Memory - Page 25 of 28

The Type of Exercise That Most Benefits Memory, Reasoning and Mental Flexibility

Study compared the mental effects of aerobic exercise, weight training and balance and co-ordination.

Study compared the mental effects of aerobic exercise, weight training and balance and co-ordination.

A new study of older people finds that there is no need to follow a special training programme to boost cognitive function.

Any type of exercise improves mental abilities: it doesn’t matter if it’s aerobic or strength or just improving balance and flexibility.

It didn’t even seem to matter if the participants were getting much fitter — as long as they got moving, they got the mental benefits of exercise.

For the research, people between the ages of 62 and 84 were put into three different groups (Berryman et al., 2014).

Two of the groups did strength training and high-intensity aerobic exercise.

A third group carried out activities that trained balance, co-ordination and other gross motor functions.

This third group did activities like throwing balls at targets, learning to juggle and yoga-type stretches.

Although the first two groups were the only ones to get physically fitter, all three groups showed similar benefits to executive function.

Dr. Louis Bherer, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“Our study targeted executive functions, or the functions that allow us to continue reacting effectively to a changing environment.
We use these functions to plan, organize, develop strategies, pay attention to and remember details, and manage time and space.”

Dr. Nicolas Berryman, the study’s lead author, said:

“For a long time, it was believed that only aerobic exercise could improve executive functions.
More recently, science has shown that strength-training also leads to positive results.
Our new findings suggest that structured activities that aim to improve gross motor skills can also improve executive functions, which decline as we age.
I would like seniors to remember that they have the power to improve their physical and cognitive health at any age and that they have many avenues to reach this goal.”

For younger people, it may well be that cardiovascular fitness — the kind you get from things like jogging — is better for your cognitive function.

But this study suggests that for older people, it’s less about the type of activity, and more about getting activity of any kind.

Image credit: A Health Blog

Light To Moderate Alcohol Intake Linked To Better Memory In Later Years

How light to moderate alcohol intake affects memory for past events.

How light to moderate alcohol intake affects memory for past events.

For people over 60, light or moderate alcohol intake is associated with better recall of past events, according to a new study.

Links were also found between increased size of the hippocampus — the area of the brain crucial to memory — and moderate alcohol consumption.

The study, published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, used data from almost 700 people who have been followed since the 1970s (Downer et al., 2014).

They completed questionnaires about their alcohol intake, along with a battery of neuropsychological test which assessed their memory for past events, along with other cognitive factors.

The results showed that people who drank alcohol lightly or moderately had better memories for past events, although there was no association with overall mental ability.

Dr. Brian Downer, who led the study, cautioned of alternative explanations for the results:

“There were no significant differences in cognitive functioning and regional brain volumes during late life according to reported midlife alcohol consumption status.
This may be due to the fact that adults who are able to continue consuming alcohol into old age are healthier, and therefore have higher cognition and larger regional brain volumes, than people who had to decrease their alcohol consumption due to unfavorable health outcomes.”

That said, this is not the only study to identify this link.

Animal studies have supported the idea that alcohol may have a protective effect.

These have found that moderate alcohol consumption can preserve the hippocampal area of the brain by encouraging the regeneration of nerve tissue.

Alcohol may also increase the release of chemicals in the brain which boost its information processing functions.

Naturally, it’s proven that extended periods of alcohol abuse — defined as five or more drinks a day — can damage the brain.

But, light to moderate alcohol intake has been consistently linked with lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline in later years.

Image credit: Dave Dugdale

What Alzheimer’s Patients Feel After Their Memories Have Vanished

Is the emotional life of Alzheimer’s patients alive and well?

Is the emotional life of Alzheimer’s patients alive and well?

While patients with Alzheimer’s might not remember when their loved ones visit, it has a profound effect on how they feel, a new study finds.

The study showed both happy and sad video clips lasting around 20 minutes to people with Alzheimer’s disease and observed their emotional states (Guzmán-Vélez et al., 2014).

They did the same for a group of healthy adults.

Five minutes afterwards, all the participants were given a memory test to see if they could remember the video they had just seen.

As you’d expect, Alzheimer’s patients remembered significantly less about the clips they’d just seen than the healthy group.

In fact, four out of the 17 patients could not remember a single fact about the clips and one patient couldn’t remember having seen any movie clips, despite the fact it was only five minutes later.

Despite not being able to remember seeing the videos, they were happier (or sadder, depending on the clips they’d seen) for at least 30 minutes afterwards.

Amazingly, when patients remembered less of the sad video clips, their feeling of sadness lasted longer.

