Memory - Page 26 of 29

A Foolproof Way To Use Forgetting To Help You Remember, Study Reveals

When you save information digitally, your real memory for that information is worse, but a new study reveals a positive flipside.

When you save information digitally, your real memory for that information is worse, but a new study reveals a positive flipside.

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

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.”

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, had participants study a file filled with words they were told to memorise (Storm & Stone, 2014).

Some were told to save the file after studying it, others were not.

They were then given a second file of words to remember.

The results showed that people remembered the words in the second file better when they had saved the first file.

Dr. Storm explained why the trick works:

“The idea is pretty simple: Saving acts as a form of offloading.
By ensuring that certain information will be digitally accessible, we can re-allocate cognitive resources away from maintaining that information and focus instead on remembering new information.”

While saving information makes our memory poorer for that information, at least we know where to find it.

Dr. Storm continued:

“As technology develops, computers and smart phones are making it easier and easier to save information, which seems to have important consequences for the ways in which our memory functions.
By treating computers and other digital devices as extensions of memory, people may be protecting themselves from the costs of forgetting while taking advantage of the benefits.”

Dr. Storm pointed out that forgetting old information may also help us be more creative:

“Coming up with a new idea or solving a problem often requires that we think outside the box, so to speak, and forgetting previous information allows us to do that.
By helping us to reduce the accessibility of old information, saving may facilitate our ability to think of new ideas and solve difficult problems.”

Image credit: A Health Blog

The Basic Emotion That Makes Infants Remember What They’ve Seen

Five-month-olds can remember what they’ve seen when it is paired with this emotion.

Five-month-olds can remember what they’ve seen when it is paired with this emotion.

Babies can remember what they’ve seen if it is paired with a positive emotion, a new study finds, but nothing otherwise.

The research, carried out by psychologists at Brigham Young University, is the first to look at how being exposed to different emotions affects the memory of infants.

The researchers tested the effect of a positive, negative and neutral tone of voice on which geometric shapes they could remember (Flom et al., 2014).

The five-month-olds in the study obviously couldn’t talk, but their eye gaze was measured to see which way they were looking and for how long.

The infants were tested five minutes after seeing the shapes and one day later — what psychologists consider long-term memory.

The results, published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development, showed that after both five minutes and one day, the infants remembered shapes that were initially paired with a positive voice.

In comparison, they seemed not to remember the shapes paired with neutral or negative voices at all.

Professor Ross Flom, who led the study, said:

“People study memory in infants, they study discrimination in emotional affect, but we are the first ones to study how these emotions influence memory.”

While scientists are not sure why babies remember things paired with positive emotions, they can extrapolate from studies on adults.

Professor Flom explained:

“We think what happens is that the positive affect heightens the babies’ attentional system and arousal.
By heightening those systems, we heighten their ability to process and perhaps remember this geometric pattern.”

Image credit: Paolo Marconi

Just 1 Gram of This Spice Boosts Memory in Six Hours

Memory improved by consuming small amount of this spice with breakfast.

Memory improved by consuming small amount of this spice with breakfast.

One gram of turmeric at breakfast has been shown by a new study to improve memory in people with memory problems.

In the study itself participants were given 1 gram of turmeric mixed into their ordinary breakfasts (Lee et al., 2014).

Their working memory was tested before and some time after their breakfast, and the results were compared with a placebo-control condition.

Professor Wahlqvist, who led the Taiwanese study, explained the results:

“We found that this modest addition to breakfast improved working memory over six hours in older people with pre-diabetes.”

Diabetes and memory problems are linked because having diabetes makes it more likely that a person will also develop dementia if the diabetes is not well controlled.

Turmeric is a yellow spice already widely used in cooking, especially in Asia.

Its distinctive yellow colour is given to it by a substance called curcumin, which makes up between 3-6% of turmeric.

It is the curcumin which is thought to have an active effect in reducing the memory problems associated with dementia.

Professor Wahlqvist explained the importance of working memory, which was tested in this study:

“Working memory is widely thought to be one of the most important mental faculties, critical for cognitive abilities such as planning, problem solving and reasoning.
Assessment of working memory is simple and convenient, but it is also very useful in the appraisal of cognition and in predicting future impairment and dementia.”

He concluded:

“Our findings with turmeric are consistent with these observations, insofar as they appear to influence cognitive function where there is disordered energy metabolism and insulin resistance.”

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

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

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