By Adam Eason
Have you ever seen someone in town and you knew you should know there name but could not recall it? Have you ever gone to dial a telephone number that you dialled hundreds of times before and just could not remember? Did you ever walk into a room but forgot what you went to do?
In these situations we can sometimes feel useless, distracted and unable to connect with our brain properly. That phenomena that is often referred to as 'tip of the tongue.' Then maybe your memory improvement skills need working on!
In July 1998 the University of Florida published some research findings that showed that elderly people should ignore stereotypes about memory loss.
Older people are much less likely to have major problems with their memory improvement skills if they believe in themselves and work to improve their recall, this University of Florida study finds.
The elderly are more likely than younger people to buy into the stereotype that they can't control their memory, and it affects not only their self-esteem but also how hard they try to remember, said Robin West, a University of Florida psychology professor who did the research.
In the study conducted by psychology graduate student Monica Yassuda, more than 200 older and young adults were divided into two groups. One group was told memory is a skill that can be improved with effort, and the other group that the ability to remember is fixed forever at birth, she said.
"There is some indication in the literature that older people tend to see memory as something they can't control -- you either have a good memory or you don't," West said.
"The results show that we need to encourage older adults to think of themselves as a group that has the potential to have a better memory if they work at it," she said. Other studies, which were conducted by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, have found the belief that people can control part of their lives is a good predictor of whether they age well mentally and physically, West said.
This way of looking at memory improvement skills of course does not have to only be applicable to the older generation, of course it applies to us all.
Let me give you some examples of things people say to me individually or in my seminars:
- “I do not have a good memory.”
- “That is too much for me to remember.”
- “I have a memory like a sieve.”
- “I am afraid my memory is failing now that I am getting older.”
My Granddad said something to me recently that really made me think. He and I were in his local village pub and we were joking about the fact that my Nana gave him a hard time for coming to the pub and ordered him not to drink too much, despite over 65 years of marriage.
My Nana has been quite ill for a number of years and she does not go out much and I mentioned to my Granddad that I noticed her struggling for her words every now and then, or struggling to remember a name and he said that it was nothing to do with her age, they are both well into their eighties, but rather it was that she has very little communication with others anymore. That was his opinion.
These quotes I just mentioned are beliefs but too often people say them as if they were facts. There are some very common misconceptions about memory and memory improvement skills: that it is an ability that cannot be changed; that you only have a certain amount; that it relates to age, and declines as we get older.
Memory is not about volume and it is not about content, it is about processes. It is about something we do, not something we have: it is about remembering.
Remembering is dependent on the connections we make between things. Imagine you are constructing an index. If you have referred to a book, or a person, by only one attribute, you will have only one data point and hence only one way of accessing that information. If you have used a number of different data points, each capturing a different aspect, you will have more ways to access this information.
Anyone can achieve enormous memory improvement by focusing on two particular aspects of memory: encoding and storage on the one hand and recall on the other. Today I write about encoding, next week I write about recall.
If you want to improve your ability to encode accurately and store information, you will need to check out your attitudes, beliefs and feelings:
Joan was an in-house business trainer who used to be great at remembering names. Over the past couple of years, she had come to resent an increasing workload and an ever-growing number of delegates. One day she was heard to say to a colleague: “There is no way I’m going to remember the names of all these delegates.” Joan’s feelings of disappointment and resentment were affecting her beliefs about how much she could remember – yet within her area of expertise she was quite capable of remembering vast bodies of information and new research. She did not actually want to remember the names of all the delegates, because in her view there were too many of them. Not surprisingly, she did find it difficult, though many years ago she had made it a matter of pride to learn all their names. But she had felt differently then.
So, consider how you think and feel about what it is you want to remember.
Feelings can affect encoding and storage in other ways too. Do you remember your first day at school? Many people do, often in considerable detail. But what about the second day? Probably not. The reason for this is that day one at school is a special day: you may have looked forward to it, or dreaded it; you may have a had a wonderful – or an awful – time. The teacher may have been really kind – or expected you to be able to do things that you had not yet learnt. The playground may have been a great place to run around in – or a terrifying place where giants a whole year older than you rushed past you and around you, yelling loudly and playing boisterously. There may have been a lot of feeling – and strong feelings can make for vivid encoding.
Therefore, engage your feelings to make what you want to remember vivid.
Routes to lost information; some memory improvment skills:
1. One way to recover information is to recall the circumstances in which you first gained it. Maybe it was the name of someone at a party? Or something you heard on the radio? Remind yourself of s many details as you can of that party, involving information from all sensory systems. Who did you talk to? Where were you sitting, or standing? What music was playing? And so on. As you fill in the context, you may find the detail you want pops up – or that search processes are triggered so that it pops up later.
2. Are you forgetting because you felt uncomfortable, uneasy or unhappy about something? If you need or wish to recover the information, pay attention to your feelings in the here-and-now and imagine they are like beads on a string. Very similar to the other times you have felt the same, feeling like this now is linked to all of the other times you have felt the same, feeling like this now is linked to all the other times and because the mind stores like things together, your attentiveness to these feelings now can lead you back along the string to the time and circumstances you forgot.
Paying attention as an integral part of your memory improvement skills:
From this day forward, think about how you encode every piece of information and how you experience life each day.
How much attention do you pay to the information you want to store? One of the most striking things about people who claim their memory is not very good is how good they are at remembering poorly! Suppose you are introduced to someone but as you are told their name you are pre-occupied. When later you try to remember their name all you can recall is what was bothering you then and what they looked like. In such circumstances there is nothing wrong with your memory. Your way of remembering – the process of encoding that you employed – has faithfully encoded exactly what was going on.
