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Discover the exciting latest breakthroughs in brain science that can unlock your full potential. This engaging journey is packed with clear explanations and practical, actionable tips that can truly transform your life for better.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:00:02] Have you had that moment, you go to the refrigerator, you open the door and you ask yourself, "Why am I standing here?" Or you meet someone, you say, "I'm going to remember their name. I'm going to do it". They tell you their name, and what happens? It just disappears into thin air. "Where did I put my keys? Where did I park my car? What was I just doing a moment ago? Where's my phone?" These can all be normal. Now, if they're happening with increased frequency, we want to get on top of it because there's things that we can do, we're no longer saying that there's nothing we can do. I want to talk to you today about some insights into how to boost our memory. Hi, my name is Dr. Marc Milstein, and welcome to Best of Your Brain podcast. I'm excited today to talk to you about the latest research into how to boost our day to day memory, how to remember the things we want to remember, and what we're going to focus on is this idea that there's things that we can do at pretty much any age to really improve our memory. Now we can think of our memory like a video camera, that we are just recording everything that we're seeing and that we're playing it back when we want to remember it, but it turns out that's really not how our memory works, but by understanding how our memory works, that really provides us those insights.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:01:07] We really have two types of memory, natural memory and artificial memory. Natural memory can improve by optimizing your sleep, your diet, and aspects of your overall health. We talk a lot about that in other episodes. Artificial memory is really the tricks and the tips used by people like memory champions to really optimize your memory. Now, let's take a moment and talk about some people who have incredible memory. There's things that we can learn from them. So there was one individual named Kim Peek. And if you saw the movie Rainman, the Dustin Hoffman character was based upon Kim Peek. And what Kim Peek could do was he could basically memorize every book that he ever read. He read 9000 books in his life, and it took him about 12 seconds to memorize a page, but he could also memorize the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye simultaneously, and all the information would go in. Kim was also a savant. And what that means is that in the face of this incredible memory, there were also things that he struggled with with just day to day memory, like remembering how to tie his shoes or button his shirt. And this really provides us some insights into the possibilities and the capabilities of how amazing memory can be.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:02:27] Now we can also talk about some memory champions. These are people who go to competitions, and they're like memory athletes. Some of the things that these memory champions do is they memorize 400 playing cards in ten minutes, 500 numbers in five minutes. And you might be saying, well, I don't really want to do that. I just want to remember my grocery list or that person's name. But the insights into how these memory champions do these incredible feats can really help us in our day to day memory.
[00:02:54] So let's talk about how you make a new memory, because that provides us some insights into how to improve our memory. So when you learn something new, you see it or you hear it, you take it in some of your 80 billion brain cells, they reach out and they make a new connection. That connection houses or stores the new memory. But when you go to sleep while you're dreaming, your brain actually makes those connections stronger. Now, if you review the information during the day, you also strengthen that connection. You run electricity over those connections, making them stronger. But if you don't practice the thing that you learned, it could be a new song on the piano or something you're reading in a book, those connections move apart and that's like getting rusty. Let's take this a step further and talk about where memories are stored in the brain.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:03:37] Now, we could think of short term memory as somebody you met yesterday, what's their name or what did you have for lunch? But in brain science, short term memory is something that's only seven to 10 seconds long, and this is how it works. When you learn something new, the information first goes to a part of your brain called your hippocampus. It's this part of your brain that kind of looks like a seahorse. And the information waits there for about seven to 10 seconds. And in that time, the rest of your brain decides, is the information in my hippocampus worth it or is it a complete waste of my time? If it's worth it, the information leaves the hippocampus almost like a waiting room, and you transfer it on to other parts of your brain where you're likely to remember it. If it's not worth it, guess what happens, you throw it away. Our brain really just wants to forget. There's just too much going on. And our brain evolved to have this filtering step to weed out what it believes to be useless information. So right now, your hippocampus is thinking, is learning about my hippocampus worth it? Or is this a complete waste of my time? But it can be really helpful to learn a little bit about your hippocampus, because the things that we talked about at the beginning, where did I park my car? Where did I put my keys? What was that person's name? Why am I standing at the refrigerator and I'm wondering why I'm standing here? These are all related to how our hippocampus works.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:04:52] If we're not focused on the information for about seven to 10 seconds, our brain just throws the information away and it sounds so simple. We're living in a time where there is just so much coming to our brain. We're multitasking, we're cooking while calling, while texting, and wondering, why is information not sticking like it used to? We can be on two screens at the same time, so something remarkably simple but highly effective is just in those moments you want to remember something, just say, I'm going to focus on this and nothing but this for about seven to 10 seconds. You convince your hippocampus the information is worth it, you send it off to other parts of your brain where you're likely to remember it, instead of just throwing it away.
