10 Things That Can Influence (and sometimes improve)

Your Memory

Scientists have found that memories associated with sound can be reinforced by playing those sounds softly to people while they sleep. In one study, participants played a Guitar Hero-like game. They learned two tunes, then had a nap. While they were in deep sleep, one of the tunes played softly in their ears. And when the participants awoke, the tune that they’d heard while sleeping was the one they were better at playing from memory.

Sounds During Sleep Reinforce Memories

Provides Balance: Checking Social media sites like Facebook throughout the day provide young people with work-life balance.

Improves Memory Retention: When you’re distracted, your brain works harder to remember the original information.

Provides Comfort: Laughter can induce a “cognitive distraction” from negativity, which effectively enhances moods.

Rejuvenates the Body: Small distractions, like a short walk or a cup of tea, can help relax the body throughout the day.

Inspires Creativity: When we’re not focusing on something, we may consider a broader range of information and alternatives that can lead to innovation.

• As we get older, we tend to become more forgetful. Scientists have found that a distraction related to what you want to remember can be extremely helpful for older people. They conducted an experiment in which they asked two groups of people—one of them aged seventeen to twenty-seven, and the other aged sixty to seventy-eight—to study and recall a list of words. They sprung a surprise second test on each group after an unrelated picture exercise.

• During the dummy picture exercise, some people in each group were exposed to background reminders of some of the words from the first test. There was a thirty percent memory improvement in those who had been prey to these —but remarkably, only among the older group. There was no difference at all in the younger group. This suggests that keeping ourselves surrounded by reminders—even if we don’t take them in consciously—can help with recall in old age.

• While older adults are watching television or playing a game on a tablet, boosting memory for goals (such as remembering to make a phone call or send a holiday card) could be accomplished by something as simple as running a stream of target information across the bottom of their tablet or TV.

The Science of Distraction

Research by psychologist Gerd Thomas Waldhauser has shown that humans can train themselves to deliberately forget information. Using EEG scans, he has shown that the

same part of the brain we would use to restrain a motor impulse—such as to stop ourselves from catching an object—is also activated when people suppress a memory. His studies

show that we can learn how to control this natural suppression—allowing us, theoretically, to forget whatever we want to forget.

Waldhauser is keen to point out, however, that only neutral memories have so far been forgotten in this way. But he speculates that—were the technique to be developed further—it may be possible to forget even our worst memories. This would be immensely helpful

to trauma victims, and those with chronic mental health issues such as depression.

Practice Forgetting

Learn a Second Language

• Learning a second language, especially as a child, has been shown to have benefits which last a lifetime. Speaking two or more languages can delay the onset of dementia by an average of four years.• Scientists have also discovered that “working memory”—the kind of memory that acts like RAM in a computer—functions more successfully in children who have learned a second language. Studies have shown that bilingual children performed better in working memory tasks than their monolingual counterparts—and the more complex these tasks were, the better the bilingual students would perform in relation to their peers.Being bilingual does more than just enhance and protect our memory; it also helps us with focusing, and shutting out unhelpful distractions.

Science has shown that the act of washing can actually have a deep impact on how we catalogue our memories. For a start, general cleanliness can impact how we feel about other people—and not necessarily because they’re dirty themselves. We’re more likely to harshly judge someone else’s moral misdeeds if we’re in a smelly room, for example.And in relation to our own memories, washing ourselves really can help us feel less guilty about whatever evil deeds we’ve committed. It’s been found that gamblers who wash after a bad streak are likely to start making higher bets, as if they’ve washed away their bad luck.If you make a difficult decision, wiping your hands afterwards can make you feel less doubt about it, since you’ve effectively wiped away your worries. But it goes both ways: if we wash after thinking about a positive experience, our happy memories can seem less satisfying.

Washing Our Hands Changes How We

Remember!

Writing something down is an intuitive way to help you remember it. Scientists from Ohio State University, however, found that the way you treat the piece of paper afterwards can have an enormous impact on memory retention. They found that if people wrote down their thoughts, and then scrunched up the paper and threw it away, they were less likely to use those thoughts when making a decision. If, on the other hand, they folded the paper neatly and put it into a pocket to protect it, the thoughts would stay with them and influence them later on. Keeping thoughts on a desk instead of throwing them away had a similar impact.As with washing, it seems our brains are influenced by metaphors in the physical world when it comes to controlling our memories.

Write it Down, But Think About What

You Do With It!

When you study, you’re more likely to remember information when it is presented in an unusual or difficult-to-read font. Scientists from Princeton University and Indiana University have conducted two different experiments to test the effect of fonts on learning. In one experiment, they gave participants some information to read for ninety seconds, either in Arial or Comic Sans.

It was found that those who absorbed the information via the more difficult font had better recall fifteen minutes later.To see if this result could have a real-world impact, the researchers designed another experiment. This time, they tampered with the fonts of learning materials used by high school students. Students who were given a difficult-to-read font performed better in tests than those who were given a simple font.

Unusual Font = Better Retention

More Pain, Less Guilt

Scientists have found that inflicting pain on ourselves can lessen the guilt we feel about a bad deed we remember having committed. In one experiment, researchers asked people to write about a time they had rejected or excluded someone. They divided them into two groups; the members of group one were asked to plunge their arms elbow-deep into ice-cold water, while the members of group two submerged their arms in luke-warm water. And when the participants rated the morality of their past actions, those who had experienced the pain of the cold water gave themselves a more forgiving score.

A third group of people were asked to write about an everyday interaction, with no guilt involved, and then to plunge their hand into the cold water. Interestingly, the people who had written about doing something bad actually kept their hands in the water longer, and reported more pain, than the control group. The scientists speculate that they subjected themselves to extra pain, as they felt the need for penance.

People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are often debilitated by horrific memories. Scientists have been working on a number of drugs that could be used to lessen, or even erase, memories. These drugs work because when we recall memories, we’re not just playing a tape—we’re actually recreating the memory in a different part of our brain. Some drugs can block the biochemistry involved in this process, and thereby cause the awful memories to fade, or even disappear.Many people take issue with use of such drugs, however, arguing that artificially erasing our memories can have a fundamental impact on who we are. Proponents counter this argument by saying that millions of people debilitated by memories of terrible experiences could regain their lives—and their true selves—with the help these drugs can provide.

Drugs to Forget?