You were preoccupied and this meant you had your own internal dialogue running. So any additional auditory input – like the person’s name – would be competing with your internally generated auditory signal. What they looked like is more memorable partly because visual data is generally easier to recall – it is more vivid – but also that element was less cluttered with internal signals at that moment.
What you attend to will affect what you actually commit to memory. So often, poor encoding is confused with poor memory. Be aware of this when looking to enhance those memory improvement skills.
Adam is a best selling author, consultant and speaker please visit his website for a vast range of personal development resources and to receive your free, instantly downloadable hypnosis session and amazing ebook: http://www.adam-eason.com Thanks.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Eason
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
10-surprising-memory-improvement-tips
There are several brain fitness topics where we still see a large disconnect between research and popular knowledge, and a major one is the relationship between memory and stress. Caroline and I collaborated on this post to bring you some context and tips.
Our society has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with physical, immediately life-threatening crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and illnesses that gnaw away at us slowly, that stress us out and that, believe it or not, end up hurting our memory and brain.
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, in an interview about his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, points out that humans uniquely "can get stressed simply with thought, turning on the same stress response as does the zebra." But, the zebra releases the stress hormones through life-preserving action, while we usually just keep muddling along, getting more anxious by the moment.
What is the relationship between stress and memory? We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our memory? Interestingly, acute stress can help us focus and remember things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduce our ability to focus and can specifically damage cells in the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to encoding short term memory.
When is stress chronic? When one feels out of control. Irritable, anxious. While every individual varies in their response the type and quantity of stress, there are some things we can do to feel more in control of your environment. This sense of empowerment can lower stress, and as a result, help memory.
What are the best defenses against chronic stress, that will help our mind and memory remain healthy for life?
1- Exercise strengthens the body and can reduce the experience of stress, depression, and anxiety. Doing something cardiovascular at least twice a week is the minimum.
2- Relaxation through meditation, tai chi, yoga, or other techniques to slow respiration, slow metabolism, and release muscle tension. Simply investing 10 minutes per day can make a difference.
3- Biofeedback programs and games that provide real-time information and tracking, allowing one to learn effective techniques for reducing stress levels.
4- Appreciation. Make sure you appreciate the good things you have and have done, and your support group around you.
5- A good social network of friends, family, and even pets help foster trust, support, and relaxation.
6- This may be obvious...except that we may not do it precisely when we need it the most: Use a calendar to schedule important things. Give items a date and a priority.
7- This one too: Make a list of things that need to be done. Even if it's a long list. It is rewarding to cross off items as you complete them.
8- Prioritize. Ask yourself how important something truly is to you. Maybe you're stressing over something that you are better off just letting go. Do you really need to remember 25 new names from that party? Focus on the 5 you want to see again.
9- Get enough sleep so that you can recharge your batteries.
10- There is no solid evidence that Ginko Biloba helps. Of course, the placebo effect does, so if you are already taking it, you think it helps you, and you can afford it, well, just skip this point (which you will probably do, anyway). But please ask your doctor if you are taking prescription drugs; there may be interactions.
These are not magical cures, but habits that you can develop with practice to improve your memory and quality of life.
OK, my turn to practice #9.
Culled from SharpBrains.com
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Our society has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with physical, immediately life-threatening crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and illnesses that gnaw away at us slowly, that stress us out and that, believe it or not, end up hurting our memory and brain.
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, in an interview about his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, points out that humans uniquely "can get stressed simply with thought, turning on the same stress response as does the zebra." But, the zebra releases the stress hormones through life-preserving action, while we usually just keep muddling along, getting more anxious by the moment.
What is the relationship between stress and memory? We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our memory? Interestingly, acute stress can help us focus and remember things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduce our ability to focus and can specifically damage cells in the hippocampus, a brain structure critical to encoding short term memory.
When is stress chronic? When one feels out of control. Irritable, anxious. While every individual varies in their response the type and quantity of stress, there are some things we can do to feel more in control of your environment. This sense of empowerment can lower stress, and as a result, help memory.
What are the best defenses against chronic stress, that will help our mind and memory remain healthy for life?
1- Exercise strengthens the body and can reduce the experience of stress, depression, and anxiety. Doing something cardiovascular at least twice a week is the minimum.
2- Relaxation through meditation, tai chi, yoga, or other techniques to slow respiration, slow metabolism, and release muscle tension. Simply investing 10 minutes per day can make a difference.
3- Biofeedback programs and games that provide real-time information and tracking, allowing one to learn effective techniques for reducing stress levels.
4- Appreciation. Make sure you appreciate the good things you have and have done, and your support group around you.
5- A good social network of friends, family, and even pets help foster trust, support, and relaxation.
6- This may be obvious...except that we may not do it precisely when we need it the most: Use a calendar to schedule important things. Give items a date and a priority.
7- This one too: Make a list of things that need to be done. Even if it's a long list. It is rewarding to cross off items as you complete them.
8- Prioritize. Ask yourself how important something truly is to you. Maybe you're stressing over something that you are better off just letting go. Do you really need to remember 25 new names from that party? Focus on the 5 you want to see again.
9- Get enough sleep so that you can recharge your batteries.
10- There is no solid evidence that Ginko Biloba helps. Of course, the placebo effect does, so if you are already taking it, you think it helps you, and you can afford it, well, just skip this point (which you will probably do, anyway). But please ask your doctor if you are taking prescription drugs; there may be interactions.