[00:05:30] I'm going to give you my silliest tip of the day, but it's rooted in brain science and it's how to remember someone's name. So right after they tell you their name, take a moment and imagine writing their name on their forehead. Just imagine it. Don't actually do it. And the reason why this can be so helpful is it takes a few extra seconds. Your brain goes, "Oh, I'm focusing on this person's name. This must be important". It leaves the hippocampus going to long term memory instead of just throwing it away. So let's go one step further. The question now becomes: once the information leaves the hippocampus, this waiting room, where in the brain does it go? Well, if you saw the movie 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' starring Jim Carrey, it was a movie a while ago. And what happens in this movie is that Jim Carrey has a breakup, and he wants to erase the memory of his ex, and basically has this procedure done where they go into his brain and they basically remove the memory of his ex. And the question is, is that possible? Is it even remotely possible? And really, it's not possible because what's happening is that we'll just take a moment and think about somebody in your life. Let's not make it an ex. Let's not go there. But think about someone in your life and the way that that person looks, that's actually stored in a specific part of your brain with certain connections. That's the visual part of your brain, which has memory. The way that person sounds, the sound of their voice, that's stored in a completely different part of your brain in the audio part of your brain. And also, the way that person might smell is in the olfactory part of your brain and emotional memories you have about that person in the amygdala, a different part of your brain.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:07:04] So the memories are spread all throughout your brain. And then when you think of that person, all of those connections come together in this cohesive idea. You pull all that information together. So it really isn't possible to unhook a couple connections or a connection or two and just erase the memory of someone. Now we can actually use this insight to our advantage and start talking about the things that these memory champions do based upon how we actually store information in our brain. So a really simple tip is: if you want to remember something where you parked your car, where you put your keys or somebody's name, just take a moment and say it out loud. Again, it sounds so simple, but once you say something out loud, you actually activate two parts of your brain involved with memory, the part of your brain involved with speech, and the part of your brain involved with hearing what you just said. And you've now stored that memory in two places. And memory is kind of like squirrels hiding nuts for the winter. The more places they hide them, the more likely they are to find them. And the same is true for memory. The more places we store the information, the more likely we are to remember it.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:08:11] And also, this idea of just saying something out loud can be very powerful. If you're reading something, you're studying for a test, there's something you want to remember. Just say it out loud. We actually see this in studies with book clubs. Saying it out loud helps you remember, just a really simple tip. Now let's talk about another individual who has incredible memory and what we can learn. There's an individual named Daniel Tammet, and he has an incredible memory, it's like a superpower. And he studied all over the world. These are some of the things that he can do. He memorized Pi 3.14 to 22,514 decimal places. He learned ten languages, including Romanian, Gaelic, Welsh and Icelandic in a week for a TV documentary. He has incredible memory and he actually can communicate part of how he does what he does. In studying Daniel, one of the things that's been discovered is that he has a condition called Synesthesia. Now, Synesthesia is a condition where the senses in the brain are kind of cross-wired. So if you think about different senses that you have hearing, vision, smell, touch, taste, those are all stored in different parts of the brain. And what happens when somebody has Synesthesia is that one sense activates the other. So there are some really famous musicians who have synesthesia, like Billy Joel or Pharrell.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:09:33] And when they hear music, they also see colors. Individuals with Synesthesia also might have a certain taste in their mouth when they hear a certain word, or the letter might have a specific color or flavor or feeling. So what we understand is that there's this cross wiring of the senses. We see it with very creative people, people who have really good memory. But we also understand that sense. Memory is really powerful. Have you ever had that moment where you're walking down the street and maybe you walk by an ice cream store or a bakery and you smell something very specific. And like all these memories just flood back things from your childhood or a very specific event. Sense memory is really strong, and what we understand is that just tapping into this can actually help us remember. Now, Daniel has incredible abilities that are beyond his Synesthesia, but Synesthesia is a part of what he's doing. And if somebody doesn't have Synesthesia, what we realize is that we can just use it to our advantage and practice it. If you're trying to remember somebody's name, and they say their name is James, you can just say, "Okay, King James", you imagine them in a pub in England and you imagine the smell of the pub and maybe the taste of the food that you would be eating there.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:10:44] It's just activating all this powerful memory in our brain for senses that we can utilize. Also, the more we build a story around the things we're trying to remember, the more likely we are to remember them and make that story emotional. Remember, we said that information essentially starts to be remembered in the hippocampus, and then you send it out to other parts of your brain. If we think of the hippocampus like the waiting room, the next room over, adjacent is the amygdala, and that's where emotional memories are stored. Once you take the information and you leave the hippocampus and you go to the amygdala, it's not a far journey. And if it's not a far journey, it's not likely for the information to get lost. On the other hand, if you send the information out to the outer parts of your brain, like the outer cortex, that's a long way to go and it's very likely that information will be lost. This also relates to the idea of how to remember your password. And if you've played that game where you're constantly resetting your password and trying to pick cars or motorcycles, there's a famous comedian named John Mulaney that says, "We spend a lot of our day trying to convince robots that we're not robots". That seems about right lately. But if you don't want to play that game anymore and you don't want to constantly reset your password, just consider making your password something emotional.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:11:55] Make it silly, make it something funny. Make it something that even could be a little bit scary. If you make it emotional, as opposed to just a random string of letters or numbers or something that's sort of disconnected to something that you feel strongly about, you're less likely to remember it. But if you make it emotional, you're more likely to remember it.
