There’s a term called “the Zeigarnik Effect” that psychologists use to describe how people tend to remember unfinished tasks, to keep them at the top of their mind, even when they need to move on to another task. This memory fills up the working space in the brain and makes subsequent tasks harder to focus on. In a 2011 study, researchers at Florida State University proved that people who had written plans for such tasks and goals were able to focus on what came next, even if they weren’t able to complete the tasks at that time. By having a confirmed plan to deal with the unfinished task, a person’s memory of all the details related to that task is “cleared out” in effect, and moved from the working memory storage area to the long-term memory storage area, leaving the active working memory free to handle the new task.

In his 2001 book “Getting Things Done,” productivity expert David Allen encourages the use of to-do lists and daily planners to help organize and clear out working memory, allowing people to easily focus on what they need to do in the moment, rather than cluttering up their thought processes with what they need to do in the future. His GTD system has been shown to increase efficiency, and it’s an excellent way to use lists – not as a way to remember things, but as a way to not have to remember them consciously, or not until they’re needed.

Organizing your thoughts like this is something that will help you improve your memory skills, and the tricks and tips related to time and task management will support your work on memory improvement.

References: Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. E.J. Masicampo and R. F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University (2011)
Getting Things Done. www.davidco.com

What’s interesting is that studies have proven that for the people who do pass the qualifying test, all that memorization paid off not only in an operating permit, but also in a better-operating brain. As a study conducted at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London proved in 2011, the brains of the successful candidates showed a marked increase in the size of the hippocampus due to a growth in new nerve cells. The nerve cells in this area of the brain are crucially important in memory-related information processing. Images taken of each candidate’s brain before and after “The Knowledge” showed that this growth was only apparent in those people who actually passed the test. Researchers speculated that the connections between the nerves likely also became stronger.

Obviously, spending three years working hard on memorizing anything, not just the London A-Z, will help create this same effect. That means that the more you practice your memorization skills, the more you’ll be taking advantage of your brain’s plasticity, and encouraging the growth of new nerve cells. When your goal is both knowledge and a better brain, you can’t go wrong with daily memory practice.

One of the best ways to challenge your memory is to work with things that are complicated and difficult to remember. Tongue twisters are an excellent way to boost your memory skills, because they’re hard enough to make your brain really work, but short enough that you won’t get bored or frustrated trying to memorize them. Like any athlete, the more you practice, the better you’ll get at your skill. When it comes to developing a strong memory, daily practice is essential. Challenge your brain and your memory by learning and memorizing these tongue twisters, and you’ll reach your goal of having ultimate memory skills!

She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore.
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure.
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore
Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.

A tree toad loved a she-toad
Who lived up in a tree.
He was a two-toed tree toad
But a three-toed toad was she.
The two-toed tree toad tried to win
The three-toed she-toad’s heart,
For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground
That the three-toed tree toad trod.
But the two-toed tree toad tried in vain.
He couldn’t please her whim.
From her tree toad bower
With her three-toed power
The she-toad vetoed him.

Betty Botter had some butter,
“But,” she said, “this butter’s bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter, it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter– that would make my batter better.”
So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So ’twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

Once upon a barren moor
There dwelt a bear, also a boar.
The bear could not bear the boar.
The boar thought the bear a bore.
At last the bear could bear no more
Of that boar that bored him on the moor,
And so one morn he bored the boar
That boar will bore the bear no more.

What’s your favorite tongue twister?

While most of the studies that have been done to date concentrate on working with children, the evidence is starting to accumulate that the benefits of learning a second language are experienced by people at any age. It’s true that it’s much easier to learn a new language if you’re young, while your growing and flexible brain is still in the process of absorbing knowledge automatically. However, that doesn’t mean that adults shouldn’t consider taking a class in Spanish or German to get that flexibility back. In fact, if you’re a parent with a child in school, think about taking a class in the language your child is studying, so you can practice together. If your child is learning English as a second language (ESL) then you might want to look into a tutoring program that’s fun to use, like the video lessons provided by Learn English 232.

In recent studies, researchers have found that the brains of children who speak multiple languages show more activity and growth in the prefrontal cortex. Because the brain continues to develop up until the teenage years are over, that leaves many opportunities for a child to start learning a new language. The increased strength in the physical and neural connections created by this language study is now proving to help prevent dementia and other age-related diseases, which are often caused by weakened connections. As Bialystok and the rest of her research team discovered when looking through hospital records, older people who grew up bilingual, and who continued to speak more than one language, had at least a four-year delay in any signs of cognitive decay, when compared to people of the same age who only spoke one language.

