Scientists Told Seniors Their “Medicine” Was Fake — It Still Boosted Their Brains 20% (M)
Older adults improved their memory and stress levels after taking pills they knew were placebos.
Category: Memory
This Strange Memory Technique Helps People Remember What Really Happened
The method was more effective than ‘free recall’, where people remember whatever they can in any order they like.
The method was more effective than ‘free recall’, where people remember whatever they can in any order they like.
Clustered recall is the key to remembering what really happened, eyewitness research finds.
This means remembering things from one category at a time.
So, if you were trying to remember what you did last Thursday, start with the location and concentrate on that.
Next, remember everything you can about what you were doing, then what people said, and so on.
The study used the same technique to test people’s memory for a video of a woman being mugged.
Dr Craig Thorley, the study’s author, explained:
“Using this system, we prompt eyewitnesses to first remember what the people involved in the crime looked like, then the what those people did, then the environment the crime took place in.”
Better than free recall
The study was designed to help eyewitnesses remember more about crimes.
The usual method is called ‘free recall’, where people remember whatever they can, in whatever order they like.
However, the study found that clustered recall was more effective.
Dr Thorley said:
“I think it’s likely that asking people to focus on one category of information at a time, such as what the people involved looked like, focuses their memory on that category and they offer more details related to it than they otherwise would.”
This method likely works because the brain stores and recalls related information together.
Dr Thorley said:
“It’s the first study to compare CCR to free recall.
We interviewed people using both methods and found using CCR produced superior results, with the people using it remembering more correct information about the crime.
It also increased the amount of different details they remembered.”
Related
The study was published in the journal Memory (Thorley, 2018).
Why Memories Get Harder To Retrieve With Age
The search for a particular book takes longer when the library is larger and more complex.
The search for a particular book takes longer when the library is larger and more complex.
People’s memories get more cluttered with age, which is why many healthy older people have certain difficulties with retrieval.
Naturally, the search for a particular book takes longer when the library is larger and more complex.
Yet, a ‘cluttered’ memory carries distinct advantages.
Indeed, whether you call it a ‘cluttered’ memory or an ‘enriched’ memory depends on the result you expect.
For a specific answer to a precise question — such as identifying the capital of Paraguay* — clutter is the enemy.
Creativity, for instance, thrives on making unexpected connections between disparate ideas.
An older mind naturally recalls a more diverse array of memories — a trait that can be highly advantageous for creative thinking.
When older people recall information to make decisions, they are more likely to remember a wider variety of circumstances.
This wealth of experience may aid decision-making.
Even learning can be easier when you have more hooks on which to hang newfound knowledge.
Memory paradox
These ideas about memory and aging come from an article published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
The authors were inspired by a paradox at the heart of memory: why do older people struggle to remember specific personal events despite possessing greater knowledge and wisdom?
Their answer is that healthy older people (60+) encode ‘too much’ information.
Consequently, when they attempt to retrieve a memory, a flood of irrelevant and unrelated information surfaces alongside it.
Here is how they represent it visually:
It is harder for older people to suppress irrelevant information, whereas the younger mind is more likely to zoom in on what is relevant.
Harder to suppress memories with age
A wide range of research in the neuroscience of memory supports these conclusions, the study’s authors argue.
Studies consistently show that older individuals face distinct challenges when trying to suppress irrelevant data.
As a result, searching for a specific memory often triggers an influx of unrelated background information.
The study’s authors summarise this dual-edged nature of cognitive aging in the paper:
“Older adults have greater knowledge of the world but generally show poorer episodic memory performance on many laboratory-based tasks relative to young adults.
Here, we propose that this paradox can be accounted for, at least partially, by the uniquely cluttered/enriched memory
representations of older adults.Specifically, unlike young adults, older adults’ memory representations contain target information bound to irrelevant
and/or knowledge-based details, likely formed as a function of reduced cognitive control.With these cluttered or rich representations, older adults are more likely to activate excessive information.
This, in turn, can pose retrieval difficulties for target information (and negatively impact episodic and working memory tasks), but can also aid performance on tasks, such as creativity, decision-making, and sometimes new learning, which benefit from access to knowledge from various sources.”
Related
- Part of the function of forgetting some things is to help us remember what is important.
* For those who are suffering, the capital of Paraguay is Asunción — not, as I once heard, Uruguay.
The study was published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Amer et al., 2022).
This Simple Storytelling Trick Dramatically Improves Memory (M)
One of the most powerful memory techniques is already built into how humans think.
20 Memory-Enhancing Hacks That Work Like Magic (P)
These 20 memory hacks involve nutrition, smells, specific types of exercise, drawing and even changing location.
The Mild Nutrient Deficiency Linked To Memory Loss
Supplementation reversed the effects of age-related memory loss.
Supplementation reversed the effects of age-related memory loss.
A diet low in flavanols is linked to age-related memory loss. However, taking a daily flavanol supplement over three years reversed these losses. Many people already get enough flavanols from a healthy diet, however, those with a poorer diet will probably benefit. Flavanols, which are a type of flavonoid, are found in nearly all fruits and vegetables, as well as in tea. Participants in the study with a mild flavanol deficiency experienced boosts to their cognitive functioning of 16 percent over the three years of the study. Professor Adam Brickman, the study’s first author, said:“The improvement among study participants with low-flavanol diets was substantial and raises the possibility of using flavanol-rich diets or supplements to improve cognitive function in older adults.”