Edmarie Guzmán-Vélez, the study’s lead author, said:

“This confirms that the emotional life of an Alzheimer’s patient is alive and well.”

It also underlines the importance of generating positive emotions when visiting patients with Alzheimer’s.

Guzmán-Vélez continued:

“Our findings should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter.
Frequent visits and social interactions, exercise, music, dance, jokes, and serving patients their favorite foods are all simple things that can have a lasting emotional impact on a patient’s quality of life and subjective well-being.”

Image credit: Bev Sykes

Memory Loss From Alzheimer’s Reversed For First Time With New Approach

Nine out of ten patients with memory problems showed improvements with this novel multi-systems approach.

Nine out of ten patients with memory problems showed improvements with this novel multi-systems approach.

Memory loss in patients with Alzheimer’s disease may be reversed — and the improvement sustained — using a novel treatment approach, a small exploratory study has found.

The study, which included 10 patients, used a combination of therapies which were personalised to help them reverse memory loss (Bredesen, 2014).

Some patients were getting disoriented while driving, others mixing up names and some had been forced to quit their jobs.

Within three to six months of the treatment all but one of the patients was seeing either objective or subjective improvements in their memory.

Those who had been forced to quit work were able to return.

One of the patients was a 55-year-old attorney who had been suffering memory loss for four years, but showed a remarkable improvement from the program:

“After five months on the therapeutic program, she noted that she no longer needed her iPad for notes, and no longer needed to record conversations.
She was able to work once again, was able to learn Spanish, and began to learn a new legal specialty.
Her children noted that she no longer became lost in mid-sentence, no longer thought she had asked them to do something that she had not asked, and answered their questions with normal rapidity and memory.”

Professor Dale Bredesen, who authored the study, explained that the key is taking a multi-systems approach:

“The existing Alzheimer’s drugs affect a single target, but Alzheimer’s disease is more complex.
Imagine having a roof with 36 holes in it, and your drug patched one hole very well — the drug may have worked, a single “hole” may have been fixed, but you still have 35 other leaks, and so the underlying process may not be affected much.”

Each patient was given a specialised program, which often included things like exercise, optimising sleep, practising yoga, brain stimulation and taking supplements such as vitamin D3 and melatonin.

In total Professor Bredesen’s therapeutic plan has 36-points, the exact combination of which was tailored for each patient.

As he is the first to say, though, the study is only a small one:

“This is the first successful demonstration.
The current, anecdotal results require a larger trial, not only to confirm or refute the results reported here, but also to address key questions raised, such as the degree of improvement that can be achieved routinely, how late in the course of cognitive decline reversal can be effected, whether such an approach may be effective in patients with familial Alzheimer’s disease, and last, how long improvement can be sustained.”

Still, even though the study is small, the results are striking — and hopeful.

How Unwanted Negative Thoughts Could Be Treated By Changing Memories

Cutting-edge research explores how memories can be modified after recall.

Hope for effectively treating unwanted negative thoughts may come from new techniques that can alter vivid, long-established memories.

Unwanted negative thoughts are core components of problems like addictions and…

Cutting-edge research explores how memories can be modified after recall.

Hope for effectively treating unwanted negative thoughts may come from new techniques that can alter vivid, long-established memories.

Unwanted negative thoughts are core components of problems like addictions and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In PTSD, people suffer from frequent intrusions of traumatic memories from, for example, a car crash or other violent event.

In addictions, people’s behaviour is strongly influenced by memories of drug-taking and these motivate their future actions.

These are more extreme versions of the everyday occurrence of having flashbacks to embarrassing moments, or other painful episodes we’ve experienced.

But, what if it were possible to adjust memories of trauma or drug use?

According to a new review of the evidence, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, it may be possible to more effectively target a part of the learning process called reconsolidation (Schwabe et al., 2014).

The figure below shows the typical process of learning, from the initial memory — for example, a traumatic event — through to its retrieval and alteration.

Reconsolidation is the point at which a stored memory is recalled and, according to recent research, this is the point at which it may be changed.

During the reconsolidation phase, memories become particularly unstable, and so easier to change.

Memories could perhaps be modified years after they were initially laid down.

This is effectively what many therapists try to do when they treat patients suffering from unwanted intrusive thoughts.

Patients are encouraged to recall the memory, but then the therapist tries to adjust the response to that memory.

Unfortunately, the original memory is often so strong that it is very difficult to change the response.

But, with the new understanding of the role of reconsolidation, it may be possible to make this process more effective.

It will require linking the neurobiological understanding of reconsolidation with everyday clinical practices.

