Category: Memory

Study tested which sex has a better memory for events, words, faces and meanings.

Women may well have a better memory than men, new research concludes.

Certainly middle-aged women outperformed men of a similar age on all tests of memory, in a new study.

The results come from a study of 212 men and women aged between 45 and 55.

It tested all different types of memory including memory for:

• events
• meanings
• words
• and faces

Women showed they had a better memory on all measures.

The results should not come as a shock to men, who apparently know their memory is worse, on average, than women.

Here’s how I described a previous study on the subject of women having a better memory:

“…men, on average, think they are more forgetful than women.

In the study, people were asked nine questions about how good they think their memory is.

The questions asked included:

• Whether they had problems remembering names and dates.
• How good they were at remembering details of conversations.
• If they could remember what they were doing one year ago.

For eight of the nine questions men reported more problems with their memory.”

Menopause and memory

The researchers also looked at the effect of the menopause on memory.

They found that after menopause, women’s memory declined.

Lower levels of estradiol, the primary female sex hormone, were linked to lower levels of performance on the memory tests.

This is probably why women often report a ‘brain fog’ descends over them when going through the menopause.

On top of this, women are at a higher risk of dementia and memory problems than men.

Dr. JoAnn Pinkerton, the executive director of the The North American Menopause Society, commenting on the study, said:

“Brain fog and complaints of memory issues should be taken seriously.

This study and others have shown that these complaints are associated with memory deficits.”

The study was published in the journal Menopause (Rentz et al., 2016).

Our sense of self is tightly bound up with how and what we remember.

Posting everyday, personal experiences to social media boosts memory for them, new research finds.

Professor Qi Wang, who led the research, said:

“If people want to remember personal experiences, the best way is to put them online.

Social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and others alike — provide an important outlet for us to recall memories, in the public space, and share with other people.”

Just by posting on social media we are constructing our past and ourselves in a particular way.

The study’s authors write:

“The process of writing about one’s experiences in the public sphere, often sustained by subsequent social feedback, may allow people to reflect on the experiences and their personal relevance.”

For the study, participants were asked to keep a diary for a week describing their daily routines.

For each item they rated its importance to them and whether they had posted about it on social media.

After a week they were given a surprise quiz on the number of events they could remember.

The results showed that posting an event on social media made it easier to recall later.

It didn’t matter how important the events were: even relatively insignificant things were better recalled if posted online.

Professor Wang said:

“We create a sense of self in the process of recalling, evaluating and sharing with others memories of personal experiences in our lives.

That’s happening when we use social media, without us even noticing it.

We just think, ‘Oh, I’m sharing my experience with my friends.’

But by shaping the way we remember our experiences, it’s also shaping who we are.”

The study was published in the journal Memory (Wang et al., 2016).

Men had better memory for a woman’s hobbies, education, age, job — even her name — when she had this body shape.

Women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 are most memorable to men, new research finds.

Men remembered the most number of details about women who had this curvy shape.

They were better at recalling her hobbies, education, age, job — even her name!

The study’s authors write:

“Many studies have shown that a female’s waist to hip ratio influences men’s perceptions of her attractiveness.

However, our studies provide the first evidence to our knowledge that an attractive waist to hip ratio leads men to have superior overall memory for her appearance and biographical background.”

In the US and Europe a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 is considered, on average, the most attractive shape.

Examples of women with this ratio include both Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss.

For the research 218 men took part in two studies.

They were shown pictures of one women whose waist-to-hip ratio was digitally manipulated to increase and lower it.

They were also presented with biographical information about her.

Across the two studies, men could recall more information about the woman when her waist-to-hip ratio was between 0.6 and 0.8.

The evolutionary explanation for why this ratio is attractive is that it signals high ‘reproductive potential’.

The study’s authors write:

“It has been theorized that human memory evolved to serve our survival and reproductive goals.

Attractive target cues, in particular, may trigger superior episodic processing in perceivers because they can signal the quality of the target’s genes or reproductive potential.

Indeed, an attractive female face and waist to hip ratio appear to stimulate brain regions in males linked to the processing of rewarding stimuli.

Our results are consistent with previous research showing that the perceivers’ memory may be superior for information of greater adaptive value to them.

However, our findings extend this research by showing that males’ enhanced memory extends beyond the specific cue of high adaptive value to other cues of potentially adaptive value that are also linked to the female target who possesses the desirable waist to hip ratio.”

The study was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (Fitzgerald et al., 2016).

Psychological exercises can help to improve this beneficial outlook.

Being optimistic about the future is linked to fewer memory problems and better problem solving and judgement.

The new research on people aged over 65 is the latest scientific endorsement of an optimistic outlook.

Optimism has already been linked to eating better and exercising more.

People who are more optimistic are also less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes.

One way to increase optimism is to try writing about your ‘best possible self’.

This exercise has been shown to increase optimism.

The conclusions come from a national survey by the US National Institute of Aging.