These are not magical cures, but habits that you can develop with practice to improve your memory and quality of life.
OK, my turn to practice #9.
Culled from SharpBrains.com
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Easy Do's and Don'ts Memory Improvement Tips
Here are some simple memory improvement tips that are easy to do and that can be done at home. Some tips are going to be things that you don't want to do because you will start to lose short term memory loss. While others are going to allow you to increase you memory.
“Use it or lose it” should be your mantra when it comes to memory. People who adopt a ‘brain-healthy’ lifestyle, which includes exercise, no smoking, a nutritious diet and hobbies, have a reduced risk of developing dementia. Keeping your brain active is also thought to build reserves of brain cells and enhance their connections.
MEMORY CHALLENGERS:
Below is a list of things that are going to deminsh our memory process.
Alcohol: Interferes with short-term memory and damages dendrites in the brain, which pass on messages between brain cells. There are many different types of diseases that occur from to much alcohol so stay away from excessive use of this.
Insomnia: Can reduce your ability to retrieve memories and leave you feeling forgetful. Getting plenty of rest is very important.
Smoking: Limits the amount of oxygen and blood flow to the brain. Plus many other problems that are caused by smoking.
Stress: A new study showed that stress activates an enzyme, kinase C protein that undermines short term memory. If you can't fix the problem, try not to worry over it. It really does you no good.
Some medications: Tranquilisers, muscle relaxants, sleeping tablets, antidepressants and medication for high blood pressure can sometimes contribute to fuzzy thinking or cause some loss of memory capacity. Also when taking medication, be careful not to drive a car, since your thinking is not very clear.
EAT FOR YOUR IQ Want to think smarter? Then feed your brain.
Berries with benefits: Blueberries get their pigment from an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which may improve concentration, co- ordination and short-term memory. Strawberries are thought to have similar benefits and may help protect against memory loss.
Broccoli Boost: This humble vegetable is high in substances which work in the brain the same way that medication for Alzheimer’s disease does - by blocking an enzyme that causes the breakdown of brain cells.
Excellent Eggs: Eggs are high in choline, a B complex vitamin. Lack of choline has been linked to poor memory and concentration, while the right amount can assist brain cells to communicate more effectively.
Grain Gains: Whole grains like brown rice and rye bread are packed with folate, B12 and B6, They help break down a chemical called homocysteine, which in high levels has been linked to Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
Salmon Smart: Cold-water fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel and herring are packed with healthy fatty acids called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). These have been shown to assist all of the brain’s thinking functions
According to a new study at Stanford University in California, the brain only chooses to remember memories it thinks are most relevant, and actively suppresses those that are similar but less used, helping to lessen the cognitive load and prevent confusion.
Don't get frustrated by the following memory tips if you still continue to forget thing. This only mean that your brain is working properly. No one can remember everything. As long as you remember what is important, that is what really matters. :)
The Memory Improvement Tips that are in this book will help you to remember more than you forget, visit: http://www.memoryenhancementtechniques.com
If you would like to learn how to memorize for test taking come and download our FREE eBook at: Improve Your Short Term Memory.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
“Use it or lose it” should be your mantra when it comes to memory. People who adopt a ‘brain-healthy’ lifestyle, which includes exercise, no smoking, a nutritious diet and hobbies, have a reduced risk of developing dementia. Keeping your brain active is also thought to build reserves of brain cells and enhance their connections.
MEMORY CHALLENGERS:
Below is a list of things that are going to deminsh our memory process.
Alcohol: Interferes with short-term memory and damages dendrites in the brain, which pass on messages between brain cells. There are many different types of diseases that occur from to much alcohol so stay away from excessive use of this.
Insomnia: Can reduce your ability to retrieve memories and leave you feeling forgetful. Getting plenty of rest is very important.
Smoking: Limits the amount of oxygen and blood flow to the brain. Plus many other problems that are caused by smoking.
Stress: A new study showed that stress activates an enzyme, kinase C protein that undermines short term memory. If you can't fix the problem, try not to worry over it. It really does you no good.
Some medications: Tranquilisers, muscle relaxants, sleeping tablets, antidepressants and medication for high blood pressure can sometimes contribute to fuzzy thinking or cause some loss of memory capacity. Also when taking medication, be careful not to drive a car, since your thinking is not very clear.
EAT FOR YOUR IQ Want to think smarter? Then feed your brain.
Berries with benefits: Blueberries get their pigment from an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which may improve concentration, co- ordination and short-term memory. Strawberries are thought to have similar benefits and may help protect against memory loss.
Broccoli Boost: This humble vegetable is high in substances which work in the brain the same way that medication for Alzheimer’s disease does - by blocking an enzyme that causes the breakdown of brain cells.
Excellent Eggs: Eggs are high in choline, a B complex vitamin. Lack of choline has been linked to poor memory and concentration, while the right amount can assist brain cells to communicate more effectively.
Grain Gains: Whole grains like brown rice and rye bread are packed with folate, B12 and B6, They help break down a chemical called homocysteine, which in high levels has been linked to Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
Salmon Smart: Cold-water fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel and herring are packed with healthy fatty acids called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). These have been shown to assist all of the brain’s thinking functions
According to a new study at Stanford University in California, the brain only chooses to remember memories it thinks are most relevant, and actively suppresses those that are similar but less used, helping to lessen the cognitive load and prevent confusion.
