Seven Smart Tips to Maintain Your Memory
21 October 2014
Read by 1980 persons
Birthday dates, wallets, credit card numbers, book titles... Experiencing memory lapses? Don't worry! You can revitalize your memory, explain Anne Dufour and Catherine Dupin, authors of "Training Your Memory, It's Smart" (Leduc.s editions, June 2014). Tips.
Who has never had a name "on the tip of their tongue"? Who has never forgotten an instruction? Who has never searched for their keys? This is annoying or disabling. To keep a brain in good shape, besides training, it is a matter of leading a rich and diversified social life. Contrary to a common idea, memory is not comparable to a computer hard drive. It is alive, flexible, and shapes itself every day, like a ball of modeling clay. Seven recommendations for fixing your memories well.
1. Avoid doing 50 things at once
Learning with the TV on, studying while glued to your computer screen, listening to a conference while reading your emails on your Smartphone... multitasking (1) is bad for memorization. Since the encoding of information is disturbed, you will lose precious bits, and there is no way to recover them. So concentrate, be 100% focused on what you are doing. And associate all your senses: images, sounds, smells...
Note: Memory is sensitive to the environment because it uses all parts of the brain.
2. Focus on the number 7
A magic number! It corresponds to the storage capacity of short-term memory, which keeps information for 20 seconds before deciding whether it should be kept or eliminated. To better memorize, group numbers, words, phrases in series of 7 logical units. They should "come out" on demand, and you can then reconstruct another series.
Note: An isolated piece of information is more difficult to remember.
3. Use a pencil
Writing, making the manual gesture, helps to engrave information in our brains because the hand and arm also communicate emotions to them, which are better remembered. A study by Professor Alain Lieury, a specialist in the subject, showed that children who trained with ad hoc exercises using a sheet of paper and a pencil had improved their memory by 33%, unlike the group who practiced on a game console (2).
Note: A pen is preferable to typing and retyping a memo on your keyboard to anchor your ideas.
4. Sleep well and take naps
Respect your nights. During slow-wave sleep, memory archives knowledge and facts; during paradoxical sleep, the sleep of dreams, it records the gestures that perform the tasks. In addition, sleeping just after learning a text or a lesson helps to store them and learn something else afterwards. Micro-naps at the office are beneficial in this respect.
Note: The benefits are measurable at any age.
5. Vary your activities as much as possible
Do crafts, play an instrument, go to the cinema, play cards, chat, go for walks in a group, go to the museum... And learn foreign languages; they open up to another system of reference and sharpen concentration. In this way, you will train all the facets of your memory and experience its neuronal plasticity. Essential for a good cognitive reserve! Don't just stick to memory techniques such as crosswords or recitations.
Note: Isolation, which impoverishes the level of information, is detrimental to memory.
6. Walk, move, exchange
Sport improves memory performance. The brain secretes endorphins during and after exercise and stimulates blood volume, which irrigates the gray matter and promotes better neuron nutrition, allowing the generation of others. Even better, practicing a sport increases the level of BDNF, a super protein involved in the creation and connection of new neurons, essential for long-term memory.
Note: Swimming, running, cycling for 20 minutes every day has a positive effect on the brain that lasts up to a year after stopping the activity.
7. Prioritize blue light
Light invigorates attention and activates the central nervous system. Blue in particular excites the different areas of learning and memory; moreover, it keeps the mind alert according to researchers from Mid Sweden University in Sweden. Equip yourself with bulbs or filters of this color to help strengthen your memory or to find a name, an event, a quote that escapes you!
Note: Blue light is harmless to tissues and cells.
Marie-Madeleine Sève.
Lexpress.fr
Published July 23, 2014.
Posted online October 21, 2014.
Who has never had a name "on the tip of their tongue"? Who has never forgotten an instruction? Who has never searched for their keys? This is annoying or disabling. To keep a brain in good shape, besides training, it is a matter of leading a rich and diversified social life. Contrary to a common idea, memory is not comparable to a computer hard drive. It is alive, flexible, and shapes itself every day, like a ball of modeling clay. Seven recommendations for fixing your memories well.
1. Avoid doing 50 things at once
Learning with the TV on, studying while glued to your computer screen, listening to a conference while reading your emails on your Smartphone... multitasking (1) is bad for memorization. Since the encoding of information is disturbed, you will lose precious bits, and there is no way to recover them. So concentrate, be 100% focused on what you are doing. And associate all your senses: images, sounds, smells...
Note: Memory is sensitive to the environment because it uses all parts of the brain.
2. Focus on the number 7
A magic number! It corresponds to the storage capacity of short-term memory, which keeps information for 20 seconds before deciding whether it should be kept or eliminated. To better memorize, group numbers, words, phrases in series of 7 logical units. They should "come out" on demand, and you can then reconstruct another series.
Note: An isolated piece of information is more difficult to remember.
3. Use a pencil
Writing, making the manual gesture, helps to engrave information in our brains because the hand and arm also communicate emotions to them, which are better remembered. A study by Professor Alain Lieury, a specialist in the subject, showed that children who trained with ad hoc exercises using a sheet of paper and a pencil had improved their memory by 33%, unlike the group who practiced on a game console (2).
Note: A pen is preferable to typing and retyping a memo on your keyboard to anchor your ideas.
4. Sleep well and take naps
Respect your nights. During slow-wave sleep, memory archives knowledge and facts; during paradoxical sleep, the sleep of dreams, it records the gestures that perform the tasks. In addition, sleeping just after learning a text or a lesson helps to store them and learn something else afterwards. Micro-naps at the office are beneficial in this respect.
Note: The benefits are measurable at any age.
5. Vary your activities as much as possible
Do crafts, play an instrument, go to the cinema, play cards, chat, go for walks in a group, go to the museum... And learn foreign languages; they open up to another system of reference and sharpen concentration. In this way, you will train all the facets of your memory and experience its neuronal plasticity. Essential for a good cognitive reserve! Don't just stick to memory techniques such as crosswords or recitations.
Note: Isolation, which impoverishes the level of information, is detrimental to memory.
6. Walk, move, exchange
Sport improves memory performance. The brain secretes endorphins during and after exercise and stimulates blood volume, which irrigates the gray matter and promotes better neuron nutrition, allowing the generation of others. Even better, practicing a sport increases the level of BDNF, a super protein involved in the creation and connection of new neurons, essential for long-term memory.
Note: Swimming, running, cycling for 20 minutes every day has a positive effect on the brain that lasts up to a year after stopping the activity.
7. Prioritize blue light
Light invigorates attention and activates the central nervous system. Blue in particular excites the different areas of learning and memory; moreover, it keeps the mind alert according to researchers from Mid Sweden University in Sweden. Equip yourself with bulbs or filters of this color to help strengthen your memory or to find a name, an event, a quote that escapes you!
Note: Blue light is harmless to tissues and cells.
Marie-Madeleine Sève.
Lexpress.fr
Published July 23, 2014.
Posted online October 21, 2014.
