Investing in Excercise

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There has been a long running belief that your body never produces new brain cells.  This has been disproved.  The brain does create new brain cells.  There was a study done recently with mice to see how exercise impacted memory.  The research was conducted by Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Gage and his colleagues allowed a group of old mice and a group of young mice to exercise on a running wheel as much as they wanted. The mice ran about 2 miles every day. The researchers also kept a third group of older mice that didn't exercise. After a month of the regular exercise, the team subjected the mice to a memory test. The researchers taught … [Read more...]

Sleeping Brains

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Scientists implanted rats with special sensors and then trained them to run a particular course in order to find cheese.  They found that they could tell where each rat was in the course by monitoring which cells were firing in the rats' brains.  When the rats were sleeping, the scientists noticed something strange.  The cells continued to fire in the same order.  It was as if the rats were practicing running the course in their sleep. In another experiment, people were given a mechanical task to learn and repeat quickly.  Scientists measured the areas of their brain that were active when performing the task right after learning it.  Then they let some of the test group sleep and … [Read more...]

Take a Nap for Memory

Studies suggest that your memories are solidified while you sleep.  Your brain does a lot of work during your rest--almost like it is busy filing and making sense of everything you've discovered while you were awake.  When you've learned a new concept or information that you want to retain, consider taking a nap or reviewing it right before going to bed.  This will give your brain the best chance to assimilate the new information. … [Read more...]

False Memories

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Your memory is not as reliable as you think it is. Even events that you vividly recall in your mind may never have happened. Here is an example. I have two cousins, Josh and Sam. When they were little Sam sat on a cactus. It was a very painful experience and their mother told the story many times over the years. 25 years later, Josh thinks it happened to him. He can remember the pain, the extraction, everything--even though it didn't happen to him. The experience was so imprinted on his mind that he has all these false memories of an event that never happened to him. These types of memories are particularly troubling when it comes to eye witness accounts of crimes and other … [Read more...]

Past Post: Exercise and Memory

Exercise has been shown to increase memory in mice. … [Read more...]

Commercial Memory Application

Jeff wrote in to say that he has a created a commercial memorization application based on the technique and tool I demonstrated in the How to Memorize post. … [Read more...]

Tuesday’s Tip: Kind of Like a String Around Your Finger

You've brushed your teeth and you are headed to bed. Suddenly you remember something very important for tomorrow. You can't forget. You can go write it down, send yourself an email, etc. but you really just want to go to bed. How can you make sure you remember? Simple. Grab your shoe and put it on top of the toilet. In the morning, you'll stumble into the bathroom, see the shoe and groggily think "What in the world is that doing there?" As your brain clears you'll remember you put it there for a reason and soon you'll be awake enough to recall what caused you to put the shoe there in the first place. This is very similar to tying a string around your finger. You can do it with about … [Read more...]

How to Memorize Verbatim Text

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If you are visiting from StumbleUpon and like this article and tool, please consider giving it a thumbs up. Thanks! Memorizing does not have to be as hard as most people make it. The problem is that most people only know how to memorize by reading the same thing over and over again. You have to learn to memorize. In this post we are going to look at how the brain remembers and then show how to use that knowledge to come up with a method for memorizing verbatim text.  Any tip or trick that will improve your memory even slightly is well worth the effort. In this article we are going to focus on a technique that will let you easily: Memorize a speech Memorize the … [Read more...]