Don't get frustrated by the following memory tips if you still continue to forget thing. This only mean that your brain is working properly. No one can remember everything. As long as you remember what is important, that is what really matters. :)
The Memory Improvement Tips that are in this book will help you to remember more than you forget, visit: http://www.memoryenhancementtechniques.com
If you would like to learn how to memorize for test taking come and download our FREE eBook at: Improve Your Short Term Memory.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
The Neuroscience Behind Intelligent Memory
by Barry Gordon, M.D., Ph.D.
While we make a big distinction between memory and our thoughts, our brains do not. All mental activity – memories, perceptions, actions, thoughts, and emotions – arise from the activity of nerve cells. The memories and thoughts most important to us usually require the coordinated action of thousands, if not millions, of nerve cells. But they're all still the product of these tiny activities. (These activities can be actual nerve firing or they can be the absence of firing. Both are part of the message or code nerve cells use, just as white spaces around a letter are as important as the black lines of it.) What memory does, and what it is, is let the nerve cell activity "remember" what it has done in the past. In essence, memory is the retrieval of knowledge about nerve cell activity, or inactivity, from the past.
When nerve cells fire, they carry information and so the memory is active and usable. But this form of memory is transient. By itself, it can exist only a few fractions of a second. What makes a memory permanent is not a nerve cell constantly firing but, over time, acquiring more potential for being able to fire. In other words, a nerve cell becomes more sensitive to firing or to staying quiet. When this happens, the memory is latent – it's not actively influencing what's going on, but it could.
This sensitivity to being triggered into action can be increased or decreased. The processes that change susceptibility are built into nerve cells. There are many of these processes, including temporary changes in the permeability of the nerve cell membrane, growth of new parts of the nerve cell, and permanent changes within its DNA. Correspondingly, they can take place over different time frames. Changes in the permeability of the nerve cell membrane can occur in fractions of a second, while changes in the proteins within a nerve cell and growth of new parts of the cell can take hours or days to accomplish. And DNA can take weeks to months or years to change.
A crucial influence on nerve cell sensitivity is individual experience – whether and how often they've fired before. If a nerve cell has fired in the past, in general it will be more sensitive to what caused it to fire. Yet, if a nerve cell has been active over long periods of time, it gradually becomes less sensitive and needs increasingly more stimulation to set it off or produce changes.
This sensitivity is basic to creating intelligent memories. Changes in sensitivity, when repeated over and over, produce particular kinds of memories – memories that arise through practice. Repeating a thought or action strengthens the appropriate individual connections between nerve cells. This is learning. Generally, this learning happens relatively slowly. But each repetition adds to the learning.
You know these kinds of memories well. They are the memories you acquire when you learn how to ride a bicycle, drive a car, play golf or to add 2 + 2. As you acquire them, you can strengthen them quickly if each time you think about the precise right way and immediately correct your mistakes. However, if a task is complicated, you need a great deal of practice.
Although so far the focus has been on individual nerve cells, keep in mind that most of the memories that mean anything to us take long chains of nerve cells. Catching a ball requires a whole sets of nerve cells for seeing, as well as sets of nerve cells for hand control, body motion, and coordination. Nevertheless, individual nerve cells and the connections between them are the basis for these activities, no matter how complicated.
On their own, individual nerve cells learn by experience. But in brains like ours, there are also other circuits that can tell these nerve cells when and what to learn, and whether something needs to be learned very quickly. These other circuits monitor what's important and what needs to be repeated and remembered. These control circuits also dictate how the more basic neural circuits are wired together, which get inputs and which do not, and which chains of circuits are beefed up and which are broken up and rewired.
And, as you may have guessed, our brains also have circuits that monitor and control the controlling circuits. And there are undoubtedly monitors and controls for the monitoring and controlling circuits, and so forth. Neuroscience doesn't completely know how many levels of controls our brains possess. They're hard to identify or track down because there is not a strict hierarchy. Instead, some controlling circuits seem to influence other controlling circuits at the same level and sometimes lower-level processes can boss around their controllers.
Our brain's basic wiring plan governs how we perceive, act, think, and remember. But to understand intelligent memories, we need to elaborate beyond this basic scheme and look at the links between nerve cells and nerve circuits. It's these connections that are the true building blocks of thoughts, and Intelligent Memory. ("Intelligent Memory" is our shorthand term for all the different intelligent memories. They all work much the same way; it's just their specific content, such as words or images, that differ.)
What we think of as a single thought in our mind – "ball" for instance – is composed of many fragments of thoughts. If you think about a ball, you do not normally separate its color from its roundness or its bounciness. However, your brain does. Its color and shape and function are stored in different regions of the brain, although not every distinct element has its own region.
Most complex thoughts are learned; they are not innate. When elemental thoughts arise from the senses, its usually constant exposure, like playing with balls as a child, that gradually produces the whole idea inside our minds. The same process seems to work for thoughts or concepts that have no obvious sensory or other correlates.
Elements of thoughts are linked in many ways. Sometimes they are linked just by being part of the same context in the world, as in the case of a ball. But the most interesting links for our purposes – the links that make up intelligent memories – are ones we discover and put into place. They are the links, for example, that allow a child to see the similarity between the ball he is throwing and the planet he is standing on.
The links between elements of thoughts, or between thoughts themselves, are patterns of neural activity. Therefore, they can be learned.
Links between thoughts produce thinking. Some kinds of thinking generated by these links may seem so ordinary that we don't call them thinking at all. Being hungry, passing a candy machine, and stopping to put in a coin is hardly a Nobel prize-winning connection. But even this thought required having the elements inside of our head (some coming internally, from our hunger; others coming externally, from the image of the candy machine) and then making the connection between them. (It also involved acting upon that connection.)
