Alzheimer’s treatment currently used.

These do not remove amyloid plaques and only work for a short time.

Professor Götz said:

“With an ageing population placing an increasing burden on the health system, an important factor is cost, and other potential drug treatments using antibodies will be expensive.
In contrast, this method uses relatively inexpensive ultrasound and microbubble technology which is non-invasive and appears highly effective.”

The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine (Leinenga & Götz, 2015).

Brain aging image from Shutterstock

Memory & Learning Boosted and Depression Prevented By Compound In These Fruits and Nuts

A compound in these nuts and fruits has striking effect on memory, learning and depression.

A compound in these nuts and fruits has striking effect on memory, learning and depression.

Resveratrol, a compound which plants produce in response to injury, has shown striking abilities to boost memory and alleviate depression in new research.

Resveratrol is found in the skin of grapes, in berries and some peanuts.

Resveratrol has already shown promise for protecting against heart disease, but this is the first time its effects on memory have been tested.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that resveratrol did better than just slowing the age-related decline of memory in rats, it actually improved it (Kodali et al., 2015).

Professor Ashok K. Shetty, who led the study, said:

“The results of the study were striking.
They indicated that for the control rats who did not receive resveratrol, spatial learning ability was largely maintained but ability to make new spatial memories significantly declined between 22 and 25 months.
By contrast, both spatial learning and memory improved in the resveratrol-treated rats.”

Since both humans and animals, including rats, suffer memory loss with age, the study suggests resveratrol may be a useful treatment in humans.

Professor Shetty said:

“The study provides novel evidence that resveratrol treatment in late middle age can help improve memory and mood function in old age.”

The study found that in comparison with a control group of rats, those fed resveratrol had double the rate of neuronal growth.

There were also improvements in their blood vessels and less problems with inflammation in their hippocampus, the area of the brain vital to memory.

On top of this, the rats were also less depressed:

“The beneficial functional effects included improved ability for spatial learning, preserved proficiency for making new spatial memory, and alleviation of depressive-like behavior associated with aging.”

Brain aging image from Shutterstock

The Age At Which Sleep Matters Most For a Good Memory

The age at which sleep has the greatest influence on cognitive function.

The time of life when sleep has the greatest influence on cognitive function.

Good sleep in young and middle-aged people helps boost memory up to 28 years later, a new review of the evidence finds.

However, people in their 70s, 80s and 90s do not typically sleep so well and the link to a good memory is less strong.

Dr Michael K. Scullin, who co-authored the review of around 2,000 separate studies, said:

“If sleep benefits memory and thinking in young adults but is changed in quantity and quality with age, then the question is whether improving sleep might delay — or reverse — age-related changes in memory and thinking.
It’s the difference between investing up front rather than trying to compensate later.
We came across studies that showed that sleeping well in middle age predicted better mental functioning 28 years later.”

Deep sleep in particular has a whole host of mental benefits, found the 50-year review of research which is published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (Scullin & Bliwise, 2015).

Just one of those is that during this time memory is sorted and consolidated for better recall later on.

Even sleep during the day, in the form of an afternoon nap, can be beneficial for memory, as long as sleep at night is still sufficient.

Later in life, though, people tend to sleep worse, with less deep sleep and more wakefulness during the night.

Dr Scullin says:

“…even if the link between sleep and memory lessens with age, sleeping well is still linked to better mental health, improved cardiovascular health and fewer, less severe disorders and diseases of many kinds.”

Image credit: Sleep image from Shutterstock

Study Finds Memory Has a Fascinating Effect On Sleep

Poor sleep’s negative effect on memory is well-known, but what about the effect of memory on sleep?

Poor sleep’s negative effect on memory is well-known, but what about the effect of memory on sleep?

It’s long been known that animals — from flies to humans — have trouble with their memory when they don’t get enough sleep.

Getting enough sleep is critical in converting short-term memories into long-term memories.

That’s the reason that all-nighters don’t work; but little is known about how memory affects sleep.

One theory has it that memory neurons are actively trying to put us to sleep so our brains can transfer information into long-term memory.

In a new study, researchers at Brandeis University have put this to the test in fruit flies.

The fly has a structure in its brain called ‘the mushroom body’, which is similar to the hippocampus, the area of the human brain that’s vital for memory consolidation.

The results, published in the journal eLife, show for the first time that when critical memory neurons were active, the flies slept more (Haynes et al., 2015).

This suggests that memory plays an active role in the sleep cycle.

Not only did parts of the mushroom body in the fly’s brain help send it to sleep, at other times it was helping to keep it awake.

Bethany L Christmann, one of the study’s authors explains:

“It’s almost as if that section of the mushroom body were saying ‘hey, stay awake and learn this.’
Then, after a while, the DPM neurons start signaling to suppress that section, as if to say ‘you’re going to need sleep if you want to remember this later.'”

Christmann continued:

“Knowing that sleep and memory overlap in the fly brain can allow researchers to narrow their search in humans.
Eventually, it could help us figure out how sleep or memory is affected when things go wrong, as in the case of insomnia or memory disorders.”

Image credit: Simon Pais-Thomas