Category: Memory

Memory is dynamic, but it needs this clue as to what it should store away so you remember more.

Telling someone else a piece of information helps lodges it into your own memory more securely, psychological research finds.

People in the study who immediately told others a piece of information could remember more later and they remembered it for longer.

Dr Melanie Sekeres, the study’s lead author, explained:

“This has to be actively replaying or re-generating the information — for example, by telling someone the particulars, as opposed to just simply re-reading the textbook or class notes and studying it again later.

A week later, the memory was just as good.

Telling someone else about what you’ve learned is a really effective way for students to study instead of just re-reading the textbook or class notes.”

For the study students were trying to remember the general plots of films and certain details in the films.

Small cues — like the title of the film — were also enough to help students recall the film’s details.

Dr Sekeres said:

“With a cue, suddenly, a lot of those details will come back.

We don’t permanently forget them, which would indicate lack of storage — we just can’t immediately access them.

And that’s good.

That means our memories aren’t as bad as we think.”

Dr Sekeres explained the nature of the films used in the study:

“We chose mostly foreign films and somewhat obscure clips that we thought most undergraduates would not have seen.

The clips all contained brief scenes of normal, everyday events that mimicked the kind of events you might experience in a day, such as a family having dinner or kids playing at a park.”

How to remember more

Trying to explain the information to someone else can be tiring, but the effort is worth it:

“We tell students to test yourself, force yourself to tell someone about the lecture.

Even by writing out some questions for yourself about the information, then later answering them yourself, you are more likely to remember the information.

Unfortunately, simply re-reading or passively listening to a recording of your lecture in the hopes of remembering the information isn’t a great study strategy by comparison.”

The reason testing and re-testing works is because the brain is adaptive:

“We remember the important things, for the most part, and we forget the unimportant details.

You don’t want your brain to search through tons of useless information.”

The study was published in the journal Learning & Memory (Sekeres et al., 2016).

The advice comes from a study of chronic inflammation in the body.

The number one cause of memory loss is simply aging.

A little forgetfulness is normal and does not necessarily indicate a problem.

However, there are ways to fight against this natural process and retain a better memory.

The three best ways to avoid memory loss later in life are:

1. Eating an anti-inflammatory heart-healthy diet,
2. getting enough sleep,
3. and exercising regularly.

The advice comes from a study of chronic inflammation in the body.

Inflammation in middle age is linked to memory and thinking problems later on, research shows.

The main problem is chronic inflammation that continues for months or even years.

Symptoms of chronic inflammation include joint pain and stiffness, digestive problems and fatigue.

Dr  Keenan A. Walker, the study’s first author, said:

“Many of the processes that can lead to a decline in thinking and memory skills are believed to begin in middle age, and it is in middle age that they may also be most responsive to intervention.

Our results show that chronic inflammation may be an important target for intervention.

However, it’s also possible that chronic inflammation is not a cause and instead a marker of, or even a response to, neurodegenerative brain diseases that can lead to cognitive decline.”

The study followed 12,336 people for an average of 20 years.

All were given blood tests for inflammation markers.

The results showed that people with the highest levels of inflammation also had the worst thinking and memory skills.

Those with the highest levels of inflammation had 8 percent worse scores on cognitive tests than those with the lowest levels.

Dr  Walker continued:

“Chronic inflammation is tough on the body, and can damage joints, internal organs, tissue and cells.

It can also lead to heart disease, stroke and cancer.

While other studies have looked at chronic inflammation and its effects on the brain in older people, our large study investigated chronic inflammation beginning in middle age and showed that it may contribute to cognitive decline in the decades leading up to old age.”

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Walker et al., 2019).

Why some memories last a lifetime and others are quickly forgotten.

Memories that last a lifetime need to be linked to lots of other memories, plus they need to be a bit weird.

These are the two key components of memories that have the potential to last a lifetime.

Professor Per Sederberg, an expert on memory, thinks the idea of peculiarity is vital to understanding memory:

“You have to build a memory on the scaffolding of what you already know, but then you have to violate the expectations somewhat.

It has to be a little bit weird.”

This ‘scaffolding’ means connections to other memories.

