Memory - Page 27 of 29

Men Forget More Than Women

It’s a mystery: men report their memory is worse than women.

A new study finds for the first time that men, on average, think they are more forgetful than women.

The results come from a large study of 48,000 people, conducted in Norway (Holmen et al., 2013).

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.

Professor Jostein Holmen, the lead author of the study, explained the results:

“It was surprising to see that men forget more than women. This has not been documented before. It was also surprising to see that men are just as forgetful whether they are 30 or 60 years old. The results were unambiguous.”

The explanation for these findings is beyond them. Holmen said:

“We have speculated a lot about why men report more frequent problems with remembering than women do, but have not been able to find an explanation. This is still an unsolved mystery.”

Across all the categories of questions it was names and dates that people found the hardest to remember.

Naturally the study only looks at people’s perception of how good or bad their memory is–it is not an objective measure.

Still, the importance of looking at subject memory impairment is to see if it might predict cognitive problems in the future, like dementia.

Image credit: Daniela Vladimirova

Heavy Drinkers Lose Memory Faster With Age

More than two or three drinks a day damages men’s memory.

A new study has found that men drinking heavily in mid-life experience faster declines in their cognitive abilities.

The study, published in the journal Neurology, found that men who drank the equivalent of 2.5 drinks per day showed faster declines with age (Sabia et al., 2014).

Some people may be surprised just how low the bar is set for ‘heavy’ drinking. What this study calls ‘heavy’ drinking, many would consider ‘moderate’.

Below this level there was little difference in cognitive health between those who abstained and those who had two or less drinks per day.

The study also included women, but there was little evidence of any increased decline in cognitive health from alcohol consumption.

Although moderate drinking is often considered relatively harmless, some recent studies on rats are not so comforting.

A Rutgers University study gave rats the equivalent of five drinks for men and 3-4 for women (Anderson et al., 2012). This is the amount that puts you on the legal driving limit in the US.

The rats’ brains showed a 40% drop in the number of nerve cells in the hippocampus

The study’s lead author, Megan Anderson, explained:

“If this area of your brain was affected every day over many months and years, eventually you might not be able to learn how to get somewhere new or to learn something new about your life. It’s something that you might not even be aware is occurring.”

Image credit: PtM 1985

Mindfulness: 6 Steps to Better Memory, Verbal Reasoning and Improved Concentration

Mindfulness is an effective antidote to mind-wandering.

If you can’t concentrate on a book, can’t sit quietly for 15 minutes or can barely make it through a blog post, then you’re not alone.

It’s the modern way–and we hear more and more people saying their attention span and memory are being eroded.

Maybe, they say, it’s the internet, or maybe it’s down to genes and personality.

Whatever the cause, a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science demonstrates that it can change.

Being mindful

In the research, 48 participants were assigned either to a mindfulness class or to a course on nutrition (Mrazek et al., 2013).

Both courses were only two weeks long and the classes met for 45 minutes over 8 sessions.

Students in the mindfulness group were asked to practice mindfulness outside the class and to apply what they’d learned to their everyday life.

The results of the study were striking. Those who’d practised mindfulness:

had better short-term memory,
improved their score on a verbal reasoning test,
and experienced less mind-wandering.

The researchers discovered that it was the last effect–the reduction in mind-wandering–that was responsible for the improved memory and reasoning.

It stands to reason: when your mind isn’t distracted and jumping around so much, it’s easier to keep things in short-term memory and to give a task your full attention.

The lead author, Michael Mrazek, explained:

“This is the most complete and rigorous demonstration that mindfulness can reduce mind-wandering, one of the clearest demonstrations that mindfulness can improve working memory and reading, and the first study to tie all this together to show that mind-wandering mediates the improvements in performance.”

Practice makes a perfect mind

One of the fascinating aspects of the study is that people’s scores increased on a test that is supposed to be uncoachable.

The test, the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) is a standardised test for fixed abilities.

But, if people are improving their scores after such a short intervention, it’s demonstrating that these kinds of cognitive abilities are not as fixed as is generally thought.

