How To Boost Your Memory

Ever walk away from an introduction and lose the person's name before you've crossed the room? Maybe you're the spouse who blanks on anniversaries and birthdays, or you've bombed a test or skipped a meeting because some detail slipped out of reach. Plenty of people live like this. The encouraging part is that memory responds to effort. You can train it.

Memory is complicated enough that researchers still can't account for every mechanism, though they've mapped out the broad strokes. Start by dropping the filing-cabinet picture. Your brain doesn't drop facts into a drawer and pull them back on demand. And memories aren't simply snapshots of things that already happened. They're closer to raw material for the person you turn into. In a real sense we are the sum of what we've learned.

What the brain is mainly doing is reading its surroundings and trying to make sense of them, and it does that by building memories. Even ordinary skills like eating or talking rest on them. Watch a baby: it takes in the sounds and gestures around it, then folds those pieces of communication inward. Sensory input like that arrives in the hippocampus, while the frontal cortex up front sizes up the moment. Then comes a verdict. Is this worth keeping? Usually the answer is yes, and the information joins what the brain already knows.

The instant your brain registers something, it lands in short-term memory. Picture a formal place setting. There's the plate, the fork, the knife, the spoon, the glass, the napkin, and then it gets fussy with a butter knife, a soup spoon, a salad fork. Pile on enough etiquette rules and you feel ridiculous at the dinner table, and that overload is a decent stand-in for what swamps short-term memory. It tends to juggle about seven items at once, each holding for roughly 30 seconds. When it decides a piece of input matters, it files it into long-term memory.

Phone numbers make the point. Seven digits isn't an accident; that length suits short-term memory about as well as anything can. You have to hold the number long enough to dial, and splitting it into three chunks makes it easier to carry. Dial it enough times, especially for someone you like talking to, and it sticks for good. Can you still rattle off your childhood number or a best friend's? You probably can if you grew up before cell phones did the remembering for you.

This is a stripped-down version of one of the hardest problems anyone has tried to study, but it gives you a foothold. Here's where it starts paying off for your own growth. Repeat a task, or keep noticing the same pattern through steady habits, and the memory tied to it strengthens. Neurotransmitters ferry signals across the gap between neurons, and it seems the same cells in the same areas keep carrying a given memory. The more they fire together, the sturdier the link. That's the whole case for practice.

The piece that matters most: these connections can be rewired as readily as they can be reinforced. Changing a habit or picking up a skill after a long layoff (think of getting back on a bike after ten years) may take a while, yet the brain makes fresh connections without much trouble. Psychologists call this neuroplasticity, and it's the capacity you lean on when you want to grow.

Sleep first. It's how the brain recharges, not some indulgence, and deep sleep is exactly when memories get locked in. Leave room to daydream and drift through mindless tasks too, because that's when your brain quietly stitches together new connections.

Spend time with people. Studies link relationships to sharper brains. Learning grows out of social contact, and the more sociable you are, the better your memory tends to hold up over the long haul.

Be silly. Laughter lights up several brain regions at once, which is part of why it's good for you. Kids and good-natured people are a reliable source, so drift toward them.

De-stress by whatever route works for you; the method isn't the point, doing it is. Long-running stress can actually injure neurons, with the hippocampus especially vulnerable. People with clinical depression have been found to have smaller hippocampal volume, and trouble with memory and concentration shows up among the symptoms of both anxiety and depression. If those symptoms are chewing into your work or your life, see a professional.

Meditate. Beyond easing stress, it sharpens how the mind works. Brain imaging has tied meditation to greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the region associated with a calm, contented mood, and it can thicken the cerebral cortex, the gray outer layer that handles information processing.

Mind what you eat and drink. Load up on omega-3 sources like salmon and walnuts, and keep fruits and vegetables coming. A glass of wine and some green tea (not in the same cup) can each do your thinking some good. Excess fat and sugar just drags the brain down.

Push your brain around. Do mental workouts. Play memory games and puzzles that make you strain, the kind that fill books and websites. Novelty builds connections too: write with your off hand, put on music that isn't your usual thing, grind through math problems if math is your weak spot. New links keep you sharp and crack the mind open a little wider.

By Melissa Lavery, M.S. Sources include Robert Mohs, "How Human Memory Works"; Melinda Smith and Lawrence Robinson, "How to Improve Your Memory"; and "The Importance of Memory" from engines4ed.org.