[00:12:12] Now we're going to wrap up today with a bit of a pop quiz just for fun. We're going to talk about how you can remember a list of information. Impress your friends with this trick! The idea is that memory is actually very much use it or lose it, and we're living in a time where we don't often have to remember things as much as we used to, and that can be a good thing in some cases. It frees up our brain to be creative, but we want to also practice remembering things. We want to keep that skill strong. So let's do a quick pop quiz. I'm going to name six random things and we're going to see if you can remember them. Magnet, chocolate, blanket, chapstick, apple, pants. I'll give you a moment. See if you can recite it back. Now, if you didn't get it, don't feel bad. Most people would have a really hard time putting that list back.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:13:05] All six of them. You might have gotten a couple. If you got all of them, that's great. But most people cannot do that. And that's okay. But we're going to do a little trick. We're going to tap into a really powerful part of your memory called location memory. This is an old trick that goes way back, your ancestors used this to memorize large pieces of information and it's called memory of loci. You see, location memory is really strong and powerful in the brain. Think about your ancestors. They had to go for a long walk. What were they looking for? Probably food. They had to remember how to get back home. If they couldn't remember how to get home, they got eaten. They didn't pass on their genes. Those aren't our ancestors. So it's deeply embedded in our brain to remember things like locations. It's just critically important. So what these memory champions do is they tap into parts of their home or their apartment, and they actually put one thing from each of this list into a different room, and then they imagine walking through the room. Now we all have different layouts to our houses or apartments, so let's try something else. Let's do our face and let's try putting each one of these things in a different part of our face, and see if we can tap into that very powerful location memory.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:14:10] So let's take a moment and imagine that there is a magnet stuck on your forehead. Imagine chocolate coming out of your ears, a blanket covering your eyes, chapstick up your nose, an apple in your mouth, and a pair of pants that you're holding on to, like with your chin. Okay, now let's see how we do where or what was attached to your forehead. A magnet, what was coming out of your ears? Chocolate. What was covering your eyes? A blanket. What was up your nose? Chapstick. What were you holding in your mouth? An apple. And what were you holding on to with your neck? A pair of pants. Did you do better? If you got a few more right, that's great. If you didn't, that's okay. It can take a little practice. But if you did better, what you did is you tapped into this very powerful part of your brain called your location memory. And we can use this to our advantage if you're trying to remember a list or a group of people on a sports team, like on the baseball lineup, or maybe even some actors or actresses in a movie. Remember, memory is use it or lose it. So just practicing this can be helpful. So I hope you leave here today with some of the best things you can do to boost your memory.
[00:15:23] Remember that your brain is not a video camera, we're not just recording and playing back. And if we can tap into these stronger parts of our brain that are very good at remembering things that can help us remember, take a few extra seconds. Another seven to 10 seconds can go a long way; you convince your hippocampus the information is worth it. Say things out loud. Associate things. Tap into your senses. Build a story around it. And a quick tip is to review before bed. Because remember, you're making those connections stronger while you're sleeping as well. So I hear people tell me that, "I don't want to do these things. I don't want to do these tricks. I just want to remember". That's kind of like saying,"I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, but I don't want to go to the gym". Sometimes these memory tricks take a little bit of effort, but they can really pay off. So I hope these are helpful to you. And if you have any tips or suggestions that you use to boost your memory or help remember things that you want to remember, please leave them in the comments. And thank you so much for watching. Remember to subscribe.
[00:16:22] Thanks so much for watching. If you'd like to receive one brain health tip per week, please sign up for my newsletter. The link is in the description in the show notes below. See you next time.