Neurons in the hippocampus
Professor Scott Small, study co-author, has been studying age-related memory loss for many years. His lab has shown that changes in the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus, are central to memory decline. Flavanols, though, enhance neuron and blood vessel growth in this region. Professor Small said:“The identification of nutrients critical for the proper development of an infant’s nervous system was a crowning achievement of 20th century nutrition science. In this century, as we are living longer research is starting to reveal that different nutrients are needed to fortify our aging minds.”The current study included over 3,500 healthy adults given either a flavanol supplement or a placebo over three years. The supplement contained 500 mg of flavanols, including 80 mg of epicatechins, a type of flavanol thought to be particularly effective. The memories of those with mild flavanol deficiencies improved by 10.5 percent compared to the placebo and by 16 percent compared to their scores at the start of the study.
Dramatic improvements
While the study provides strong evidence for the benefits of a healthy dietary flavanol intake, Professor Small is cautious:“We cannot yet definitively conclude that low dietary intake of flavanols alone causes poor memory performance, because we did not conduct the opposite experiment: depleting flavanol in people who are not deficient.”Next, Professor Small wants to look at the effects of rectifying a severe flavanol deficiency:
“Age-related memory decline is thought to occur sooner or later in nearly everyone, though there is a great amount of variability. If some of this variance is partly due to differences in dietary consumption of flavanols, then we would see an even more dramatic improvement in memory in people who replenish dietary flavanols when they’re in their 40s and 50s.”
High-flavanol foods
Foods containing high levels of flavanols include:- pears,
- olive oil,
- wine,
- tomato sauce,
- kale,
- beans,
- tea,
- spinach,
- broccoli,
- apples,
- and oranges.
Related
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Brickman et al., 2023).This Vitamin Provides Triple Protection Against Memory Loss
The memories of people with low levels of this vitamin decline three times faster.
The memories of people with low levels of this vitamin decline three times faster.
Low levels of vitamin D among older people are linked to memory loss.
Those with low levels of vitamin D decline three times faster than those with adequate levels.
Professor Joshua Miller, one of the study’s authors, said:
“Independent of race or ethnicity, baseline cognitive abilities and a host of other risk factors, vitamin D insufficiency was associated with significantly faster declines in both episodic memory and executive function performance.
This work, and that of others, suggests that there is enough evidence to recommend that people in their 60s and older discuss taking a daily vitamin D supplement with their physicians.
Even if doing so proves to not be effective, there’s still very low health risk to doing it.”
The study included almost 400 older people and around 60% had low levels of vitamin D.
In fact, around one-quarter were found to be deficient (very low) and 35% insufficient (just low) in vitamin D.
African-Americans and Hispanics were more likely than white people to be low in vitamin D.
These are high-risk groups because those with darker skins cannot absorb as much from the sun.
The results showed that the cognitive abilities of people deficient in vitamin D declined two to three times faster than those with adequate levels.
Professor Charles DeCarli, the study’s first author and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at UC Davis, said:
“We expected to see declines in individuals with low vitamin D status.
What was unexpected was how profoundly and rapidly [low vitamin D] impacts cognition.”
The other major source of vitamin D is the diet — particularly the consumption of dairy products.
Professor DeCarli said:
“I don’t know if replacement therapy would affect these cognitive trajectories.
That needs to be researched and we are planning on doing that.
This is a vitamin deficiency that could easily be treated and that has other health consequences.
We need to start talking about it.
And we need to start talking about it, particularly for people of color, for whom vitamin D deficiency appears to present an even greater risk.”
Related
The study was published in the journal JAMA Neurology (DeCarli et al., 2015).
12 Proven Ways To Prevent Memory Loss As You Age (P)
Research reveals everyday habits that shape how well our memory holds up with age.
These Blood Pressure Meds Fight Memory Loss
Almost half of Americans are living with high blood pressure and it is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, along with other diseases.
Almost half of Americans are living with high blood pressure and it is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, along with other diseases.
Two types of blood pressure medications are linked to better memory over time, a review of the research reveals. Both ACE-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers could reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment by almost one-fifth. Mild cognitive impairment, characterised by problems with memory, language and thinking greater than those expected with age, can be a precursor to dementia. Dr Daniel A. Nation, study co-author, said:“Research has been mixed on which medicines have the most benefit to cognition. Studies of angiotensin II receptor blockers and angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors have suggested these medicines may confer the greatest benefit to long-term cognition, while other studies have shown the benefits of calcium channel blockers and diuretics on reducing dementia risk.”The researchers looked at 14 different studies including almost 13,000 people across six countries. The results showed that the drugs linked to better memory recall crossed the blood-brain barrier. People in the studies were primarily taking the drugs for high blood pressure. Almost half of Americans are living with high blood pressure and it is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, along with other diseases. Dr Nation said:
“Hypertension occurs decades prior to the onset of dementia symptoms, affecting blood flow not only in the body but also to the brain. Treating hypertension is likely to have long-term beneficial effects on brain health and cognitive function later.”These are the names of common drugs that do cross the blood-brain barrier that are used to treat hypertension:
- Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors): enalapril, lisinopril, ramipril, captopril, benazepril.
- Angiotensin-receptor blocker (ARBs, sartans): valsartan, candesartan, losartan, irbesartan.
“These findings represent the most powerful evidence to-date linking brain-penetrant ACE-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers to better memory. It suggests that people who are being treated for hypertension may be protected from cognitive decline if they medications that cross the blood-brain barrier.”Blood pressure is considered elevated above 120/80 mm/Hg although medication is not normally recommended until the reading is 140/90 mm/Hg. Between the two readings, people are told to modify their diet and exercise habits. The study was published in the journal Hypertension (Ho et al., 2021).
The Everyday Snack That Boosts Older Adults’ Brain Function (M)
A daily handful of a familiar food may improve cognitive performance by enhancing vascular function in the brain.
