Tips for improving your memory — by a neuroscientist

We now process an unprecedented quantity of information every day — 34 gigabytes by one estimate. Image / 123RF

The noise of modern life is making it harder to remember, but we can manage what stays in a brain, says Professor Charan Ranganath.

Now where did I leave the car keys this time? If that’s a question you’ve asked yourself a few times recently, you may not take comfort from the words of the American neuroscientist Charan Ranganath. “Episodic memory declines as we get older,” he says. “It leads us increasingly to experience the frustration of misplaced keys, forgotten names and baffled moments when we forget what we were just talking about.” Sound familiar? What were we talking about again?

But we shouldn’t feel too bad about it. As Ranganath writes in his new book, Why We Remember: “The reality is we are designed to forget.” Memory is incomplete, inaccurate and gets worse as we get older. Each time we delve into the chaotic filing system of the neocortex — the densely folded mass of grey tissue that stores memories — we have to flick through a jumble of other memories before we find the one we need. And modern life isn’t helping.

Add in emails, conversations, television, books and social media and we now process an unprecedented quantity of information every day — 34 gigabytes by one estimate.

So how do we cut out the noise? “We need to prioritise what is important so we can rapidly deploy that information when needed,” says Ranganath, 53, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Davis.

Memory v technology

While technology is often seen as the enemy of memory — why remember the kings and queens of England when we have Google? — Ranganath is more than happy to outsource mundane tasks such as keeping a diary to his smartphone. “We should allow our devices to do the tedious work,” he says.

However, when it comes to special moments you’ll want to treasure into your twilight years, it’s best to put devices away. Ranganath admits he struggles to remember childhood birthday parties he organised for his daughter Mira, now 23, because he was trying to record them on a camcorder. When he watched the videos he found it was as if he was experiencing them anew — he had retained virtually no actual memories.

Accentuate the positive

Everything from our identity to deciding what to eat for lunch is dictated by memory, Ranganath says. And while memories are unreliable, we can take actions to mould them. An example is the way childhood memories are forged.

“You take your child to the beach and later one parent might say, ‘Remember that day at the beach? We had so much fun. Your sandcastle got washed away but you built it back up again. It was so great you didn’t give up.’ They meaningfully engage with the memories of that experience.” Give your children a negative narrative and that could be the memory that sticks. “Another parent might say, ‘You were crying all the way there and your sandcastle got washed away — it was miserable.’”

Ranganath is an advocate of the family dinner-table chat. This enables children to become the “authors of their own personal narratives” — forging an understanding of what has occurred. “Teenagers from families whose dinner-table conversations include shared reminiscences are less likely to be anxious or depressed and have fewer behavioural problems,” he says.

This reframing of memory works for adults too. Choosing which memories to hold on to and which to let fade away is something we can all practise. “We can free ourselves from the shackles of the past and instead use the past to guide us towards a better future.”

Helpful associations

To better remember names, create an association. “If you know Greek mythology, you might link my name with Charon, the ferryman of the underworld,” he writes. “If you can find some aspect of my appearance that reminds you of Greece you’ll be set to pull up my name whenever you see my face again.”

But what about those car keys? The trick, he says, is not to focus on the keys themselves but on something unique to the location where you put them down — the colour of the counter or the pile of unopened letters on the side. This helps tune out that noise and focus on the memories we need.

• Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters, by Dr Charan Ranganath (Faber)

Written by: Ben Spencer

© The Times of London