Solving harder, more complex problems requires more and better connections. But this should not obscure the fact that the same basic components are required – elements of thought and the links between them.
Solving a problem involves getting to a destination. Creative thinking differs in that what's required to solve a "problem" often isn't really known. But the directions our thoughts travel for creative thinking are still links, and they still arise from the same nerve cell activity and the same learning process.
Links are the streets that take us from thought to thought. But finding connections between thoughts, or finding the best ones, can be like trying to find the best route to a destination. The first route we explore may have many false starts or roads that look good on paper but don't work in practice. With time, though, we find a shorter work or faster route. So it can be with thinking. Over time, we can prune away the false starts and wrong directions, and eliminate the links that look good originally but prove to be rocky or difficult or time-consuming.
This process of finding the best mental route – and recognizing it – is the third part of Intelligent Memory. Many of us know this part by a variety of names, such as logic and critical thinking. We probably don't think of it as memory. But it too is a product of nerve cells. So it too can be learned or taught to perform better.
At least two more aspects of memory are important for understanding thinking, learning and creativity, and how they can be improved. One is the special way the brain has for boosting learning when it needs to. The other is how we can use memory to create miniature intelligences in our minds, to help eliminate the bottlenecks of certain kinds of thinking.
Nerve cells learn when they are exercised. Practice, which stimulates connections, makes them learn. However, they also learn when they are told they to. When we deliberately activate the circuits that signal something is important, the circuits pass on the message and tell the appropriate target nerve cells that what is happening is important and should be learned well. This happens naturally when something is emotionally important. The brain centers involved in emotions are directly connected to the learning system, and automatically activate the teaching circuits. This is why emotionally significant events – our first day of anything, the birth of child, the death of a parent, a disaster – become so engraved in our memories. They literally are etched, by strong emotions. We can take advantage of this natural learning booster by believing something is important. If we try to learn without interest, very little gets saved. But if you can force yourself to treat what you are trying to learn as important, your brain will become your ally and trigger the learning circuits. The difference is astounding. Without interest, people learn perhaps 10% or less of what they're taught. With interest, over 90%.
Given that interest and motivation synergistically tickle nerve cells and make them learn much faster, this is another mechanism we can use to enhance our Intelligent Memory.
The bottleneck mentioned earlier arises with our conscious thinking and attention. When we are fully alert, we can keep no more than a few thoughts in our mind at once. (Perhaps just only one thought at a time can be maintained consciously.) Our unconscious, automatic mind, on the other hand, does not have such a bottleneck or limitation. It can handle many thoughts and thought processes simultaneously. And fortunately, much of our mental activity takes place unconsciously and automatically. When you walk, you don't think about every irregularity in the pavement or every step. Those perceptions, decisions, and actions are handled automatically and unconsciously.
Your mind did not always perform such mental tasks automatically. There was a time when you had to learn them. Driving a car is a good example of mental skills that have become automatic.
When you were learning to drive, you had to learn to pay attention. You watched your hands on the steering wheel, the hood of the car, each sign and traffic light, the other cars on the road, and every pedestrian. You also had to think about what to do in special situations: the stop sign or the yield sign, a car getting too close, a pothole. But as you practiced driving and became better, your ability to detect what was happening on the road as well as your reactions became automatic. You didn't have to consciously look for a stop sign or a red light in order to notice it and automatically respond the right way. And if a pothole suddenly appeared, you immediately saw it and not only swerved but checked your mirrors for other cars nearby.
What you did through all this practice and attention was create automatic mental abilities. You used your conscious mind and deliberate intention to instruct your brain on what to attend to, what decisions to make, and what to be done. Your conscious mind programmed the necessary circuits in your brain. It instructed your vision to pay attention to the color red. Your mind established a network of override circuits so that the need to stop took precedence over almost everything else. It also set up a watchdog circuit, so you would not stop too quickly if a car was on your tail. Finally, it programmed what you have to do to stop: take your foot off the gas and push the brake pedal. All these mental processes were practiced to the point that they became instinctive, like a separate intelligence or "minimind" operating on its own.
Now that you are an experienced driver, these miniminds are vigilant whenever you're behind the wheel, ready to respond to any stop sign or stop light. You don't have to think about them, and they no longer require your conscious attention. Because they're automated, they work in parallel with your conscious mind. They augment your abilities. They augment your intelligence, without costing you any additional conscious mental effort.
Elementary mental processes happen fast. They operate in hundreds of a second, or at their slowest, in tenths of a second. However, these elementary mental processes are often strung together in chains and loops and these strings of processes can take a fair amount of time to unfold. Conscious minds may need more than a second to appreciate a situation, and several seconds of backwards and forwards thinking to come up with a response. Our unconscious, automatic minds, on the other hand, are much simpler and more direct, and can work much faster. A baseball thrown by a professional pitcher moves too quickly from the pitcher's mound to the plate for the batter's conscious thought to react (which takes a minimum of 1/4 of a second). But the batter can preprogram his miniminds to watch the pitcher's throw and to watch the ball, so that his swing has a decent chance of connecting.
All of your thinking, all of your decisions, all of your creativity comes from the same kind of miniminds you apply to skillful driving. But these miniminds cannot always substitute for careful, deliberate thinking. Sometimes, the information they use is too limited, and the judgments they make are too quick. Still, they augment the powers of your conscious mind.
