Tips to Help Improve Your Memory

Tips to Help Improve Your Memory
To understand how memory might be improved, it is a smart idea to learn about how memory works and fails. A small structure in the brain called the hippocampus is the nerve center for memory formation. That’s where the crucial switching from short-term to long-term memory takes place through a process called “consolidation.”

Most memory diseases involve the steady deterioration of consolidation, so it may be easier to call on ancient memories and not be able to store any new ones. Can anything be done to enhance your ability to store memories?

Five tips that generally improve memory are:
1. Deal with stress. Continuous stress produces chemical by-products which inhibit memory.
2. Get enough sleep. Dream or REM sleep gives your brain the opportunity to process new information and consolidate learning.
3. Eat for memory. Certain foods are thought to improve memory performance. They include fish such as salmon and tuna, eggs, beef, chicken and bananas.
4. Exercise. Exercise can help your whole body work more efficiently. A short exercise break every 30 to 50 minutes can help push oxygen around your body and to your brain.
5. Drink lots of water or non-caffeinated drinks. Even a small degree of dehydration can reduce alertness. Some day you may use that glass of water to take a pill designed to protect your memory.

Research into drugs being used to treat memory difficulties found that by amplifying specific recep-tors in the brain, it may be possible to give memory a boost. For example, in developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and depression, Cortex Pharmaceuticals (AMEX:COR) has pioneered and is developing a new class of pharmaceuticals called AMPAKINE® compounds. These molecules amplify signals in the brain, like a hearing aid does for the hearing impaired, making it easier to encode new information.

While the goal of these drugs is to treat Alzheimer’s, depression and a variety of memory and cognition problems associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders—not to enhance normal memory performance— a lack of side effects found in experiments on mice indicates the drugs could be used that way in the future.

Early Phase 1 clinical trials in elderly subjects suggest AMPAKINE may have memory-enhancing characteristics which could benefit patients with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. The compounds may provide acute symptomatic relief for MCI and cognition.
Tips to Help Improve Your Memory

Herman Ebbinghaus

Herman Ebbinghaus
Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who originally trained in philosophy, suggested that: Mental states of every kind of sensations, feelings, ideas – which were at one time present in consciousness (but have now disappeared from it), have not with their disappearance absolutely ceased to exist.

In his book Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (1885), he goes further: ....they continue to exist, stored up so to speak, in the memory.

So for Ebbinghaus , experiences never cease to exist, they just get ‘stored up’ in memory. He continues to explain in his book that there are three ways in which the memory store may be accessed.

First he describes voluntary access, in which we deliberately try to recollect images. Second, he outlines a recall that is ‘without any act of the will – images that are reproduced involuntary’. Third, he proposes that there is a type of recall that is obvious only because we are able to carry out some task or activity.

It is knowledge that is not conscious, yet produces effects that can be seen in everyday life.

One very important contribution that Ebbinghaus made to the development of memory research was the rigor in his methodology.

The experiments he conducted tested how humans learned to associate words together. He was more interested in the process of memory formation than the end result. For this reason he developed ‘nonsense syllables’, combinations of letter that had no existing associations.

His argument was that if he used words that already existed some of those worlds would be easier to recall than others because they would be well established in the memory storage.

For example, of a person was to see the word ‘cage’ and they owned a pet that was kept in a cage, they would be at a distinct advantage when it came to remembering this word. They could make a more meaningful association than someone who did not own such a pet.

This sounds like a very sensible approach to memory research - to use material that has no preconceived images attached to it.
Herman Ebbinghaus

Increase Observation Power

Increase Observation Power
To be able to observe better, you need to be attentive and focused. If you are not attentive, you can’t observant and if you are not observant you can’t have a good memory.

There are various ways to strengthen the observation. You can begin playing the memory games that are flooding the markets these days,

The games liked ‘jigsaw’ puzzles’ and ‘spot the differences’ are also very affective in increasing the power of observation.

Give yourself some simple observation tasks every day. For instance, if you are going for a party, observe the dresses worn by five people.

When you return home, try to recapitulate the details. Increase the number to ten, after a few days.

Similarly, while driving, when you halt at the traffic light you can try to observe the vehicles around you.

Note the kind of vehicle, the color and the make of the vehicle, the driver and the passengers. Try and recall these when you reach your office.

While shopping for detergents try and observe how many brands of detergents are available at the supermarkets, what is the difference on the packing, the prices etc.

These exercise will hone your observation within a few weeks.
Increase Observation Power