The second fascinating aspect of the study is the broad effect of the intervention.

Typically, people who do ‘brain training’ exercises get better at those specific brain training exercises but not much else.

For example, if you do loads of Sudoku or crossword puzzles, you get better at those specific activities, but these improvements generally doesn’t reach into other areas.

But here a mindfulness intervention was having a broad effect on memory, verbal skills and concentration.

The reason it works is because it dampens down mind wandering, our natural tendency to daydream, time-travel and generally goof off.

Psychologists call the neural structures that underlie this effect the ‘default network’.

The mind’s ‘default network’ is not a bad thing in itself, but it shouldn’t interfere when we want to concentrate:

“…mindfulness training leads to reduced activation of the default network, a collection of brain regions that typically show greater activation at rest than during externally directed cognitive tasks. Both long-term meditators and individuals who have completed 2 weeks of mindfulness training show reduced activation of the default network.” (Mrazek et al., 2013).

The six steps to mindfulness

For those of you who’d like to try this at home, here’s what the mindfulness classes involved:

“(a) sitting in an upright posture with legs crossed and gaze lowered,
(b) distinguishing between naturally arising thoughts and elaborated thinking,
(c) minimizing the distracting quality of past and future concerns by reframing them as mental projections occurring in the present,
(d) using the breath as an anchor for attention during meditation,
(e) repeatedly counting up to 21 consecutive exhalations
(f ) allowing the mind to rest naturally rather than trying to suppress the occurrence of thoughts.”

Now try these 10 mindfulness exercises.

Image credit: Julian Coutinho

Music and Memory: 5 Awesome New Psychology Studies

Music aids language learning, helps injured brains remember, causes widespread brain activation and more…

Music and memory: it aids language learning, helps injured brains remember, causes widespread brain activation and more…

Music and memory have a tremendously strong link.

Hearing an old song can take you back decades in the blink of an eye.

Psychologists have been fascinated by this connection between music and memory.

Here are five recent psychology studies which demonstrate the intimate link between music and memory.

1. Singing aids language learning

The link between music and memory is so strong that it can help you learn a foreign language.

Research by Ludke et al. (2013) found that people trying to learn Hungarian, a notoriously difficult language, performed much better if they sang the Hungarian phrases rather than just saying them.

The researchers think that the melody may provide an extra cue which helps embed the memory.

2. Music and memory: the injured brain

People who have suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), such as in a car accident, often have problems with memory.

Music is increasingly being tested as a way to help bring back forgotten autobiographical memories.

A recent study had participants who had suffered severe TBIs listening to number-one songs from their lifetimes to see what memories were evoked (Baird & Sampson, 2013).

The memories brought back were mostly of people or a period of their lives and were broadly similar to those evoked by control participants who did not have a TBI.

Compared with using a standardised interview–the Autobiographical Memory Interview–playing number-one hits to people who’d suffered TBIs was more effective in eliciting memories.

3. Widespread brain activation

One of the reasons the link between music and memory is so powerful is that it activates such large areas of the brain.

A recent brain imaging study found that music activated the auditory, motor and limbic (emotional) regions (Alluri et al., 2013).

The study found that whether their participants were listening to the Beatles or Vivaldi, largely the same areas of the brain were active.

The motor areas process the rhythm, the auditory areas process the sound, while the limbic regions are associated with the emotions (Alluri et al., 2013).

4. Music can take you back two generations

Classic hits can easily take you back to your teens and twenties.

Most people have particularly strong memories of this time in their lives–psychologists have called it the ‘reminiscence bump’.

But, perhaps surprisingly, one study has shown that people also have mini reminiscence bumps for the music their parents listened to, and even for their grandparents’ music (Krumhansl & Zupnick, 2013).

The study’s lead author, Carol Lynne Krumhansl, explained:

“Music transmitted from generation to generation shapes autobiographical memories, preferences, and emotional responses, a phenomenon we call cascading ‘reminiscence bumps’.
“These new findings point to the impact of music in childhood and likely reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment.”