Don’t wait for more evidence to come in on the benefits of bilingualism – start learning a new language today!

References: Bialystok, E., Craik, F., Green, D., Gollan, T. Bilingual Minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Association for Psychological Science (2009).
Willis, J. Bilingual Brains – Smarter & Faster. Psychology Today (2012).

Medical professionals, caregivers, family, friends, and cancer patients themselves have always known that there is a definite mental and emotional impact during cancer treatment, especially if chemotherapy is involved. However, it’s now clear that the chemicals used in this treatment affect the brain directly, and scientists are learning exactly how that happens. A recent study led by Dr. Rachel Lagos at West Virginia University used computerized brain scans to map the metabolism of a patient’s brain, something that allowed them to target brain functions rather than simply the physical effects of chemotherapy treatment. What Dr. Lagos’ study found is that in the 128 patients scanned both before and after chemotherapy treatment, there was a significant decrease in activity in the parts of the brain responsible for memory and planning. This means that patients might not just be depressed and lacking energy after treatment – they might actually not be able to use their brains in the same way as they did before. Knowing this, says Lagos, medical providers and caregivers will be better able to help these patients in their post-treatment recovery process.

Read more about the study in this press release from the Radiological Society of North America.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana, in “The Life of Reason” (1905)

Experience is the teacher of all things.
- Julius Caesar, in “Commentaries on the Civil War” (c. 50 CE)

Memory plays a part in every aspect of our lives. If you’ve started working on improving your memory, it was probably with the goal of being able to remember the documents you need to read for work or school, or to get better at remembering people’s names, or even to counter the annoying habit you seem to be developing of always forgetting where you left your cell phone or keys. It’s true that when you work on improving any of these aspects of memory, you’ll strengthen all parts of your brain and memory skills, but there’s a memory-building function going on in your mind every minute of the day, and that’s autobiographical memory. Basically, this is the set of thoughts related to you yourself, and all of the “what, where, when, who, and how” details that make up the events of your daily life. They can include sensory information like sounds and smells, or be more along the lines of dates and facts you learned in 8th-grade history class. All of these autobiographical memories tend to tie together and support each other. You might remember learning about the American Civil War in that 8th-grade history class, but you also probably remember the look of the desk or table where you were sitting, and the sound of the teacher’s voice, and maybe even the nervous feeling you got when that cute kid in the next row seemed to be looking at you and smiling right at you!.

These memories form part of our experiences in the past, and help us know what to do in the future in those same situations. When you find someone attractive looking at you and smiling, you’ll remember what it felt like to be a nervous teenager, and perhaps you can recognize that nervousness and set it aside so that you can have a conversation with them. Later, the two of you will have a shared memory of that conversation, something that builds social bonds between people. And years into the future, you can look back at that first conversation and recognize that the person you were back then made you the person you are now. That sense of “person” wouldn’t be possible without your memories, or at least not in the same way. If you suddenly forgot everything about your past, would you know what it meant to be “you”?

The Center on Autobiographical Memory Research at Aarhus University (Denmark) will be hosting a conference on the topic of autobiographical memory in June. If you’re interested in learning about the social aspects of autobiographical memory, and the link between memory and imagination, we encourage you to attend. This conference should be particularly useful for PhD students in the memory research field, who get a discount on the price of registration.

While you sleep, your brain processes and stores the information you’ve learned during the day. New studies are finding that you can prompt your brain to do that even more efficiently if you concentrate on the fact that you’re going to be given a test on that information after you wake up. Researchers at the Universities of Lübeck and Tübingen in Germany studied groups of people who were given new information to learn. These groups did their learning in several different ways: either they learned in the morning, or they learned at night right before sleeping, and some groups were told that they would be tested on that information, while others weren’t. The scientists found that the best way to remember new information came when the study participants were told that they were going to be quizzed, and were also given the new information right before they slept. As the study revealed, the brain wave patterns of this last group showed the most activity in the area of memory processing and storage. This means that if you have something you need to learn, focus on it at night so that there is little or no time between studying and sleep, especially on the night before you’ll be tested.