These miniminds, which represent intelligent memories, take time to be constructed, but they are extremely persistent once they have been built. This is often an advantage, since a useful mental tool should be kept around. However, this persistence can also cause problems. Problems can arise when a minimind has not been constructed properly or when its operation has taken wrong turn that becomes permanent. For example, making a snap judgment using these miniminds is a big reason people make errors on everyday problems, particularly those involving statistics and logical thinking.
A first step in enhancing your miniminds is to understand what types you have available. The ones that work well can be left alone, while the ones that repeatedly make mistakes need to be retrained. When you survey your mental abilities and needs, you may well discover that you need certain abilities – miniminds – that you do not currently have. These gaps need to be identified and filled, and to take their place alongside your high-functioning miniminds. And, of course, you need to train the intelligent memories that orchestrate these particular miniminds, so the right ones can be used in the right situations.
Now you know more about your Intelligent Memory, and how you can consciously exercise this memory and make it stronger.
About the Author
Barry Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. is founder of the Memory Clinic and the Cognitive Neurology/Neuropsychology group at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. For more information, see Dr. Gordon’s book Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Everyday Life.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
While we make a big distinction between memory and our thoughts, our brains do not. All mental activity – memories, perceptions, actions, thoughts, and emotions – arise from the activity of nerve cells. The memories and thoughts most important to us usually require the coordinated action of thousands, if not millions, of nerve cells. But they're all still the product of these tiny activities. (These activities can be actual nerve firing or they can be the absence of firing. Both are part of the message or code nerve cells use, just as white spaces around a letter are as important as the black lines of it.) What memory does, and what it is, is let the nerve cell activity "remember" what it has done in the past. In essence, memory is the retrieval of knowledge about nerve cell activity, or inactivity, from the past.
When nerve cells fire, they carry information and so the memory is active and usable. But this form of memory is transient. By itself, it can exist only a few fractions of a second. What makes a memory permanent is not a nerve cell constantly firing but, over time, acquiring more potential for being able to fire. In other words, a nerve cell becomes more sensitive to firing or to staying quiet. When this happens, the memory is latent – it's not actively influencing what's going on, but it could.
This sensitivity to being triggered into action can be increased or decreased. The processes that change susceptibility are built into nerve cells. There are many of these processes, including temporary changes in the permeability of the nerve cell membrane, growth of new parts of the nerve cell, and permanent changes within its DNA. Correspondingly, they can take place over different time frames. Changes in the permeability of the nerve cell membrane can occur in fractions of a second, while changes in the proteins within a nerve cell and growth of new parts of the cell can take hours or days to accomplish. And DNA can take weeks to months or years to change.
A crucial influence on nerve cell sensitivity is individual experience – whether and how often they've fired before. If a nerve cell has fired in the past, in general it will be more sensitive to what caused it to fire. Yet, if a nerve cell has been active over long periods of time, it gradually becomes less sensitive and needs increasingly more stimulation to set it off or produce changes.
This sensitivity is basic to creating intelligent memories. Changes in sensitivity, when repeated over and over, produce particular kinds of memories – memories that arise through practice. Repeating a thought or action strengthens the appropriate individual connections between nerve cells. This is learning. Generally, this learning happens relatively slowly. But each repetition adds to the learning.
You know these kinds of memories well. They are the memories you acquire when you learn how to ride a bicycle, drive a car, play golf or to add 2 + 2. As you acquire them, you can strengthen them quickly if each time you think about the precise right way and immediately correct your mistakes. However, if a task is complicated, you need a great deal of practice.
Although so far the focus has been on individual nerve cells, keep in mind that most of the memories that mean anything to us take long chains of nerve cells. Catching a ball requires a whole sets of nerve cells for seeing, as well as sets of nerve cells for hand control, body motion, and coordination. Nevertheless, individual nerve cells and the connections between them are the basis for these activities, no matter how complicated.
On their own, individual nerve cells learn by experience. But in brains like ours, there are also other circuits that can tell these nerve cells when and what to learn, and whether something needs to be learned very quickly. These other circuits monitor what's important and what needs to be repeated and remembered. These control circuits also dictate how the more basic neural circuits are wired together, which get inputs and which do not, and which chains of circuits are beefed up and which are broken up and rewired.
And, as you may have guessed, our brains also have circuits that monitor and control the controlling circuits. And there are undoubtedly monitors and controls for the monitoring and controlling circuits, and so forth. Neuroscience doesn't completely know how many levels of controls our brains possess. They're hard to identify or track down because there is not a strict hierarchy. Instead, some controlling circuits seem to influence other controlling circuits at the same level and sometimes lower-level processes can boss around their controllers.
Our brain's basic wiring plan governs how we perceive, act, think, and remember. But to understand intelligent memories, we need to elaborate beyond this basic scheme and look at the links between nerve cells and nerve circuits. It's these connections that are the true building blocks of thoughts, and Intelligent Memory. ("Intelligent Memory" is our shorthand term for all the different intelligent memories. They all work much the same way; it's just their specific content, such as words or images, that differ.)
What we think of as a single thought in our mind – "ball" for instance – is composed of many fragments of thoughts. If you think about a ball, you do not normally separate its color from its roundness or its bounciness. However, your brain does. Its color and shape and function are stored in different regions of the brain, although not every distinct element has its own region.
Most complex thoughts are learned; they are not innate. When elemental thoughts arise from the senses, its usually constant exposure, like playing with balls as a child, that gradually produces the whole idea inside our minds. The same process seems to work for thoughts or concepts that have no obvious sensory or other correlates.
