Neural stimulation can enhance the formation, consolidation and retrieval of memories.
The technique improved people’s recall by 15 percent.
Ignoring or avoiding challenges, troubles and difficulties can lead to less meaningful life.
The technique incorporates multiple ways of representing information.
It almost seems too simple to work.
The study tested people’s ability to remember smells.
Exercise sparked more activity in important parts of the hippocampus — a brain region linked to memory.
The food boosted memory, mood and motivation.
The drink helps fight the effects of a high-fat, high-sugar diet.
The drink helps fight the effects of a high-fat, high-sugar diet.
Green tea may help protect against memory problems linked to a poor diet, new research finds.
It could also help brain insulin resistance and reduce obesity.
Dr Xuebo Liu, who led the study, said:
“Green tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water, and is grown in at least 30 countries.
The ancient habit of drinking green tea may be a more acceptable alternative to medicine when it comes to combatting obesity, insulin resistance, and memory impairment.”
The conclusions come from a study on mice.
It found that a catechin called EGCG (epigallocatechin-3-gallate) had beneficial effects on the brains of mice.
All were fed a high-fat diet, high-sugar diet analogous to that consumed in many Western countries.
Half, though, were given the EGCG, the active ingredient in green tea.
Those given the EGCG were better able to resist the deleterious effects of the high-sugar, high-fat diet.
They put on less weight and were less cognitively impaired.
Dr Thoru Pederson, Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal in which the study was published, said:
“Many reports, anecdotal and to some extent research-based, are now greatly strengthened by this more penetrating study.”
The study was published in the journal The FASEB Journal (Mi et al., 2017).
Image credit: Arthur
Simply remembering everything that happens to us is not the point of memory.
Simply remembering everything that happens to us is not the point of memory.
Forgetting is the key to having a useful memory, a new psychology paper argues.
Simply remembering everything that happens to us is not the point of memory.
Our memories should help to guide us in making intelligent decisions in the situations we find ourselves.
Dr Blake Richards, one of the study’s authors, said:
“It’s important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses on the stuff that’s going to help make decisions in the real world.”
In fact, the brain works hard to forget the right things, said Dr Richards:
“We find plenty of evidence from recent research that there are mechanisms that promote memory loss, and that these are distinct from those involved in storing information.”
The brain forgets by weakening the connections between synapses and through the creation of new neurons.
New neurons ‘delete’ old memories as they create new networks that overwrite what was stored there.
This may help explain why children forget so much: they are producing so many new neurons in the hippocampus.
The process of forgetting is beneficial because it helps us dump outdated or useless information, said Dr Richards:
“If you’re trying to navigate the world and your brain is constantly bringing up multiple conflicting memories, that makes it harder for you to make an informed decision.”
Forgetting also helps us to generalise old information to new situations.
In other words, we get the gist but forget the details and use this to inform future decisions.
What we remember and what we forget comes down partly to the environment we are in.
Dr Richards said:
“One of the things that distinguishes an environment where you’re going to want to remember stuff versus an environment where you want to forget stuff is this question of how consistent the environment is and how likely things are to come back into your life.”
The study was published in the journal Neuron (Richards & Frankland, 2017).
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