For example, memories of our childhoods are linked to lots of other memories about our families and the places we lived.

And which are the stories we remember best — the ones that stand out?

Of course, it is the ones where something unusual happened: when Grandad told you he was in a band years ago and astonished you by playing the guitar.

It is when you were cycling home and happened to pass your mother in the street wearing a dragon costume and holding a cricket bat.

How memories are stored and retrieved

In one of Professor Sederberg’s studies people wore smartphones around their necks for a month.

These automatically took photos at random intervals.

Later, they relived these memories in the brain scanner so researchers could see where and how the memories were stored and retrieved.

Think of all your memories as being like a vast network, Professor Sederberg said:

“If we want to be able to retrieve a memory later, you want to build a rich web.

It should connect to other memories in multiple ways, so there are many ways for our mind to get back to it.

You want to have a lot of different ways to get to any individual memory.”

Memorable experiences often happen in familiar contexts, but have some peculiar, unpredictable aspect, said Professor Sederberg:

“Those peculiar experiences are the things that stand out, that make a more lasting memory.”

This is why some memories last a lifetime and others are quickly forgotten.

Professor Sederberg was speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in France on June 19. The study referenced was published in the journal PNAS (Nielson et al., 2015).

Working memory is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.

Even healthy young people can improve their memory by increasing their omega-3 intake, research finds.

The six-month study showed that omega-3 supplements increased people’s working memory.

Professor Bita Moghaddam, a study author, said:

“Before seeing this data, I would have said it was impossible to move young healthy individuals above their cognitive best.

We found that members of this population can enhance their working memory performance even further, despite their already being at the top of their cognitive game.”

Working memory is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.

Better working memory has been linked to improved learning, attention and other vital outcomes.

Dr Matthew Muldoon, a study co-author, said:

“So many of the previous studies have been done with the elderly or people with medical conditions, leaving this unique population of young adults unaddressed.

But what about our highest-functioning periods?

Can we help the brain achieve its full potential by adapting our healthy behaviors in our young adult life?

We found that we absolutely can.”

The team were also hoping to find the mechanism in the brain that was linked to the improvement in working memory.

Unfortunately brain scans did not reveal evidence of the mechanism they were looking for.

Dr Rajesh Narendarn, the study’s first author, said:

“It is really interesting that diets enriched with Omega-3 fatty acid can enhance cognition in highly functional young individuals.

Nevertheless, it was a bit disappointing that our imaging studies were unable to clarify the mechanisms by which it enhances working memory.”

Participants in the study took a supplement called Lovaza (essentially, fish oil or omega-3) at a dosage of 2g per day.

The supplement had roughly equal amounts of DHA and EPA.

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE (Narendran et al., 2012).

Each exercise session was only 20-minutes long.

Short bursts of high-intensity exercise provide a considerable boost to memory, research finds.

The study showed that healthy young adults increased their memory performance in a relatively short period of time.

Each exercise session was only 20-minutes long, during which they did short bouts of intense exercise.

Those with the greatest fitness gains saw increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

This is a protein that supports the function, growth and survival of brain cells.

Dr Jennifer Heisz, the study’s first author, said:

“Improvements in this type of memory from exercise might help to explain the previously established link between aerobic exercise and better academic performance.

At the other end of our lifespan, as we reach our senior years, we might expect to see even greater benefits in individuals with memory impairment brought on by conditions such as dementia.”

For the study, exercise training was compared with a control group among 95 people.

The high-intensity exercise was particularly beneficial to high-interference memory.

When we try to retrieve something from memory, the retrieval process can be hampered by other similar memories.

For example, when trying to remember someone’s name beginning with the letter ‘J’, the memory might return ‘Jack’, ‘James’ and ‘Jeremy’, before you remember the man’s name is ‘Jeff’.

After exercise, people found it easier to recall memories in these sorts of situations.

Dr Heisz said they were now looking at older adults to see if the same findings held true:

“One hypothesis is that we will see greater benefits for older adults given that this type of memory declines with age.

However, the availability of neurotrophic factors also declines with age and this may mean that we do not get the synergistic effects.”

The study was published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (Heisz et al., 2017).