Elements of thoughts are linked in many ways. Sometimes they are linked just by being part of the same context in the world, as in the case of a ball. But the most interesting links for our purposes – the links that make up intelligent memories – are ones we discover and put into place. They are the links, for example, that allow a child to see the similarity between the ball he is throwing and the planet he is standing on.
The links between elements of thoughts, or between thoughts themselves, are patterns of neural activity. Therefore, they can be learned.
Links between thoughts produce thinking. Some kinds of thinking generated by these links may seem so ordinary that we don't call them thinking at all. Being hungry, passing a candy machine, and stopping to put in a coin is hardly a Nobel prize-winning connection. But even this thought required having the elements inside of our head (some coming internally, from our hunger; others coming externally, from the image of the candy machine) and then making the connection between them. (It also involved acting upon that connection.)
Solving harder, more complex problems requires more and better connections. But this should not obscure the fact that the same basic components are required – elements of thought and the links between them.
Solving a problem involves getting to a destination. Creative thinking differs in that what's required to solve a "problem" often isn't really known. But the directions our thoughts travel for creative thinking are still links, and they still arise from the same nerve cell activity and the same learning process.
Links are the streets that take us from thought to thought. But finding connections between thoughts, or finding the best ones, can be like trying to find the best route to a destination. The first route we explore may have many false starts or roads that look good on paper but don't work in practice. With time, though, we find a shorter work or faster route. So it can be with thinking. Over time, we can prune away the false starts and wrong directions, and eliminate the links that look good originally but prove to be rocky or difficult or time-consuming.
This process of finding the best mental route – and recognizing it – is the third part of Intelligent Memory. Many of us know this part by a variety of names, such as logic and critical thinking. We probably don't think of it as memory. But it too is a product of nerve cells. So it too can be learned or taught to perform better.
At least two more aspects of memory are important for understanding thinking, learning and creativity, and how they can be improved. One is the special way the brain has for boosting learning when it needs to. The other is how we can use memory to create miniature intelligences in our minds, to help eliminate the bottlenecks of certain kinds of thinking.
Nerve cells learn when they are exercised. Practice, which stimulates connections, makes them learn. However, they also learn when they are told they to. When we deliberately activate the circuits that signal something is important, the circuits pass on the message and tell the appropriate target nerve cells that what is happening is important and should be learned well. This happens naturally when something is emotionally important. The brain centers involved in emotions are directly connected to the learning system, and automatically activate the teaching circuits. This is why emotionally significant events – our first day of anything, the birth of child, the death of a parent, a disaster – become so engraved in our memories. They literally are etched, by strong emotions. We can take advantage of this natural learning booster by believing something is important. If we try to learn without interest, very little gets saved. But if you can force yourself to treat what you are trying to learn as important, your brain will become your ally and trigger the learning circuits. The difference is astounding. Without interest, people learn perhaps 10% or less of what they're taught. With interest, over 90%.
Given that interest and motivation synergistically tickle nerve cells and make them learn much faster, this is another mechanism we can use to enhance our Intelligent Memory.
The bottleneck mentioned earlier arises with our conscious thinking and attention. When we are fully alert, we can keep no more than a few thoughts in our mind at once. (Perhaps just only one thought at a time can be maintained consciously.) Our unconscious, automatic mind, on the other hand, does not have such a bottleneck or limitation. It can handle many thoughts and thought processes simultaneously. And fortunately, much of our mental activity takes place unconsciously and automatically. When you walk, you don't think about every irregularity in the pavement or every step. Those perceptions, decisions, and actions are handled automatically and unconsciously.
Your mind did not always perform such mental tasks automatically. There was a time when you had to learn them. Driving a car is a good example of mental skills that have become automatic.
When you were learning to drive, you had to learn to pay attention. You watched your hands on the steering wheel, the hood of the car, each sign and traffic light, the other cars on the road, and every pedestrian. You also had to think about what to do in special situations: the stop sign or the yield sign, a car getting too close, a pothole. But as you practiced driving and became better, your ability to detect what was happening on the road as well as your reactions became automatic. You didn't have to consciously look for a stop sign or a red light in order to notice it and automatically respond the right way. And if a pothole suddenly appeared, you immediately saw it and not only swerved but checked your mirrors for other cars nearby.
What you did through all this practice and attention was create automatic mental abilities. You used your conscious mind and deliberate intention to instruct your brain on what to attend to, what decisions to make, and what to be done. Your conscious mind programmed the necessary circuits in your brain. It instructed your vision to pay attention to the color red. Your mind established a network of override circuits so that the need to stop took precedence over almost everything else. It also set up a watchdog circuit, so you would not stop too quickly if a car was on your tail. Finally, it programmed what you have to do to stop: take your foot off the gas and push the brake pedal. All these mental processes were practiced to the point that they became instinctive, like a separate intelligence or "minimind" operating on its own.
Now that you are an experienced driver, these miniminds are vigilant whenever you're behind the wheel, ready to respond to any stop sign or stop light. You don't have to think about them, and they no longer require your conscious attention. Because they're automated, they work in parallel with your conscious mind. They augment your abilities. They augment your intelligence, without costing you any additional conscious mental effort.
Elementary mental processes happen fast. They operate in hundreds of a second, or at their slowest, in tenths of a second. However, these elementary mental processes are often strung together in chains and loops and these strings of processes can take a fair amount of time to unfold. Conscious minds may need more than a second to appreciate a situation, and several seconds of backwards and forwards thinking to come up with a response. Our unconscious, automatic minds, on the other hand, are much simpler and more direct, and can work much faster. A baseball thrown by a professional pitcher moves too quickly from the pitcher's mound to the plate for the batter's conscious thought to react (which takes a minimum of 1/4 of a second). But the batter can preprogram his miniminds to watch the pitcher's throw and to watch the ball, so that his swing has a decent chance of connecting.