Another study has shown that we don’t even need to hear the tune to active the link between music and memory–the words are enough (Cady et al., 2008).

For a whole generation, the words “Ice, ice baby”, and for another generation “…living in the gangsta’s paradise” are enough to take them back in time.

5. A unique musical hallucination

The power of the link between music and memory is sometimes frightening.

A recent study from Frontiers in Neurology reported the case of a woman who, one night, suddenly began to hear music playing in her head, like a sort of internal, unstoppable jukebox (Vitorovic & Biller, 2013). The problem continued for months.

When she hummed the songs to her husband, he recognised some of them, but she herself didn’t know what they were or where they came from.

It seemed the songs were so deeply rooted in her memory that she wasn’t consciously aware she knew them. They only came to the surface during these night-time hallucinations.

She was treated with an anti-seizure medication and her symptoms improved a little.

This is the only known case of this kind of musical hallucination.

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

Image credit: flyzipper

Learning Challenging New Skills Like Photography Improves Memory

Three-month-long experiment demonstrates the importance of challenging new activities for older minds.

Older people are often advised to keep active for cognitive health, but passive activities like listening to music or doing puzzles may not be enough.

According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, in order to boost cognition, activities need to be active and mentally taxing.

In their study, Park et al. (2013) randomly divided 221 people aged between 60 and 90 into a series of groups:

One group took up photography or quilting, or both, and engaged in the activity for 15 hours a week over three months.
One control group took part in social activities like playing games or watching movies, but did not learn any new skills.
Another control group completed word puzzles or listened to classical music.

After three months those who had been learning photography or quilting showed improved memory function.

In comparison those listening to music, doing puzzles or engaging in social activities had not improved.

This study clearly shows the importance of engaging with taxing activities, especially in later years. The lead author Denise Park explained:

“It seems it is not enough just to get out and do something–it is important to get out and do something that is unfamiliar and mentally challenging, and that provides broad stimulation mentally and socially. When you are inside your comfort zone you may be outside of the enhancement zone.”

This is one of only a handful of studies to experimentally show the benefits keeping an active mind.

Previous studies have been correlational: in other words they have only an association between staying mentally active and improved cognitive skills.

The problem with these sorts of studies is we don’t know that it’s staying mentally active that is really causing older minds to be sharper. It could be, for example, that people whose minds are sharper are more likely to take on more challenging activities.

However, this study is good evidence that it’s actually the mentally stimulating activities with which people are engaging that really is causing the improvements in memory.

‘Successful’ ageing

It’s also a great study because it includes activities people might actually enjoy!

Who wants to sit, slogging away at brain training apps when you could be doing something fun like photography?

And, of course, it doesn’t have to be photography, it just has to be something which requires your active mental engagement.

You could just as easily see these benefits from learning another language, playing bridge or any other reasonably complex and challenging activity.

It’s interesting to note, though, that in this study learning photography was more beneficial than the quilting, probably because it requires learning so much new information. Quilting, on the other hand, after the initial learning, is mostly a procedural skill.

With the average age in countries around increasing, these types of findings will become more and more important:

“…unlike computer training, productive engagement has the potential to be self-reinforcing and propagate continued learning and intellectual stimulation. […] The present results provide some of the first experimental evidence that learning new things and keeping the mind engaged may be an important key to successful cognitive aging…” (Park et al., 2013)

Image credit: Leo Herbert

Fearful ‘Memories’ Passed Between Generations Through Genetic Code

New study on mice suggests parents’ fears can be passed on to their grandchildren.

A frankly mind-blowing new study suggests traumatic events that happen to a parent could be passed down through their genes onto their children.

The research, published in Nature Neuroscience, was carried out on mice, which were conditioned to become afraid of a particular smell: in fact a smell not unlike cherry blossom (Dias & Ressler, 2013).

Soon the mice began to shudder in its presence.

