Your memory, everything you need to know

Maybe you remember everything, and have a near photographic memory, or maybe your head’s like a sieve. Either way, this article lets you know the basics of how this essential brain function works.

Short-term or long term

Different parts of our brains are responsible for handling memory, and it seems that memory itself has different stores. We know this because after certain types of brain injury, people have experienced the loss of their ‘short-term’ store, without any difference to their long-term store.

Magic number seven

The short-term memory is thought to have a capacity of seven plus or minus two items, and lasts up to a minute unless you ‘rehearse’ things over and over again. Think about those times when you have said an unfamiliar phone number over and over to yourself until you’ve dialled it. You probably forgot it as soon as you’d made the call. The phone number never made it to your long-term store.

So what?

You’re a student, and you need to use both parts of your brain to help you to study. Understanding how they fit together, how to take care of them, and how to use them to your best advantage will help you achieve your best grades. Understanding the ways that memory is organised will help you make the most of it. Meaning is hugely important in the process of your brain knowing what to do with the information you take in, this is to do with context.

It’s all in the context

Studies showed that memory for a story increased by 30% when the participants were told the title- which gave it a context. You can use this to help you learn. Find out what each of your lectures is meant to be about, and how it fits into the overall structure of the module it’s in. Then you’ll be more likely to understand it in context, and therefore remember it much better.

Depths of processing

Another thing which helps us remember things is how ‘deeply’ we process them. One of the most superficial ways to retain something is just to repeat it to yourself over and over. A deeper way to remember a fact is to think about what it means, and what impact it has on your area of study. Make up strong visual images, absurd ones if you can, for facts which do not easily lend themselves to this, it’s another example of deeper processing.

Ridiculous mental image

Names and dates are often helpful in backing up an argument in an exam, but much more difficult to remember than the meaning of their theory. If the theory emerged the same year your cousin was born, and the theorist’s name was the same as your geography teacher from school. Then you could try linking a mental image that’s something to do with the theory. Your old geography teacher’s looking after your cousin as a baby. The more ridiculous it is, the better it will aid your recall.

Sleep well

Sleep consolidates the memory traces stored in the brain over the course of the day.

In animals and humans, an increase in the amount of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is observed during the night following a learning experience. Sleep is when we ‘lay down’ memories. Conversely, sleep deprivation adversely affects learning. So getting enough sleep is essential to effective learning, and general functioning because it is when the brain and body restore themselves.

So-called ‘Low-frequency sleep’, which occurs mainly at the start of the night, also seems to play a role in cementing new memories in your brain. Some research shows that both the major phases of sleep are involved, and that it is the alternation of low-frequency sleep with REM sleep that produces the beneficial effect.

One of the best things you can do to help your memories embed themselves in your brain is to get a good night sleep.

Eat fish

Eat well, as well as boosting your mood, some foods may help memory. There’s evidence that higher amounts of omega 3 in your diet and body will also help your memory stores. Oily fish in the run-up to an exam could be a useful dietary supplement. See our article on food and mood for more information.

Flashbulb

Some memories are more visual, strongly remembered, and suffer little change over time. These are sometimes called ‘flashbulb’ memories. It is the type of memory that means you can answer ‘where were you on 9/11?’ or ‘when Diana died’ with clarity, whilst you cannot recall what you had for dinner last Wednesday.

This is because events with emotional significance, to you personally, or societally are remembered in a different way. A flash-back after a shock or a traumatic event is another example of this kind of memory.

Method of ‘loci’

One technique which uses a lot of the memory tips in this article combined together is called the ‘method of loci’. You’re revising a topic area ready for an essay in an exam. You do a mind-map to flush out the 7 points you want to cover in the essay, 7 key theories, pieces of evidence or topic areas.

Next you think of a very familiar route, not a long one. The walk between your front door and your bedroom at your parent’s house, for example. ‘find’ 7 places to ‘leave’ a memory. By the front door, at the bottom of the stairs… Next try to create one of those absurd visual images we talked about earlier, and picture each one in that specific setting. Rehearse walking the route a few times, concentrating on seeing each thing in it’s right place.

Contextual cues help memory

Smells, places and sounds as well as our mood affect our ability to ‘retrieve’ a memory. Some people hum (internally) the songs they listened to while revising, to trigger that elusive fact. You could also try wearing the same perfume or hair gel on the day of the exam, as the one you wore when you revised, the smell should help trigger the facts you learnt.

Don’t forget, not everyone’s the same

Finally, bear in mind that everyone has a different learning style, and this too will affect how you are best able to remember things. For example, if you’re a visual learner, your best revision method might involve colour- coding your notes according to the different themes which might come up in the exam. Then you can mentally skim back through ‘looking’ for all the words you highlighted in green. See the article on learning styles for more information.