The Fastest Way to Remember Something Is by Doing It Over and Over and Over Again

Why is it that y'all can perfectly recite the words to *NSYNC's "Bye Good day Bye," just tin can't remember the championship of the new TV show y'all started watching on Netflix and wanted to tell your coworker about?

We remember things because they either stand out, they chronicle to and tin can easily be integrated in our existing noesis base, or it'due south something we recall, recount or use repeatedly over time, explains Sean Kang, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Education at Dartmouth College, whose inquiry focuses on the cognitive psychology of learning and memory. "The average layperson trying to learn nuclear physics for the kickoff time, for example, will probably notice it very difficult to retain that information." That's because he or she likely doesn't have existing cognition in their brain to connect that new information to.

And on a molecular level neuroscientists suspect that in that location's actually a physical process that needs to exist completed to form a memory — and us non remembering something is a outcome of that not happening, explains Blake Richards, DPhil, banana professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

In the aforementioned way that when you store a grocery list on a piece of paper, you are making a physical change to that paper by writing words downward, or when yous shop a file on a computer, y'all're making a concrete change somewhere in the magnetization of some part of your difficult drive — a concrete change happens in your brain when you shop a retentivity or new information.

"So the ultimate question, at the cellular level, equally to whether or not a memory gets stored [in the encephalon] is does that process actually complete properly," he explains. "Do all of the molecular signals become transmitted to ensure that that cell changes physically?"

And so there are strategies for better organizing what may at outset glance appear to be unrelated information to connect it to what we already know to assistance us better remember things, according to Kang and others. But equally far as changing the physical processes in the brain that make memories stick, in that location's likely not much you can do now to impact that, Richards says.

And that'due south probably a good thing, he adds.

There may be a reason our brains forget things

In a recent paper, Richards and his colleague Paul Frankland, PhD, senior scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children and Swain at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Inquiry, looked at previous studies that accept investigated the physical changes in the encephalon associated with retention — and why sometimes that process completes and sometimes it does non. "We constitute that in that location's a variety of mechanisms the brain uses — and actually invests energy in — that disengage and override those connections, ultimately cause united states of america to forget information," Richards says.

And that would hateful that some "forgetting" is actually a very natural and normal procedure, rather than a "failure" of our retentiveness, Richards says. "Our brains may want us to recollect the gist of what we've experienced considering that will be most adaptive for making decisions in the real world."

For example, allow's say you remember a friend's phone number, merely that friend moves away and gets a new telephone number. Remembering the old number becomes useless and may make it more difficult to call up your friend's new number.

"It's not the example that as much forgetting as possible is adept, obviously," he says. "But at the same time it may not be the case that as much remembering every bit possible is always the best course either."

What you tin do to assist make memories stick

Sure, some of what determines how well you retrieve things are the genes you're born with, Kang says. But training tin can definitely plays a role in retentivity, as is the example for people who compete in memory competitions, he adds. "No 1 of a sudden wakes up one day being able to memorize lx,000 digits of Pi."

If you want to hone your own skills (whether that's for memorizing Pi or amend remembering names or facts), here's what might help:

1. Get a expert night'south sleep

Decades of inquiry support the fact that sleep is a critical time when memories consolidate and get stored. And that ways missing out on sleep — or high enough quality sleep — can compromise some of those processes. The National Sleep Foundation recommends getting between 7 and nine hours of sleep each dark for optimal health and brain office.

2. Practise regularly

What is exercise not good for? Information technology's important for your center, your mood, your sleep and your mind, specially the part of your mind involved in memory. In 1 study in middle-historic period women with early signs of retentiveness loss, starting a programme of regular aerobic practice actually increased the size of the hippocampus (a function of the brain known to be involved in the retentiveness storing procedure) and improved verbal memory and learning scores when the women were tested.

And a new 2018 guideline from the American Academy of Neurology recommends regular exercise equally one of the things people with mild memory problems should practise to help cease those problems from getting worse or turn into serious neurological disorders like Alzheimer'southward disease and other types of dementia.

three. Repeat or re-larn the information later

Psychologists and others call this one the spacing effect. The thought is that the more y'all re-learn or remind yourself of data again and again spaced out over time the better you'll retain that information.

Perhaps yous start learn almost an Olympic figure skater's hard upbringing watching a news prune nigh his story; then a solar day or so afterwards y'all read an article most that same skater; and so a few days afterwards a coworker starts telling you lot nigh the same figure's skater story. Repetition helps make that story stick in your head — and so does the fact that you re-learned that information on different days in multiple unlike settings, Kang explains. (Multiple studies show that there is indeed merit in this approach.)

"The richer the contextual details associated with a particular retentivity, the greater the number of possible cues that could be helpful in evoking the retention afterwards," Kang says.

four. Test yourself

People ofttimes think testing is useful considering information technology tells you what you know and what you lot don't. But the more important power of testing is giving yous exercise retrieving information you lot've learned and establishing that connection in the encephalon, explains Rosalind Potts, PhD, education fellow at the University College London, who researches how cognitive psychology applies to educational activity.

For example, in 1 study that tested a group of students on new information they had learned i week earlier, students who were as well tested on the new information immediately after learning it outperformed students who were simply instructed to study the information on the test they all took i calendar week later.

5. Put the information in your "memory palace"

Some say this approach dates back to ancient Latin scholars, but it'south also been proven in much more contempo literature to work. The idea is if you desire to remember something, such as a shopping list or a code, you visualize those items or numbers in different rooms of your house (or another physical identify yous are very familiar with).

The "memory palace" approach (also chosen the "Method of Loci") has been studied extensively in psychology. Enquiry shows it can be more valuable in terms of remembering than having more intellectual capabilities in the first place, and that it can be more than constructive for remembering than straightforward repetition and memorization.

6. Use a mnemonic device

It's easier to remember things that relate to knowledge nosotros already have because we connect it to what we already have stored in our memory, Potts says. That's why mnemonic devices work — they create a span between two pieces of information.

"Then when we want to call that memory to mind, there are lots of dissimilar possible routes to information technology," she says.

If you lot want to remember the meaning of the Spanish word "zumo" ("juice" in English language), you might conjure up an image in your head of a sumo wrestler drinking juice. When you hear the word "zumo," you might then retrieve of that sumo wrestler drinking his juice and remember the pregnant of the word.

7. Pay attention

Sure, it's obvious. But concentration is of import if y'all're trying to learn something, Kang says. "If yous don't pay much attention to the data, the likelihood you encode that in your long-term retention is low."

For case, he says, how many Americans could accurately draw the details of the dollar neb, even though they probable look at it all the fourth dimension?

8. Make information technology relevant to your life

Based on the neuroscience explanation of how memory works, if you actually want to remember something, your all-time bet is trying to connect it to some other part of your life or a topic yous already know, Richards adds. "Figure out another facet of life why it'south relevant — and use it."

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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-get-better-remembering-things-according-neuroscience-ncna882426

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