Why is it that so many of us can remember our childhood phone number or the name of our first crush, but we can’t remember where we left our keys three hours ago?
There are many things we can do to keep our memories sharp as we get older, including getting a good regular night’s sleep, staying physically active to maintain brain health, and making use of lists and apps to keep our busy lives organized.
But recent science has found a few other tricks that can give our brains a boost, helping us better retain and recall what we learn. Here’s a look at a few of them:
Power naps can rev up memory
Naps are great for cats and kids, but they might also help grown-ups with their recall abilities.
A recent small study from German researchers published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory found that a short daytime nap in the middle of the day lasting about 45 minutes to an hour could be just what our brains need to improve some kinds of memory.
The study was a small one and involved only 41 participants. Researchers had volunteers learn single words, phone numbers, and pairs of words that were seemingly unrelated -- words such as “milk-taxi.” Half the participants were then allowed to take a snooze, while the others were asked to watch a DVD.
Those who had taken a nap did much better at remembering the word pairs than the participants who watched the movie. In fact, they performed almost five times better. But interestingly, they didn’t fare as well at remembering the single words and phone numbers.
The researchers say their findings suggest that a concentrated period of learning followed by a short sleep may not help with all forms or memory but it can help boost “associative memory,” meaning the ability to remember items linked together.
Curiousity can prep the brain for remembering
It’s not surprising to hear that when we are genuinely interested in a topic, we tend to pay closer attention. But new research has found that curiosity might actually “jolt” our brain awake and prime it for retaining all kinds of memories beyond just the topic at hand.
In research published last fall in the journal Neuron, several study participants were asked a trivia question in a topic they indicated they were curious about. While they waited for the answer to pop up on the screen, they were shown a picture of a random person’s face.
Participants were tested to see if they remembered the answers to the trivia questions -- as well as the faces they saw. Participants were better at learning the trivia questions when they were highly curious about the topic, but they were also better at remembering the faces they were shown while their curiosity was aroused.
The researchers say that being in a curious state of mind activates the hippocampus, the brain region important for forming new memories. The study’s main author, neuroscience researcher Matthias Gruber, says curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, “like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.”
Write it out by hand to remember it better
A recent study published in Psychological Science found that the pen really is mightier than the keyboard when it comes to understanding and remembering new ideas.
In experiments, researchers from Princeton University and UCLA had groups of college students watch video lectures and take notes, either longhand or with a laptop. Afterwards, the students were tested on what they retained from the lectures either right afterward, or after consulting their notes. The tests were designed to assess both their recall of specific facts recited in the lecture, and their overall understanding of the concepts in the lectures.
As you may have guessed, the longhand note-takers generally performed better on the tests, earning slightly higher scores on most of the tests.
The researchers speculate that the problem with taking notes on a computer is that it’s so much quicker to type, we tend to just copy everything verbatim. Longhand, on the other hand, requires us to listen closely so that we can identify key bits of information and paraphrase them into concise notes. All that listening translates into better understanding and thus, better remembering.
Bursts of exercise to help with focus
Children often have a hard time holding their attention in class and can get up to mischief when bored, but a simple solution is to let them jump it off.
Recent Canadian research has found that brief, high-intensity interval exercise can help get kids back on track and stay more attentive and less fidgety in class, making them more able to absorb what they’re learning.
A study published this past fall found that when kids were encouraged to move together for four minutes doing things like pretending to quickly gather firewood and erect a tent, their behaviour in class was much better in the hour afterward. The researchers call their exercise breaks FUNtervals and have prepared a booklet to explain how they’re done.
While the research was done on kids, plenty of research has shown that taking regular breaks can make adults more productive workers and learners as well, refreshing our minds and preparing them better for learning.
Chewing gum can help with concentration
Chewing on a big wad of gum is often seen as impolite but it turns out that baseball players and other athletes who chew gum while they play might be onto something, as science has shown it can help us focus and concentrate.
A small study published recently in the British Journal of Psychology had volunteers listen to a list of numbers being read out at random and listen for a sequence of odd-even-odd numbers, such as 7-2-1. Participants who stayed alert by chewing gum had both quicker reaction times and were more accurate than the non-gum chewers, the study found.
Interestingly, the participants who weren’t chewing gum performed slightly better at the beginning of the task but then saw their performance drop toward the end of the test. Those chewing gum stayed cognitively nimble the whole way through.
The researchers say their findings suggest that chewing gum helps us focus on tasks that require staying continuously alert. That then allows us to hold onto information and remember it better.
