"Oh how did I forget?!" Acquaintance? We all want to remember more than we remember - if it's the material for the test; if these are a code or password; And if we see someone on the street and forget where we know them from. It turns out that there are several methods to train the brain to remember more. Want to try?
Written by: Dr. Roni Tivon and Dr. Alisa Cooper
We are used to thinking that much more is better: we want to have more money, eat more chocolate or know more to do better in a test. When it comes to memory, when we need to remember many things, we may try to remember more than we can.
How can we help our memory remember more? It is difficult to remember a lot of information. Scientists have found that if we string together many small pieces of information to form one piece of information, we can improve our memory. We will immediately tell you about two types of such connections that can improve memory, and what happens in our brain while they are working.
work on working memory
When scientists talk about "working memory", they mean memory that works to keep information for a few seconds: we need to keep the information until we solve the problem or deal with the situation, and then we can forget it. This information will be quickly forgotten if we do not act to keep it in memory, for example by repeating it out loud over and over again. The reason why the information disappears so quickly is that the space in the working memory is limited - it can contain about seven items at any given moment. Therefore, the information has to be forgotten or moved from the working memory to more permanent memory stores, so that space is made for new information.
For example, you received a voucher for your favorite online store, and you want to use it. When you buy, you will have to read the long number from the voucher card, then type it on the store's website, which means you have to keep the number on the voucher in your working memory. Let's assume that the number is 977421012005 - these are quite a few digits! It is difficult to remember such a long number, even for a few seconds.
Therefore, instead of trying to remember each digit separately, try to divide the number into parts that will consist of several digits. To do this you can use a memory trick called "kibbutz"; It is called so because the information is divided into several parts or groups. If, for example, you divide the number into groups: 97-742-101-2005 - each group can have a special meaning for you. For example, you may have gotten a 97 on a science test, 742 may be the number of the main road that passes by your house, 101 is the phone number to call to call an ambulance and 2005 is the year of your girlhood. Now, instead of memorizing all the numbers, you only need to remember science-road-ambulance-birth. Isn't it much easier? With the help of using the kibbutz, you were able to free up more space in your working memory, because now the long number takes up only four places, not 12! You can use the kibbutz in other situations as well; For example, if a friend asks you to take a book out of his locker at school. The friend will give you the code to open the locker, and you will only have to remember it until you type it. Can you think of other situations that can be used in the kibbutz to remember things for a short period of time?
Scientists have discovered that our working memory is in an area called the prefrontal cortex, which is located in the front part of the brain, above the eyes and behind the forehead. The scientists were curious to know how this area works when using a kibbutz. They observed brain activity while people did or did not use kibbutz to remember information. What do you think happened in the experiment? Did the prefrontal cortex work more or less when people used kibbutz?
As you saw in the gift voucher example, when information is grouped we have to remember fewer "pieces of information". If the prefrontal cortex is used to hold the units of information, then maybe we use this area less when we group, because we have to remember fewer units? This is not what is found in the experiment. In fact, the scientists found the opposite: when people grouped information, the prefrontal cortex was more active than when no grouping was conducted.
why? Although when we use a kibbutz we keep fewer pieces of information, but we have to think and plan more. If so, from this experiment we can learn that the prefrontal cortex is not responsible for holding the information itself in the working memory, but for the planning and thinking that allow the working memory to use kibbutz.
Extending long-term memories
Increasing our working memory can be useful when we need to remember information for a very short period of time. But many times it is important for us to remember information for more than a few seconds so that we can use it again in the future. When we need to remember things for a long period of time, we use long-term memory: for example, when we remember a football game that we won. Long-term memory is not perfect, and sometimes it takes a lot of effort to remember things that might be forgotten. So how can it be improved? We'll get to that in a moment. First of all, let's understand a little more about how this memory works.
Scientists have discovered that there are two methods of recalling things that we have stored in long-term memory. Both methods use different brain areas and require a different investment of effort. The first method is called "recalling", and it involves a lot of effort. This method can be used to recall one item of information. For example, if you see the school librarian in a coffee shop on a Saturday night, you can use memory to identify who the librarian is.
Recall can also be used to remember two or more things that are connected by links. If, for example, you need to remember that the librarian is the one who gives you the bus ticket, it is not enough that you remember the librarian or the bus ticket, but you must also remember the connection between them. Scientists have discovered that the part of the brain responsible for remembering such connections is an area called the hippocampus. The shape of the hippocampus resembles a seahorse (this is the Greek meaning of the word hippocampus), and it is located deep inside the brain.
The second method of recalling information that is in long-term memory is called "familiarity", and it is a faster, simpler and easier method than recall. We can use familiarity to recall one item of information. If you use familiarity, you may not be able to tell that the woman you saw at the coffee shop on Saturday night is the school librarian, but you will know that she is familiar to you. But if your mother suddenly asks, "Isn't that the school librarian?" Your brain will recognize that she is right, because you will "feel" that it is true. When we use familiarity, we use an area called the perirhinal cortex. This area is located near the hippocampus and receives input from other areas of the brain, which receive information from the senses.
Familiarity is an easy method that does not require much effort, but unfortunately it is not always possible to use it. When we want to recall the links between several items, we usually cannot use sales and will have to use recall. If you could remember links using the simple and easy process of familiarity, instead of needing recall, which is a more complicated and complex method - you would improve your long-term memory, because it would be easier for you to recall the information.
Scientists have discovered that familiarity can be used instead of recall when using a form of thinking called "unification". Consolidation is a way that allows several pieces of information to be attached to each other, so that they create one piece of information that will be stored in the long-term memory. You can do this by making new connections that connect together things you want to remember. Scientists have discovered that when we use unification, the perirhinal cortex becomes more active.
Going back to our example, imagine that you have to remember to ask the librarian for the bus pass. You can come up with a word that creates a common meaning for both things - for example, "auto-book" - and imagine that it is a special bus that transports librarians to the library. That way, instead of remembering two things, you'll only have to remember one thing. When you have to pick up the tab, if you used the union, your brain will easily recognize that the combination of librarian and bus is "correct", thanks to the important link you created when you connected the two things so that they represented one thing. So now you won't have to try so hard to remember where to get the tab from - you can use familiarity to immediately recognize that a bus tab and a library card "go" together. Can you use unification to remember that Europa is one of Jupiter's moons, that Marconi invented the radio, and that a bacterium only has one cell?
Source: Tibon R and Cooper E (2016) When One Is More Than Two: Increasing Our Memory. Front Young Minds. 4:11. doi: 10.3389/frym.2016.00011
The article was published in Young Galileo - the monthly for curious children. For a gift digital sheet Click
5 תגובות
I happened to come across an interesting video this week, the famous magician Darren Brown teaching a man named Glenn to memorize the contents of all the books in the library within a week, this is in preparation for the London Trivia Championship. He won second place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYMLT37QKGk
A well-known method (and probably also very effective) to remember a list of things is to integrate them into a story that you invent... As soon as you are presented with a list of things and you are asked to remember them, try to invent a story in which they will be integrated. For example, I went to the living room and then I saw a chair (first object) placed on a rug (second object), I sat on it and suddenly I saw a pendulum clock (third object) on the wall in front of me... and so on.
Addict = Acquaintance
A method I once learned to use this association is to take a familiar thing and attach to it the details you want to remember.
For example, you take the way from home to work, for every object / house that you remember this way, attach one of the details that you want to remember.