Memory is directly related to the brain. Memory is all about retaining something in your mind that you have been taught, shown or being experienced by you in real life. The human mind works like a computer. It inputs the important information into "files." When you are trying to remember something, you are basically trying to pull up a particular file, but it is not necessary that human memory will always work perfectly. As people grow older, it may take longer to retrieve those files which have previously been saved. Forgetting things is normal for a human brain.
It's quite normal to forget things once in a while. We all tend to forget some important dates, numbers, facts, we switched off the light, where we put our keys, or if we locked the front door or not, this is very common among humans. Seniors who forget things more often than others is because their age may have a mild cognitive impairment. Forgetting some very basic functions like how to open your door lock or find your way home may be signs of some serious problem and need to be paid attention immediately. These symptoms may include Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, stroke, depression, head injuries, thyroid problems, or reactions to certain medicines. If a person is worried about his forgetfulness, then it is advisable to see a doctor immediately.
A strong memory depends on the health and vitality of the human brain. Everyone wants a sharp and healthy memory, whether you're a student studying for final exams, a working professional interested in doing all you can to stay mentally sharp, or a senior looking to preserve and enhance their grey matter as they age, there are lots of things that can be done to improve your memory and enhance your mental performance.
Types of Memory
Human memory is a complex thing and had been a topic of research for a long time. What we usually think of as “memory” in our day-to-day life is actually our long-term memory, but there are also important short-term and sensory memory processes, which must be worked through before a long-term memory can be established. The different types of memory are all unique and each has their own particular mode of operation and process and they all cooperates in the process of memorizing and can be seen as three important steps in forming an effective lasting memory. Different types are:
- Sensory Memory: Sensory memory is the shortest-term element of the human memory. It can be defined as the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended and act as a kind of buffer for stimuli received through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, which are retained accurately, but very briefly. For example, if you looked at a flower in a garden for a few seconds and remember how it looked is an effective example of sensory memory. Sensory memory holds sensory information for a few seconds or less after an item is perceived. With very short presentations, people often report that they seem to "see" more than they can actually report and are also in observing things they may find difficult to explain later. This form of memory degrades very quickly, sometimes observers would see the display, but be unable to report all of the items before they decayed. This type of memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal. The sensory memory can further be divided into three types.
- Iconic memory
- Echoic memory
- Haptic memory
Iconic memory is a fast decaying store of information by the senses of vision, a type of sensory memory that briefly stores an image which has been observed for a very small duration. Echoic can be termed as a memory that is a fast decaying store of information through the senses of hearing, another type of sensory memory that briefly stores sounds which has been perceived for a small duration. Haptic memory is a type of sensory memory that represents a database for touch stimuli. Itching and pain are a form of haptic memory.
- Short-Term Memory: Short-term memory acts as a kind of scratch-pad for the temporary recall of some information that is being processed at any point of time, and has been referred to as "the brain's Post-it note" and it has a very limited capacity. Short-term memory allows recall for a period of several seconds to a minute without rehearsal and can be thought of as the ability to remember information along with processing it at the same time. It can a small amount of information (typically around 7 items or even less) in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. Short-term memory is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing information and to a lesser extent a visual code.
- Long-Term Memory: The storage level in sensory memory and short-term memory are generally of short capacity and duration, which means that information, cannot be retained for a long time, whereas in comparison to both of these long-term memories can store much larger quantities of information for potentially longer durations (sometimes even whole lifespan). Its capacity is immeasurably large. For example, if you are told to remember a random eight digit number you may tend to forget that number after some time, but you never tend to forget your eight-digit birth date.
Long-term memory is intended for storage of information over a long period of time which may be for years or probably your whole lifetime. Despite our everyday efforts of forgetting, it seems likely that long-term memory actually decays very little over time or sometimes unable to get it out of your memory, and can store a seemingly unlimited amount of information almost indefinitely. Indeed, there is some debate as to whether we actually ever “forget” anything at all, or whether it just becomes increasingly difficult to access or retrieve certain items from memory.
Tips to Improve Memory
- Effective Utilization of Brain: Brain is the most important part of human life that you need for your day to day activity, which includes simple activities like eating drinking also. Without the brain, your body cannot function. Many people say that I cannot learn more or study more or I don’t have enough brain to study more, which is not true. The human brain has an astonishing ability to adapt and change—even into old age. This ability is known as neuroplasticity. With the right stimulation, the brain can form new neural pathways, alter existing connections, and adapt and react in ever-changing ways.
