For example, if you associate the Bellagio Resort and Casino in Vegas with its location on a map or the fact that the dancing fountain show takes place every 30 minutes, you're encoding the Bellagio with semantic memory. This is good to know because research suggests we remember things better and retain them longer when we associate meaning to them using semantic encoding. All of these little bits and pieces of information are then stored in different areas of your brain. Your neurons the nerve cells in your brain pass signals to each other about what you perceived, effectively "talking" with each other and building either temporary or long-lasting connections.
It's that neural activity and the strength of those connections that make a memory, neuroscientists believe. There are two kinds of memory: short-term and long-term. Short-term or working memory is like your brain's scratchpad. It's when your brain temporarily stores information before either dismissing it or transferring it to long-term memory—for example, remembering what you want to order for lunch before calling the takeout place.
Once your food is delivered and eaten, your brain can let go of that info. Long-term memories are those memories you hold on to for a few days or many years--things like how to ride a bike or the first dinner you had with the first person you fell in love with. Both kinds of memories can weaken with age because the brain loses cells critical to those connections between neurons over time--but that's not inevitable.
As with muscle strength, you can exercise your brain; with memory, it's "use it or lose it. And finally, to retrieve a memory, your brain "replays" or revisits the nerve pathways created when the memory was formed. Repeatedly recalling information helps strengthen those connections and your memories, which is why techniques like reviewing your notes or using flashcards help you retain information.
However, when you remember something, it's not an exact reproduction of the first time you experienced an event or came across a fact, because your own awareness of the current situation gets mixed in with the memory. As The Human Memory explains :. Memories are not frozen in time, and new information and suggestions may become incorporated into old memories over time.
Thus, remembering can be thought of as an act of creative reimagination. That's also why people can have false memories, or their memories of events might change over time. Now that we know some of how memory works, we can use that understanding to improve our memory. We'll start with the lifestyle changes we can make, since they can improve more than just our memory, and then go over specific memorization techniques.
In general, increasing your overall health with better sleep, regular exercise, and better nutrition will improve your brain health--including memory--as well as your physical health. These three things will give you the biggest bang for your buck in preventing memory loss and improving your memory overall. Here's an easy way to boost your memory: Get a good night's sleep or take a power nap after learning something new. One research study found that people who slept for 8 hours after learning new faces and names were better able to remember them compared to those who didn't get the sleep opportunity.
And in an analysis of two research datasets , psychologist Nicolas Dumay determined that not only does sleep protect our brains from forgetting memories, it also helps us retrieve memories better.
Why is this? It appears that sleep "resets" our brains and is critical for memory and learning. If you're sleep-deprived, the brain's neurons become over-connected with so much electrical activity that new memories can't be saved.
So this makes the case against late-night cramming for a test or staying up all night to rehearse your presentation. As the New York Times explains :. Studies have found that the first half of the night contains the richest dose of so-called deep sleep — the knocked-out-cold variety — and this is when the brain consolidates facts and figures and new words. Naps count too! So sleep on it. If your boss or co-workers catch you napping at work, just show them these findings.
Just as sleep is important for both your physical and mental health, so too is that other pillar of health: exercise. Our brains rely on oxygen to function properly, and to get that oxygen, we need a healthy flow of oxygen-rich blood to our brains. Guess what? Exercise improves blood flow to the brain. Researchers at the National Institute on Ageing discovered that aerobic exercise, such as running, is linked with improved memory.
Exercise such as this triggers high levels of a protein called cathepsin B, which travels to the brain to trigger neuron growth and new connections in the hippocampus, an area in the brain believed to be critical for memory.
The tests were done on mice, monkeys, and 43 sedentary university students who were forced to get fit for the study. Those subjects with the largest improvements in memory? You guessed it: those with the largest increase in cathepsin B after physical activity. Don't rush to get your running shoes on just yet, though. After studying or learning something new, it might pay to wait. Exercising about 4 hours after learning might be better for improving memory than exercising immediately after.
Scientists are still unsure why delaying exercise is more effective than working out immediately, but perhaps our brains need time to soak in new information before that brain-boosting exercise. We don't mean to sound like your mom or doctor with all this advice, but here's the last lifestyle-based recommendation: Eat healthier.