When their offspring were born and tested, they were also shown to be afraid of the cherry blossom smell, despite never having been exposed to it before.

Even the grandchildren showed the fearful response. So the fearful response towards this smell was passed down two generations.

Epigenetics

The reason this study is so potentially exciting is that evolution is thought to occur mostly through random genetic mutations across many generations.

However, if behaviour could be inherited in this way, it might suggest another route by which creatures could have changed and adapted.

The mechanism for the transmission of this response across generations appears to be through the mice’s sperm.

Although the mice’s DNA sequence remained unchanged, a process is thought to have occurred that changes the way these genes are expressed (DNA methylation).

This is a highly controversial idea and many scientists are skeptical about whether these results can really be true.

But, if they did hold in humans, it could help explain how conditions like phobias, alcoholism or anxiety could affect later generations.

A geneticist at UCL, Professor Marcus Pembrey, commented:

“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously. I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”

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

Image credit: DeeAshley

Lying: False Denials Are Harder to Remember Than False Descriptions

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” ―Mark Twain

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” ―Mark Twain

Lying is easy, anyone can do it–it’s remembering which lies you’ve told and to whom, that’s the tricky part.

And what a person remembers later depends on exactly how they lie, according to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Research and Memory Cognition.

In their research, Vieira and Lane (2013) compared two types of lies, (1) a brief denial and (2) a false description.

Twenty-four participants were asked to remember a series of simple objects. Then, the items were listed again, with some that weren’t seen before, and they were told to either lie or tell the truth about whether they’d seen it before.

Either way–truth or lie–they had to describe the object, so that sometimes this description was made up.

Two days later they tried to remember which items they’d seen, which they’d lied about and which they hadn’t lied about.

The results showed that the brief denials (i.e. they saw the object but said they hadn’t) were most difficult to remember. In comparison, people were much better at remembering their made up descriptions of the objects.

The reason for this is probably that making something up takes effort, so it’s better remembered. Denials are quick and, in comparison, more likely to be forgotten.

On the night of the fourteenth, did you…

Brief denials are important practically because they are very common in criminal interviews and investigations.

A person facing criminal interrogation will be asked several times about the same events.

If they lie about some of those events, the next time they are asked, they have to remember whether they told a lie or the truth. Brief false denials, therefore, may be particularly difficult for suspects to remember.

Canny liars, then, are better off avoiding brief denials, and embroidering a little: the more substance they give the lie, the better the memory is encoded.

There was also an ironic twist in the findings: the more people honestly denied seeing an object, the more likely they were later on to think they actually had seen it. In other words, by repeatedly denying it, they almost came to believe their denial was false!

The reason for this is probably the illusion of truth effect, which is explained by one of the authors, Sean Lane:

“They’re confusing the familiarity of the repetition [with the truth], not realizing that those repeated denials are what makes it seem familiar 48 hours later.”

Image credit: Dyanna Hyde

How to Easily Improve Your Memory

10 surprising and mostly easy ways to improve your memory.

Many of the methods for improving memory–like exercise, chunking, building associations or brain training–involve a fair amount of mental effort.

So here are ten (mostly) very easy ways to improve your memory that are supported by research.

With two or three exceptions, most people can do these with very little effort or expense.

1. Clench your right fist

If you squeeze your right hand into a fist during learning, it can aid memory.

Later on, to aid recall, squeeze your left hand into a fist.

In study by Propper et al. (2013), participants who squeezed their right fist during learning and their left during recall, did better than control groups clenching the other fist or not clenching at all.

2. Chew gum

Chewing gum can help you stay focused on a task and so improve your memory.

A study by Morgan et al. (2013) tested the audio memory of those chewing gum, compared with those who didn’t.

The gum chewers had improved short-term memory compared with non-chewers.

3. Go to sleep

One of the many benefits of sleep is that it makes memory stronger.

That’s because the brain is surprisingly busy during sleep and one of the things it’s doing is working on our memories.

Not only does sleep make our memories stronger, it also restructures and reorganises them.

