Boosting Memory

Here is an article I found in the Men's Journal in the November 2009 issue that talks about how to improve your memory. Ron White a winner of this years USA Memory Championship tells how he is able to remember up to 200 perons names (long-term) that he has just shaken hands with. He says the trick is to associated a physical feature of somebody he has just met to their name. For example, he says "I remember meeting a Dave in the crowd of 200 people, he had a divot on his forehead- so I associated divot with David to remember his name". Pretty weird, but it works. The article states that whenever your brain is trying to memorize something the amygdala gets excited and sends out a neural response to the hippocampus which intern causes the brain to "press the record button" to keep in memory.

Memory starts to fade around age 30, Ron White the champ is 36 years old. So what is the trick to boost your memory? Well, Mr. White says he is all "natural" and improves his memory strictly by practicing association with something often. How do others do it? Well some people opt for memory improving drugs such as Adderall. Adderall effects the neurotransmitter dopamine which leads to improved memory. Unfortunately Adderall can lead to headaches and nausea. Take a guess what is a safer way to improve memory? You got it, exercise, getting plenty of sleep and eating nuts and fish products often. Oh, and one more thing, the article clearly states superior memory was NOT driven by intellectual ability or structural differences in the brain. How about that. So get your exercise, sleep, eat good and practice association like the champ Ron White does.

In my psychology studies this semester I learned about both short-term and long-term memories in an entire chapter devoted to memory. The part of the chapter that best compares with the above article is found under "elaborative rehearsal". Elaborative rehearsal is pretty much like the champ Ron White uses in associating things together. The easiest way to do this is to connect new information with something that is already known. For the champ the known word was "divot" and the new information was "David". The book uses the word "maison" -- a french word that means "house". What would be the best way to remember the word maison? Well you should know the english word "mason" right? What does a mason do --- a mason builds houses. Now tie them together, maison with an 'I' sounds and looks like mason. Now, just remember mason is associated with the word house so the word maison which looks and sounds the same must have a similiar meaning. You then think maison must have something to do with the word house as well. You just used something you knew and tied it with something you did NOT know to get the meaning. This is exactly how elaborative rehearsal works. Okay maybe using maison with mason was too easy because they looked and sounded the same. But our book clearly illustrates that using elaborative rehearsal can be a more effective way of memory than simply just repeating a word over and over again to get it into long-term memory.

Do you think Ron White the champ had time to repeat all 200 names over and over again or did he use elaborative rehearsal such as shaken hands with a guy named Brian and tied it to Brian having blue eyes and a birth mark on his elbow?