You've probably guessed it, but saturated and trans fats--the kind you get from red meat and butter--are linked to poorer memory.
Just as cholesterol can build up in your heart's arteries, it can build up in your brain. Harvard Health explains :.
The buildup of cholesterol plaques in brain blood vessels can damage brain tissue, either through small blockages that cause silent strokes, or a larger, more catastrophic stroke.
Either way, brain cells are deprived of the oxygen-rich blood they need to function normally, which can compromise thinking and memory. Diets such as the Mediterranean diet, which consists mostly of vegetables and fruit, olive oil, seafood, and nuts—rich in healthy unsaturated fats—have been linked in numerous studies to improvements in memory and lower rates of memory decline.
Ready to feed your brain? Here's the Mayo Clinic's guide to getting started with the Mediterranean diet. Beyond living a healthy lifestyle, specific memory techniques will help you better remember details of anything you're learning. The most common mnemonics help you quickly remember words or phrases. Music Mnemonics: Music is a powerful mnemonic because it provides a structure for information and encourages repetition.
It's a lot easier to remember a catchy song than it is to remember a long string of words or letters, such as your bank account password.
It's also why advertisers often use jingles to make their messages stick in your head. Don't get me started with that Kars4Kids jingle. You probably learned the alphabet through the ABC song, and if you're studying a popular subject, chances are there's a song for that, like learning the 50 states in the USA with the Fifty Nifty United States song or learning all the elements with the periodic table song.
Rhyming Mnemonics: Perhaps you're familiar with the rhyme that starts with "30 days hath September, April, June, and November"? Rhymes are similar to music mnemonics. When the end of every line rhymes, it creates a song-like pattern that's easy to remember. One expression I learned from watching a cooking show: "Looks the same, cooks the same"—a reminder to chop and dice ingredients uniformly for even cooking.
The Rhyming Peg System: You can use number rhymes to memorize a list of items using the " peg system " also known as the "hook system". In this system, for each number, you memorize an image of a word that rhymes with it.
That image provides a "hook" or "peg" for things you want to remember, especially in order. So, for example, let's say you had a grocery list of items to buy: milk, cookies, bananas, and bacon. With the peg system, you'd:. First learn or create the rhyming peg. And so on. Form a vivid mental image of the rhyming object for each number. What does that bread bun look like? What kind of shoe is it?
What color are the leaves on the tree? What kind of hardware does the door have? For each item on your grocery list, picture the rhyming object with your list item. Then see a box of cookies falling into a lion's cage at the zoo, a maple tree inside the store with bananas hanging off of a branch, and slices of bacon stuffed in the mailbox slot of a black door.
It takes some work and creativity to memorize a list this way, but you'll retain that information much longer than if you just tried to memorize the words in order. And once you've got the basic rhyming peg down, you can reuse this for any future lists. Resources: Peglist. And check out hundreds of mnemonic devices you can use in everyday life or to learn a new subject. The memory palace is a mnemonic device that's as tried-and-true as it gets—and deserves a section of its own.
Invented by orators in ancient Roman and Greek times, the memory palace or mind palace or "method of loci" technique is both effective and enjoyable to use, whether you're trying to remember a speech you have to give, details of a case you're working on a la Sherlock Holmes , or your grocery list.
In fact, four-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis —who claims to have an average memory—says that "The number one technique that we top memory athletes use is still and will always be the memory palace. When we experience an event, our brains tie the sights, smells, sounds, and our own impressions together into a relationship. That relationship itself is the memory of the event.
Unlike computer memories, a human memory is not a discrete thing that exists at a particular location; instead, it is an abstract relationship amongst thoughts that arises out of neural activity spread over the whole brain. But how is the memory relationship actually made? The process from both a biological and a behavioral perspective is critically dependent on reinforcement.
Reinforcement can also occur through emotional arousal; most people remember where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was shot because of the highly emotional content of that event. Arousal is also a product of attention, so memories can be reinforced independent of context by paying careful attention and consciously attempting to remember. Remembering a New Face Reinforcement is important in forming memories because it moves the memory relationship from short-lived categories to longer-lasting ones.