All of your thinking, all of your decisions, all of your creativity comes from the same kind of miniminds you apply to skillful driving. But these miniminds cannot always substitute for careful, deliberate thinking. Sometimes, the information they use is too limited, and the judgments they make are too quick. Still, they augment the powers of your conscious mind.
These miniminds, which represent intelligent memories, take time to be constructed, but they are extremely persistent once they have been built. This is often an advantage, since a useful mental tool should be kept around. However, this persistence can also cause problems. Problems can arise when a minimind has not been constructed properly or when its operation has taken wrong turn that becomes permanent. For example, making a snap judgment using these miniminds is a big reason people make errors on everyday problems, particularly those involving statistics and logical thinking.
A first step in enhancing your miniminds is to understand what types you have available. The ones that work well can be left alone, while the ones that repeatedly make mistakes need to be retrained. When you survey your mental abilities and needs, you may well discover that you need certain abilities – miniminds – that you do not currently have. These gaps need to be identified and filled, and to take their place alongside your high-functioning miniminds. And, of course, you need to train the intelligent memories that orchestrate these particular miniminds, so the right ones can be used in the right situations.
Now you know more about your Intelligent Memory, and how you can consciously exercise this memory and make it stronger.
About the Author
Barry Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. is founder of the Memory Clinic and the Cognitive Neurology/Neuropsychology group at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. For more information, see Dr. Gordon’s book Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Everyday Life.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Nutrition and improved Memory
One thing I find very interesting about memory improvement and college life is the fact that inorder to succeed as a student, you need to be able to remember what the professors are teaching you; the more your remember, the easier it is to pass all your courses.
Books and articles have been written on different memory improvement techniques of which some work and some don't. It is believed that the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers used them in different forms and were able to remember their speeches and all that.
One of the best ways to improve our memory is through improving our diets. below are a list of nutritional requirements that can easily be found around, which could help your memory when you are in school.
Dimethylaminoethanol:
DME is usully found in fish and has been observed to help the brain produce acetylcholine which is an important neurotransmitter and of course as we all know fish and fish oils are also very important for a healthy and nutritional diet. So my advice is add this to your dietary needs for the week.
Apple Juice:
Apple juice can also provide nutrition for good memory and recent studies suggest that apple juice can help to protect against age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease which can come with loss of memory.
Lecithin:
This is a fat substance and excellent source of B vitamins found in eggs. Lecithin has been shown to activate a sluggish mind and improve memory loss and nutrition.
Ginkgo Biloba:
This is another one of the excellent nutrients for memory improvement this powerful antioxidant enhances circulation throughout the brain. Your brain needs this believe me
Huperzine:
Extracted from the club moss huperzia serrata this nutrient promotes enhanced brain function.
B Vitamins:
These vitamins are both excellent for memory loss and nutrition and are critical for quicker and thorough brain metabolism.
Other nutrients to improve memory that are found in these supplements include: Acetyl L-Carnitine, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Lycopene, L-Glutamine, Folic Acid, Biotin, B vitamins, zinc, and herbs such as bilberry extract, ginkgo biloba, grape seed, green tea, and ginseng to mention but a few.
So if you want to hold on to your sharp mind and great memory so your stay in college would be worhtwhile and not a waste of time then you must remember, memory loss/improvement and nutrition go hand in hand and nutrients for memory improvement will help you maintain your great memory for many more years to come even out of college.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Books and articles have been written on different memory improvement techniques of which some work and some don't. It is believed that the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers used them in different forms and were able to remember their speeches and all that.
One of the best ways to improve our memory is through improving our diets. below are a list of nutritional requirements that can easily be found around, which could help your memory when you are in school.
Dimethylaminoethanol:
DME is usully found in fish and has been observed to help the brain produce acetylcholine which is an important neurotransmitter and of course as we all know fish and fish oils are also very important for a healthy and nutritional diet. So my advice is add this to your dietary needs for the week.
Apple Juice:
Apple juice can also provide nutrition for good memory and recent studies suggest that apple juice can help to protect against age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease which can come with loss of memory.
Lecithin:
This is a fat substance and excellent source of B vitamins found in eggs. Lecithin has been shown to activate a sluggish mind and improve memory loss and nutrition.
Ginkgo Biloba:
This is another one of the excellent nutrients for memory improvement this powerful antioxidant enhances circulation throughout the brain. Your brain needs this believe me
Huperzine:
Extracted from the club moss huperzia serrata this nutrient promotes enhanced brain function.
B Vitamins:
These vitamins are both excellent for memory loss and nutrition and are critical for quicker and thorough brain metabolism.
Other nutrients to improve memory that are found in these supplements include: Acetyl L-Carnitine, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Lycopene, L-Glutamine, Folic Acid, Biotin, B vitamins, zinc, and herbs such as bilberry extract, ginkgo biloba, grape seed, green tea, and ginseng to mention but a few.
So if you want to hold on to your sharp mind and great memory so your stay in college would be worhtwhile and not a waste of time then you must remember, memory loss/improvement and nutrition go hand in hand and nutrients for memory improvement will help you maintain your great memory for many more years to come even out of college.
Ricky Macharm has a great free resource blog, http://memory-and-grades.blogspot.com/containing different articles on memory improvement. Visit today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
