How to Improve my Memory

At its simplest level, memory is a mental activity for recalling information that has been learned or experienced. It involves receiving, retaining and retrieving data much like our computers.

Nobody really knows where your memories are stored, but they could be stored as neural pathways. In other words, a memory hooks up synapses to neurons in certain ways, and the more practiced you are at that particular memory hookup, the better you remember.

To keep ourselves from going insane, our brain has two types of memory. We don't need to remember most things we experience past about five minutes, so we store them in our short-term memory (aka the working memory). But after an hour, two thirds of our short-term memory is gone and 90 percent of it is gone in 24 hours. So the trick is to move things from the short-term in-basket to long-term filing cabinets.

So, is there something I can do to help my memory? The answer is a definite YES to this question. During ages scientists and researchers have found various techniques for improving the human memory, the essential memory tips and tricks are all listed here.

One of the best ways to remember information is to use it as much as you can. That's why you had to do homework. It forced you to put your newly acquired knowledge to practical use. It's also why you forgot all that stuff after you left high school. You stopped using it and no longer needed it.

In a sense, this is the same tip as the above. Before you can understand information, you must use it analytically. Put new facts into a context of larger patterns, or organize them into meaningful groups. Being able to put a fact in some kind of context gives you more hooks into that fact and makes it easier to remember.

This is why teaching history as a collection of dates or as a column of presidents and kings never works. Even if you find a trick to remember them all (and we provide some below) you will have a much harder time retaining the info. Also, if you remember information because you understand it in a context, you can recall it more quickly than if you need a trick to facilitate recall.

By visualizing I mean creating a story. The more fantasy you put in it, the more unique the story is and the more unique it is, the more valuable it gets when you need to remember the real things behind the story.

For example: "A bear attacks a horse, and a guy on a computer watches. he then gets in his car, puts in a CD, and drives to get pancakes. On the way out he knocks over a chair, dropping his comb and wallet. When he gets home and tries to empty his pockets near the refrigerator he realizes he has lost his comb & wallet."
Quite nonsense, but still it if makes sense to you, you can use it to remember complex things.

To make your mnemonics most valuable try these tricks:

• - Use positive, pleasant images. The brain often blocks out unpleasant ones.
• - Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images, these are easier to remember than drab ones.
• - Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
• - Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of association, or to help you to remember actions.
• - Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image.
• - Use humor! Make up jokes using facts and figures you need to recall. Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than pedestrian ones.
• - Make up rhymes such as the one we all learned in elementary school, "30 days hath September..."
• - Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.) can code complex messages quickly and effectively.

Use as many senses as you can. If you're trying to remember the medical names for your bones, tap them and recite the name aloud. This gives you a visual, auditory and tactile memory hook

Touch - Take a mental note of how the door handle feels when you close it. Its curvature, its texture, its roughness, anything that you distinctly feel about the door handle when you close the door.

Smell - Breathe in deeply. You may notice the smell of the metal door handle, the smell of the pine trees, or the humidity from the lake. Compress all these smells into one mental sensation of your cottage's exit's smell.

Hearing - Listen to the squeeling of the door handle being pulled down, the creaking of the door closing, the thump of the shut door. Sounds are extremely unique if you pay attention to them.

Seeing - Take a look at that bird feeder you see when you recoil away from the cottage door, see that distinct pine tree with its witch's back's knot in it halfway down the truck, gander at your neighbours mail box and take a mental snapshot.

Taste - This sense comes into play very infrequently for obvious reasons so we won't touch upon it. For example, we don't usually taste our environment.

Once you have mapped out your mental snapshots of all the sensory input you get when closing your cottage door, try thinking about them all at the same time and creating a master snapshot that includes them all. The beauty of this technique is that there are many redundant fail safes in it. For example, if your kid is yelling and you don't notice the door creaking, chances are you will still notice the shape and texture of the door handle. Conversely, if your kid is tugging on your jacket and you don't notice the shape and texture of the door handle, chances are you will still notice the smell of the pine trees, or see your neighbour's mailbox.

Now give it a try and sharpen your ability to remember facts, principles, details, and theories.

Wed, Jul 29 2008

parama says:

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Tue, Nov 17 2008

???????????????????????? says:

wow

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