At first this information is loosely held in immediate memory, just long enough for the event to play itself out.
Immediate memories are held in various modality-specific regions of the brain, meaning that immediate visual memory is probably held in visual parts of the brain, immediate auditory memory in auditory parts of the brain, and so on.
If you paid attention during the introduction, the relationship between sight, sound, and awareness is brought together into working memory, somewhere in the prefrontal lobe of the brain.
When the event moves from immediate memory to working memory, certain features will be lost. The loss of distracting information is an important feature of human memory, and is critical for efficient storage and recollection of experiences.
At this point you might rehearse the event by saying the name to yourself, or by making up a mnemonic John Byrd, who has a big hook nose like a bird. The process of converting working memory into long-term memory is called consolidation, and again, it is characterized by the loss of distracting information. Several days after meeting Mr. Byrd you may not be able to remember what color his tie was or whether he wore a wristwatch, but you will still remember his face, his name, and the person who introduced you to him.
The consolidation phase of memory formation is sensitive to interruption; if you are distracted just after meeting Mr. Byrd, you may have trouble remembering his name later. The actual ability to smell is highly linked to memory.
Research has shown that when areas of the brain connected to memory are damaged, the ability to identify smells is actually impaired. In order to identify a scent, you must remember when you have smelled it before and then connect it to visual information that occurred at the same time. According to some research, studying information in the presence of an odor actually increases the vividness and intensity of that remembered information when you smell that odor again. Researchers have long believed that changes in brain neurons are associated with the formation of memories.
Today, most experts believe that memory creation is associated with the strengthening of existing connections or the growth of new connections between neurons.
The connections between nerve cells are known as synapses and they allow information carried in the form of nerve impulses to travel from one neuron to the next. In the human brain, there are trillions of synapses forming a complex and flexible network that allows us to feel, behave, and think. It is the changes in the synaptic connections in areas of the brain such as the cerebral cortex and hippocampus that is associated with the learning and retention of new information.
In one study conducted at the New York School of Medicine, researchers were able to observe synapse formation in the brains of genetically engineered mice.
This growth rate coincided with the rapid development of the visual cortex. While a large number of these tiny protrusions eventually faded with age, many did continue their formation into fully-fledged spines. You just need to modify the strength of the preexisting synapses for short-term learning and memory. However, it's likely that few synapses are made or eliminated to achieve long-term memory.
Clearly, maintaining a healthy brain and synapses is critical. Deterioration of synapses due to diseases or neurotoxins is associated with cognitive problems, memory loss, changes in mood, and other alterations in brain function. You have probably heard about many of the reasons to get a good night's sleep. Since the s, researchers have noted the important connection between sleep and memory. In one classic experiment conducted in , researchers found that depriving participants of sleep impaired their ability to improve performance on a line identification task.
In addition to aiding in memory, sleep also plays an essential role in learning new information. Researchers have found that depriving students of sleep after learning a new skill significantly decreased memory of that skill up to three days later. Researchers have found, however, that sleep's influence on procedural memory is much stronger than it is for declarative memory.
Procedural memories are those that involve motor and perceptual skills, while declarative memories are those that involve the memorization of facts. While Alzheimer's disease and other age-related memory problems affect many older adults, the loss of memory during old-age might not inevitable. Some types of memory even increase with age.
While researchers are still working to understand why exactly some elderly adults manage to maintain an excellent memory while others struggle, a few factors have been implicated so far.
First, many experts believe that there is a genetic component to memory retention during old age. Secondly, lifestyle choices are also believed to play an important role. Bruce S. So what are some steps you can take to stave off the negative effects of aging? According to experts, having a strong sense of self-efficacy has been associated with maintaining good memory abilities during old age.
Self-efficacy refers to the sense of control that people have over their own lives and destiny. This strong sense of self-efficacy has also been linked to lowered stress levels. As mentioned previously, high levels of chronic stress have been connected to deterioration in the memory centers of the brain.
While there is no simple "quick fix" for ensuring that your memory stays intact as you age, researchers believe that avoiding stress, leading an active lifestyle, and remaining mentally engaged are important ways to decrease your risk of memory loss. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. National Library of Medicine.
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