Research on those with PTSD, however, has already begun to show that the use of some drugs during reconsolidation can help extinguish traumatic thoughts.

Dr. Lars Schwabe, the lead author of the study, said:

“Memory reconsolidation is probably among the most exciting phenomena in cognitive neuroscience today.
It assumes that memories may be modified once they are retrieved which may give us the great opportunity to change seemingly robust, unwanted memories.”

→ Continue reading: 8 Ways to Get Rid of Unwanted Negative Thoughts.

Image credits: Zoltan Horlik & Elsevier

Poor Sleep Can Lead to False Memories

Short of sleep? Your memory could be playing serious tricks on you.

We all know that lack of sleep affects our memory, along with other cognitive abilities.

Sitting in the office, sleep deprived, it’s difficult to remember your own name, let along the ever-lengthening to-do list.

But now new research shows that not getting enough sleep increases the chances your mind will actually create false memories.

The study, published in Psychological Science, allowed one group of participants to get a full nights’ sleep, while another had to stay up all night (Frenda et al., 2014).

In the morning they were given a series of photos that were supposed to show a crime being committed.

Next, both groups were given some eyewitness statements about the crime.

Like many witness statements in real-life crimes, the details were different to those shown in the photographs.

For example, in one instance the photo showed a thief putting a wallet in his jacket, but in the witness statement it said he put it in his pants (that’s ‘trousers’ for British people, not his underwear!).

Afterwards, they were asked what they had seen in the original photographs.

The results showed that those who’d missed out on their sleep were the most likely to regurgitate the false eyewitness statements they’d just read, rather than remembering the ‘true’ crime-scene photos they’d been shown moments beforehand.

The lack of sleep had messed with their heads to the extent that all the evidence — right and wrong — had got mixed up.

One of the study’s authors, Kimberly Fenn, said:

“People who repeatedly get low amounts of sleep every night could be more prone in the long run to develop these forms of memory distortion.
It’s not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk.”

Indeed, a preliminary study they carried out found that getting just five hours sleep was enough to cause people to start manufacturing false memories.

→ Related: 10 Sleep Deprivation Effects.

Image credit: Dan Foy

How Sleep After Learning Enhances Memory

The physical changes in the motor cortex that result from learning and sleep.

Sleep after learning encourages brain cells to make connections with other brain cells, research shows for the first time.

The connections, called dendritic spines, enable the flow of information across the synapses.

The findings, published in the prestigious journal Science, are the first to show physical changes in the motor cortex resulting from learning and sleep (Yang et al., 2014).

One of the study’s authors, Wen-Biao Gan, PhD, said:

“We’ve known for a long time that sleep plays an important role in learning and memory. If you don’t sleep well you won’t learn well.
But what’s the underlying physical mechanism responsible for this phenomenon?
Here we’ve shown how sleep helps neurons form very specific connections on dendritic branches that may facilitate long-term memory.
We also show how different types of learning form synapses on different branches of the same neurons, suggesting that learning causes very specific structural changes in the brain.”

The results come from studies in mice, which were genetically engineered with a fluorescent protein in their neurons.

With the use of a laser-scanning microscope, the fluorescent protein allowed the scientists to track and image the dendritic spines before and after they learnt a new skill; in this case balancing on a spinning rod.

Some of the mice were allowed to sleep after they had learned to balance on the rod, others were not.

In the brains of those that had slept, there was more growth of dendritic spines.

In addition, the type of task the mice learnt –whether they ran forward or backward across the rod — affected where the dendritic spines grew.

Gan continued:

“Now we know that when we learn something new, a neuron will grow new connections on a specific branch.
Imagine a tree that grows leaves (spines) on one branch but not another branch. When we learn something new, it’s like we’re sprouting leaves on a specific branch.”

More on the science of sleep: Unwind: The Science of Rest, Relaxation and Sleep

Image credit: Ryan Ritchie

The Facial Expression That Fights Memory Loss

It fights the stress hormone which damages the brain’s ability to learn and remember.

It’s a smile.

New research from researchers at Loma Linda University has found that older people with diabetes who were shown a funny video scored better on a memory test. (Bains et al., 2014).

The reason seems to be that cortisol — the ‘stress hormone’ — damages the brain’s ability to learn and remember.

It does this by affective certain neurons in the brain.

Humour and laughter, though, are well-known relievers of stress.