Studies have shown, for example, that people are more likely to dream about things with a higher value to them, and are subsequently more likely to recall those things (Oudiette et al., 2013).

And, if what’s important to you is learning to play the piano, you could even try listening to the piece while you nap, as one study has shown this helps cement the memory (Anthony et al., 2012).

More on how the mind learns during sleep.

4. Go for a walk

Many people suffer memory problems with advancing years.

But, walking just six miles a week helps to preserve memory in old age.

One study has found that older people who walked six to nine miles per week had greater gray matter volume nine years later than those who were more sedentary (Erickson et al., 2010).

5. Stop smoking

Although the physical benefits of quitting smoking are well-known, it’s less well-known that it will also benefit memory.

That’s because smoking damages the memory, and quitting can almost restore it to normal function (Hefferman et al., 2011).

That’s one more reason to quit (or to be happy that you don’t smoke).

6. Ignore stereotypes

If you think your memory will get much worse with age, then it probably will. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Older people who are reminded of stereotypes about age and memory perform worse in tests (Hess et al., 2003).

So, suffer fewer memory problems with age by paying no heed to the stereotypes.

7. Read Facebook posts

One study has found that people’s memories are much stronger for posts on Facebook than for sentences from books, or even people’s faces.

Mickes et al. (2013) found that Facebook posts were probably easier to remember because they were ‘mind-ready’: they were already in an easily digestible format and written in spontaneous natural speech.

Facebook is also full of juicy gossip, which probably doesn’t hurt!

8. Sniff rosemary

The smell of the essential oil, rosemary, has been shown to improve long-term memory, mental arithmetic and prospective memory–remembering to do things at certain times.

In one study, participants who sat in a room infused with the scent of rosemary performed better on a memory task than a control group (McCready & Moss, 2013).

9. Lose weight

Like smoking, putting on weight is associated with memory problems–but these are also reversible.

Lose some of the weight and memory function is likely to return.

Petterson et al. (2013) found that older, overweight, women whose weight dropped from an average of 85kg (188 pounds) to 77kg (171 pounds), over six months, saw improved memory function.

10. Turn off the computer and sit quietly

Now that you’ve read this article, it’s time to turn off the computer, tablet or phone and sit quietly.

That’s because when we are idle, the brain is actually still performing important memory functions.

Professor Erik Fransén explains:

“The brain is made to go into a less active state, which we might think is wasteful; but [is] probably [when] memory consolidation […] takes place […].
“When we max out our active states with technology […] we remove from the brain part of the processing, and it can’t work.”

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

Image credit: Davey Van Lienden

Exercise Can Improve Long-Term Memory

The right combination of exercise and learning can improve long-term memory.

It’s now well-established that exercise is not just good for your body; it’s also good for your mind.

Exercise improves mood, information processing and makes your thinking more flexible.

But what effect does exercise have on memory? Well, it depends on the type of memory, since it is split into two main types: short and long.

Working memory

Something like short-term memory is usually called ‘working memory’ by psychologists.

Working memory includes what’s in your conscious mind right now and whatever you’re doing with this information. This might include the gist of the last sentence or two and the meanings, conclusions and thoughts you’re having about them. Roughly speaking, it’s the stuff that your mind is working on right now.

Studies suggest that exercise is broadly beneficial for working memory. After 30 minutes exercise, people’s working memory improves. There’s some evidence that accuracy drops a bit, but this is more than made up for by increases in speed (McMorris et al., 2011).

Long-term memory

For psychologists, long-term memory is pretty much what you think it is: it’s anything that leaves conscious thought to be recalled much later.

The effects of exercise on long-term memory are less clear. Some studies show benefits, others not.

But a recent study suggests that exercise only benefits long-term memory under certain conditions (Schmidt-Kassow et al., 2013).

This study had young women trying to learn new words, either after or while they rode an exercise bike.

What they found was that there was a boost to long-term memory when the new vocab was learned during exercise, but not if the learning took place afterwards.