Ms Katerina Gawronski, the study’s first author, said:

“We felt like this was an important topic to investigate and to our knowledge, it’s the first study to examine the link between optimism and cognitive impairment in older adults.

We found that optimism was indeed associated with better cognitive health over time.”

Mr Eric Kim, the study’s co-author, said:

“Therefore, optimism may be a novel and promising target for prevention and intervention strategies aimed at improving cognitive health,”

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Gawronski et al., 2016).

Image credit: annamo

Exercise does more than just boost mood.

Long-term memory is boosted by exercise four hours after learning, a new study finds.

Exercising directly after learning, though, provides no boost to memory whatsoever.

The study split people into three groups, all of whom learnt a series of picture-location associations.

One carried out exercise just after learning, another four hours later and the final group did no exercise.

The exercise involved 35 minutes of interval training on an exercise bike.

Two days after learning they returned to the lab to see how much they could remember — and to have their brains scanned.

It was those who had exercised four hours after learning who displayed the best recall.

In addition, brain scans revealed that exercise lead to more precise representations of memories in the hippocampus.

The authors write:

“Our results suggest that appropriately timed physical exercise can improve long-term memory and highlight the potential of exercise as an intervention in educational and clinical settings.”

The scientists are not sure yet why exercise after learning boosts memory.

However, they write:

“Considering that the exercise intervention took place after learning, delayed exercise most likely affected memory retention through an impact on memory consolidation.

[…]

…previous research suggests that exercise triggers the release of BDNF, plasticity-related products (PRPs), noradrenaline, and dopamine, among other substances that promote neural plasticity.

Such factors are critical for the consolidation of synaptic potentiation, as proposed in the synaptic tagging and capture (STC) hypothesis, and are also important for later stages of memory consolidation.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology (van Dongen et al., 2016).

Spice already linked to a variety of health benefits.

Turmeric — which is used in curries — can block fear memories after a traumatic experience, recent research finds.

Turmeric has already been linked to a variety of medicinal properties, including helping to treat stomach problems, arthritis and diabetes.

The study on rats has shown that the yellow-coloured, ginger root could have psychological benefits as well.

Professor Glenne Schafe, who led the research, said:

“We showed that rats freely fed a diet enriched with curcumin [found in turmeric] have impaired encoding of fear memories.

We also showed that rats with a pre-existing fear memory can lose that memory when it is recalled while they are eating a curcumin-enriched diet.”

Rats in the study who were fed the curcumin had their bad memories repressed for a long time.

Curcumin seemed to prevent the fearful memories being reconsolidated.

In other words: it was very hard for the fearful memories to return.

The authors write:

“Curcumin, a yellow-pigment compound found in the popular Indian spice turmeric (Curcuma longa), has been extensively investigated for its anti-inflammatory, chemopreventative and antidepressant properties.

Here, we examined the efficacy of dietary curcumin at impairing the consolidation and reconsolidation of a Pavlovian fear memory, a widely studied animal model of traumatic memory formation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

Rats in the study, though, were given about 1 gram of curcumin per kilogram of their body weight.

This would mean giving 68 grams to an average human — an amount that is way to high.

Unfortunately the compound is very poorly absorbed by the body and turmeric only contains about 3% curcumin.

Future research will look at ways of increasing the concentration  and absorption of the compound.

The study’s authors conclude:

“…our findings indicate that a diet enriched with curcumin is capable of impairing fear memory consolidation and reconsolidation processes, findings that may have important clinical implications for the treatment of disorders such as PTSD that are characterized by unusually strong and persistently reactivated fear memories.”

The study was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology (Monsey et al., 2015).

Men with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were more likely to have a history of this infection.

Candida yeast infections are linked to serious mental health problems, new research finds.

Men with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were more likely to have a history of infection.

Women with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who also had a Candida infection were more likely to have poorer memory.

Dr Emily Severance, the study’s first author, said:

“It’s far too early to single out Candida infection as a cause of mental illness or vice versa.

However, most Candida infections can be treated in their early stages, and clinicians should make it a point to look out for these infections in their patients with mental illness.”

Nevertheless, the study suggests there are critical links between psychiatric disorders, memory problems and yeast infections.

Candida infections can be tackled by washing properly, lowering sugar intake and avoiding unnecessary antibiotics.

Candida albicans is a fungus which naturally occurs in the human digestive tract.

It can cause rashes as well as sexually transmittable yeast infections.

Dr Severance said:

“Although we cannot demonstrate a direct link between Candida infection and physiological brain processes, our data show that some factor associated with Candida infection, and possibly the organism itself, plays a role in affecting the memory of women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and this is an avenue that needs to be further explored.

Because Candida is a natural component of the human body microbiome, yeast overgrowth or infection in the digestive tract, for example, may disrupt the gut-brain axis.

This disruption in conjunction with an abnormally functioning immune system could collectively disturb those brain processes that are important for memory.”

The study was published in the journal npj Schizophrenia (Severance et al., 2016).