Even if you’re not studying for a test, tell yourself you are, and your brain will be prompted to put special emphasis on the memory processing. Quiz yourself the next day with a review session, or have friends, fellow students, or coworkers give you that quiz. Whether it’s a review or a real test, going over the information the next morning will solidify the knowledge in your brain, ensuring good recall and long-lasting memory storage.

Most doctors, researchers, and scientists who study the connection between brain and body recommend getting at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week (or more), with the addition of a quick, intense, high-impact exercise session at the end of the 30 minutes. The moderate exercise gets your blood moving, your muscles loose, and the oxygen pumping from your lungs through your body and up into your brain. When you add two or three minutes of high-intensity exercise (for example, running as fast as you can up a flight of stairs) you’ll shift your body into high gear. You’re essentially moving your overall metabolism up a level, and that’s something that will last for several days, increasing your body’s ability to burn fat. High-intensity exercise also helps you regulate your insulin and glucose levels, which is important for brain function; your brain relies on a constant, steady supply of glucose for nutrition, not an up-and-down level that comes from irregular eating habits.

You might not count meditation as an exercise, but it’s an excellent way to regulate your body’s chemistry, and promote good oxygen flow. When you practice deep, regular breathing, you help your body flush out toxins as well as increase the flow of oxygen to your brain. Alternate your workouts with low-impact breathing exercises, and you’ll help your brain stay healthy and balanced.

Remember, it’s never too late to start improving your health! If you have concerns about your health and whether you might run risks when starting a new exercise program, consult your medical provider.

University of Leicester researcher Kate Garland conducted a study in which she compared the time it took for two groups of students to read and understand unfamiliar material (in the study, psychology students were given complicated economic texts to read). While both groups eventually were able to process the information and respond accurately to questions, it took the e-text readers much longer, requiring more repetition and review of the same text. Other researchers, including neurobiologist Mark Changizi, explain that part of the reading process involves our evolutionary tendency to incorporate location into information processing, something we do without realizing it when reading. For example, when you’re reading a paper book and you’re halfway through the text, it’s easy to look at the book and see that you’re halfway through. If there’s a fact you need on the page at this halfway mark, you’ll associate the fact with the location, and even if you don’t go back to check that page, your brain will have created that additional link that makes the memory stronger.

One of the reasons, then, why e-books might make it harder to remember things (or easier to forget them, depending on your perspective) is that there are few if any visual clues associated with the location of information as we read. There’s no way to tell the beginning from the end, the top of the page from the bottom, as we scroll through the text. Finally, think about the last time you were reading a document for work – you probably had several moments when you paused and flipped back a page or two to verify something before continuing to read. In fact, you probably did that automatically and didn’t think about it; it’s a natural tendency, and easy to do with a paper book. If you’ve got a computerized text, on the other hand, “flipping back” means scrolling up through text that doesn’t have the visual markers that make this task easy. You might subconsciously decide it’s too much work, and keep moving forward even if you really do need to go back to confirm a detail. Without that confirmation, your memory might be weaker.

As technology improves, and as we get better at using it, these problems may disappear. For now, keep in mind that when you’re using an e-book, you might be leaving yourself open for some missing memories in the future.

A joint study by doctors and researchers at Kaiser Permanente Southern California and Boston College looked at a group of over two thousand women in their late 70s and early 80s who showed no signs of dementia at the time the study started. They followed these women for the next few years, and compared their cognitive health at the end of the four-year study period. The researchers found that women who had larger social networks, who spent time talking and interacting with friends and family regularly, were much less likely to develop dementia. In fact, as the study found, women who had this interaction daily actually cut their risk of dementia in half. The best results came when women combined socializing with physical exercise, something that has also been proven to reduce the risk of cognitive disease and dementia.

It’s fun to do things with friends, and you’ll get a boost of energy and protect your brain as well if you spend time each day walking and talking together, playing golf in a group, or even just strolling through a museum. As an added benefit, you can use these outings as memory recall exercises later. For example, if you go for a walk, test each other the next day to remember whether you saw anyone walking their dog, or how many of the streets you crossed had their “don’t walk” signal on when you arrived at the corner. After a visit to a museum or art gallery, talk about what you saw, and quiz your friends on the spelling of the artist’s name, or any other details you might have noticed. Combining friends and fun is a great way to keep your brain active and your social networks strong!