The brain’s incredible ability to reshape itself holds true when it comes to learning and memory. Discovering that the brain can change as a result of experience has resulted in the development of a new memory improvement technique known as cognitive training and is based on harnessing the natural power of neuroplasticity. Cognitive training improves cognitive functioning, that can increase the working memory capacity and improve cognitive skills also. Cognitive training tends to focus on various aspects of memory and learning such as attention, the speed of processing, neurofeedback, dual-tasking and perceptual training. Two cognitive training methods are:
- Strategy Training: Strategy training can be used to develop quality to remember more information or is used to help increasing amounts of information an individual can remember. It involves teaching some effective techniques for encoding the information, maintaining it, and to recall from working memory. The main aim of strategy training is to increase performance in tasks requiring retention of information and thereby promoting its easy memorization whenever needed. It is a proven fact that the amount of information remembered can be increased by rehearsing out loud, telling the story to someone, or using imagery senses to make stimuli stand out. Strategy training can be effectively used in children with Down syndrome and also in older adult populations.
- Core Training: Core training is aimed at making learning and memorizing easy. Core training works on the principle of learning effectively by repeating and repeating again for better memorizing. Basic core training programs involve a combination of several tasks with widely varying stimulus types. The goal of cognitive training is to impact the ease and success of cognitive performance in one’s daily life. Core training can reduce effectively the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and improve the quality of life for patients with multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and also, those who have suffered from the stroke.
- Stay Mentally Active: Just like the other parts of the body our brain also develops with time and regular activities. We do various physical activity and exercises that help us to keep your body in shape, in the same way, the brain also needs exercise in the form of mentally stimulating activities which helps us keep our brain in shape — and perhaps help us retaining more and keep memory loss at bay. Doing various crossword puzzles and other quizzes brain involving can also help a lot in improving memory skills.
By the time we reached adulthood, our brain has already developed millions of neural pathways that help us in processing information promptly, quickly solve problems, and execute familiar tasks with a very little mental effort. But if we just stick to normal paths of daily activities, we are not giving our brain the stimulation it needs to keep growing and developing. The brain needs some extra activity and it is necessary to shake up the things from time to time. The more brain works out, the better it would be able to process and remember the information. The best brain exercising activities break your routine and challenge you to use and develop new brain pathways, these exercises generally involve activities that are new as well as challenging for our brain.
- Healthy Diet: For proper and effective working of the brain it is very important to have a healthy diet also. A heart-healthy diet may be as good for your brain as it is for your heart. For a healthy brain focus more on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Choosing on a low-fat protein source, such as fish, lean meat and skinless poultry is also very useful for a healthy brain. Not enough water or too much intake of alcohol can lead to confusion and memory loss hence one needs to be careful about these facts. Food that we eat directly influences our brain. Glucose in our diet is very helpful and is a major source of energy used by the central nervous system and transported from blood to brain for various cognitive functions and may enhance memory processing by altering neural metabolism and neurotransmitter synthesis in the brain. Glucose influences the synthesis of hippocampal acetylcholine (ACh), which is an essential neurotransmitter in the brain. Avoiding high-calorie diet also helps to enhance memory. Diets rich in saturated fats, hydrogenated fats and or cholesterol can impair cognitive performance, memory and hippocampal morphology. These fats tend to produce more errors in working memory. Human studies on Alzheimer's disease (AD) clearly suggest that saturated fats, cholesterol, high-calorie diets that are vitamin and antioxidant deficient may promote the onset of the Alzheimer's disease. Individuals with high cholesterol diets have also been seen to increase the risk of the AD, while those taking cholesterol-lowering drugs may have a decreased risk. Hence keeping this in mind one can plan his diet for a healthy brain.
- Proper Sleep: When a person is a sleep-deprived his brain is unable to operate at full capacity and there is a problem in both, learning new things and memorizing some old facts. Compromising on your sleep may lead to your creativity, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills also being compromised. Whether you’re young or old, studying, working, or doing anything, sleep deprivation is really harmful to your brain as well as your body and a perfect recipe for disaster. But sleep is critical to learning and memory in an even more fundamental way. Research by various doctors’ shows that sleep is necessary for memory consolidation, with the key memory-enhancing activity occurring during the deepest stages of human sleep.
- Socialization: Make time for family, friends and fun. Countless studies show that a life that’s full of friends and fun comes with cognitive benefits. It is very important to socialize for the effective development of your brain. Humans are highly social animals. We cannot survive alone, or cannot be let alone to thrive in isolation. Relationships tend to stimulate our brains—in fact, interacting with others may be the best exercise for our brain and we tend to learn many new things when we interact. Various research works in the field of the human brain has suggested that relations are very important for emotional as well as mental growth. Researchers have found that people with the most active social lives had the slowest rate of memory decline. Furthermore, listening to funny jokes and working out punch lines activates areas of the brain vital to learning and creativity and that obviously helps in memory improving.