One of the study’s authors, Dr. Lee Berk said:

“It’s simple, the less stress you have the better your memory.
Humor reduces detrimental stress hormones like cortisol that decrease memory hippocampal neurons, lowers your blood pressure, and increases blood flow and your mood state.
The act of laughter — or simply enjoying some humor — increases the release of endorphins and dopamine in the brain, which provides a sense of pleasure and reward.
These positive and beneficial neurochemical changes, in turn, make the immune system function better.
There are even changes in brain wave activity towards what’s called the “gamma wave band frequency,” which also amp up memory and recall.
So, indeed, laughter is turning out to be not only a good medicine, but also a memory enhancer adding to our quality of life.”

The study’s lead author, Dr. Gurinder Singh Bains added:

“Our research findings offer potential clinical and rehabilitative benefits that can be applied to wellness programs for the elderly.
The cognitive components — learning ability and delayed recall — become more challenging as we age and are essential to older adults for an improved quality of life: mind, body, and spirit.
Although older adults have age-related memory deficits, complimentary, enjoyable, and beneficial humor therapies need to be implemented for these individuals.”

→ Continue reading: Memory and Recall: 10 Amazing Facts You Should Know

Image credit: Janos

Why Smells Evoke Memories So Vividly

Brain regions are synchronized as neurons fire at a common frequency.

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell.
One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.” ~ Diane Ackerman

Or, in the somewhat less poetic language of science: areas of the brain that are central to long-term memory and the sense of smell are coupled together by brain waves oscillating at 20-40 hertz.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, come from the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Norway, where they have been using mice to explore the strong connections between smell and memory (Igarashi et al., 2014).

In their research, the experimenters first had to simulate the laying down of a smell-related memory, like the association we might have between cut grass and a summer long-ago.

So, the mice were taught that certain smells led them to rewards of food.

Then, they needed to see what happened in the mice’s brains when they retrieved the memory.

This is analogous to the moment when the cut grass smell hits our noses and we are instantly transported back a decade.

Kei Igarashi, the study’s lead author explained the results:

“Immediately after the rat is exposed to the smell there is a burst in activity of 20 Hz waves in a specific connection between an area in the entorhinal cortex, lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), and an area in the hippocampus, distal CA1 (dCA1), while a similar strong response was not observed in other connections.”

The entorhinal cortex is important in linking spatial memory to smell — the mice had to remember where the reward was — and the hippocampus plays an important role in turning short-term memories into long-term memories, as well as spatial navigation.

Synchronising the brain

Not only does the study explore how smell and memory are linked, it is also one of a wave of new studies investigating how different parts of the brain synchronise with each other to create functional networks.

Edvard Moser, director of the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, explains:

“This is not the first time we observe that the brain uses synchronised wave activity to establish network connections.
Both during encoding and retrieval of declarative memories there is an interaction between these areas mediated through gamma and theta oscillations.
Together, the evidence is now piling up and pointing in the direction of cortical oscillations as a general mechanism for mediating interactions among functionally specialized neurons in distributed brain circuits.”

It’s a lot to think about when you are smelling a rose; but it’s all happening in that moment when you pick up a rose, breathe in, and are taken back in time.

→ Continue reading: Memory and Recall: 10 Amazing Facts You Should Know

Image credit: Amanda Tipton

The Effects of Vitamin E on Alzheimer’s and Age-Related Memory Problems

Day-to-day living is one of the greatest challenges for those with Alzheimer’s.

Two recent studies provide evidence of the protective effects of Vitamin E against both mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease and age-related memory problems.

In the first, 613 patients across 14 centres for veterans in the US who had mild to moderate Alzheimer’s were involved in an experiment to test Vitamin E (Dysken et al., 2014).

Some were randomly assigned to receive Vitamin E and their results were compared with comparison groups.

One of the trial’s co-investigators, Dr. Mary Sano, explained the effects on functional decline, the increasing problems Alzheimer’s sufferers have with day-to-day living:

“This trial showed that vitamin E delays progression of functional decline by 19% per year, which translates into 6.2 months benefit over placebo.”

The study’s authors think that vitamin E can be recommended as standard clinical practice.

This is an encouraging result given that there are few other useful drugs for mild to moderate dementia.

A second study carried out in Finland also provided support for the use of Vitamin E to fight age-related memory problems.

The study, published in the journal Experimental Gerontology, examined 140 people over 65 who did not have any memory problems at the start of the study (Mangialasche et al., 2013).

They were followed up over the next eight years and the researchers found that higher levels of vitamin E in the blood seemed to protect against memory disorders.

The interesting thing about the study was that it looked at different types of vitamin E: there are 8 naturally occurring forms, all of which have antioxidant properties.

Levels of all of these naturally occurring forms were associated with a protective effect against memory problems.

The fact that vitamin E is widely available and relatively inexpensive makes these findings even more practical.

Image credit: Colin Dunn