Taking care of our health is essential at any stage of life, and not only physical healthgiven that memory is an equally important part as we get older However, just as we can strengthen our muscles and fitness, there are also ways to improve our memory and not forget the most important things.
Thus, the neuroscientist Elizabeth Kensinger and the neurologist Andrew Budson They gave some keys to The Harvard Gazette on how to achieve just that, Don’t forget the most important things.
As they explain, memory errors usually occur when an error occurs in any of the different phases that allow us to have access to those memories, such as encoding, storage and remembering that information. In this sense, Kesinger pointed out that “get enough sleep It’s one of the most important things we can do.”
Although many people believe that forgetting is a bad thing, the truth is that “forgetting is important because if every time we tried to make a prediction about the future or understand what is happening now, we had to sift through everything that has happened to us, it would be inefficient,” he says.
But to make sure we remember the most relevant things, we can follow a procedure in four steps, represented in a mnemonic device. FOURThat will allow us encode information in memory more easily. These four steps consist of: first, focus attention; second, organize the information; third, understand the information; and finally, relate it to something else we already know.
They note that “it is much easier said than done.” “Often when someone says: I went to a party, and I met all these people, and I don’t remember any of their names.. The collapse was in that first stage, not paying enough attention“, explains Kesinger. “At the time of recovery, we can also have failures. Any student has experienced this, when they know the content but, during a test, they can’t remember it. Or when you’re looking at someone’s face, and you know that person’s name, but right then you can’t remember it. That’s when, instead of trying to generate possible responses, we could use general retrieval cues, like thinking about the last time you saw that person, the context, and possible connections.”
memory in aging
Inevitably, memory worsens with age, since “with aging, there is a transition to the brain that prioritize the essence of what happened. The brain accepts the similarities between events instead of trying to hang on to each event individually. That can lead to a lot of frustrations with memory, and it can also make us prone to some types of memory distortions or false memories where we think something happened, but it was something slightly different.”
Despite everything, the neuroscientist adds that “it is also important to point out that there are some advantages in this transition“First of all, Budson points out that, regardless of age, “there is nothing wrong with externalizing your memory or using aids to remember”.