Studies suggest that the exercise should be relatively low-intensity or the brain gets over-stimulated and the benefits may be lost.

We don’t yet know if these benefits extend to other types of learning, or during other types of exercise, but it’s likely they will.

So, if you’re trying to learn a new language, it might be worth listening to those language tapes while you’re working out. Not only will you be keeping fit, but you’ll also be giving yourself a better chance of laying down stronger long-term memories.

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

Image credit: E’Lisa Campbell

How Memory Works: 21 Psychological Insights

Find out how memory twists, pops, distorts, persists and decays, along with the odd tip on how to improve it.

“You think you have a memory; but it has you!” —John Irving.

Irving’s quote nicely captures our hunch that we are slaves to our memories. Will I recall someone’s name? What moment from my past will come back to delight, perplex or daunt me? And at other times we ask ourselves why we seem unable to forget.

These uncertainties prompt many people to say their memory is awful, a comment distinguished memory researcher Professor Alan Baddeley hears all the time. But be fair, he argues:

“I have a good memory and would argue, despite its occasionally embarrassing fallibility, that both my memory and yours exceed that of the best computer in terms of capacity, flexibility, and durability.” (Baddeley, 1999)

At times it may not feel like it and that’s partly because human memory follows its own rules, not the ones we imagine or prefer. To help us use our memories more effectively we need a better understanding of how it really works so that, hopefully, we can forgive its eccentricities.

Here are 21 of my favourite articles on the mysteries of memory, culled from PsyBlog’s archives:

How Memory Works: 10 Things Most People Get Wrong – “If we remembered everything we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” —William James
Why People’s Names Are So Hard to Remember – Why people’s names are more difficult to remember than their jobs, hobbies or home towns.
How Memories are Distorted and Invented: Misattribution – One evening in 1975 an unsuspecting Australian psychologist, Donald M. Thomson, walked into a television studio to discuss the psychology of eyewitness testimony, little did he know…
Memory Improved 20% by Nature Walk – Short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene.
Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise? – The benefits of forgetting.
Mind Pops: Memories That Come From Nowhere – Cheese grater. Why do odd images suddenly pop into your head for no reason?
How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory – How recall fades over time.
Reconstructing the Past: How Recalling Memories Alters Them – Experiment shows both the enhancing and distorting effects of recall on the original memories.
Can Doodling Improve Memory and Concentration? – Doodling may be more than just a pleasant waste of time and paper.
On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories – College students have one or two ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ moments a week, while older adults have between two to four per week.
Six Memory Myths – Can flashbulb memories be distorted? Some of the most widespread beliefs about memory are plain wrong.
Memory Improved By Saying Words Aloud – Memory can be improved by vocalising or sub-vocalising words.
Infant Memory Works From Very Early – Some argue it’s impossible for us to remember anything much from before around two to four years of age—but is that true?
Memories Are Made of This – Study records the activation of human brain cells deep inside the living brain as memories are formed and recalled.
Memory Enhanced by a Simple Break After Reading – If you find it difficult to remember what you’ve read, try giving the memory time to consolidate.
The Persistence of Memory – Being unable to forget is a double-edged sword.
7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Memory Without Any Training – Boost your memory by writing about your problems, predicting your performance and more…
How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories – What were your political views a decade ago? How good was your relationship last year? Studies show we often assume things haven’t changed, when in fact they have.
The Temporal Doppler Effect: Why The Future Feels Closer Than The Past – Like the sound of a passing ambulance siren, our perception of time distorts as it shoots by.
Implanting False Memories: Lost in the Mall & Paul Ingram – “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is that you think you remember?” — Elizabeth Loftus
Offline Learning: How The Mind Learns During Sleep – A nap as short as 6 minutes after learning can help to consolidate learning and improve performance.
10 Surprising and (Mostly) Easy Ways to Improve Your Memory – Improve your memory by clenching your right fist, chewing gum, walking, ignoring stereotypes, sniffing rosemary and more…

Image credit: Mike Bailey-Gates