2 simple methods to try for better memory recall

I don’t know about you, but as I get older, certain aspects of my ability to remember things are changing, and not for the better. This shift is in no way debilitating, thank goodness… more like downright annoying! You may know the kind of thing I’m talking about… like going to a specific room in the house and forgetting why or setting your keys or cell phone down and instantly forgetting where… There are many memory training programs and studies out there that claim to help people like us improve our memories. A recent study had me intrigued until I found out it involved drawing . I’m one of those “I can’t draw a stick figure” people, so I thought for sure this method would be unavailable to me, but I was wrong. It seems that drawing can help boost memory and that there are brain-based reasons for this. Drawing on your memory Melissa Meade, a doctoral candidate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Canada who co-authored a recent study, explains why drawing can be such an effective memory aid. “In normal, healthy aging, you tend to see a lot of changes occurring to parts of the brain that are involved in memory functioning and language processing. You don’t see many changes occurring in regions that are involved in sensory processing of visual information.” Meade’s study demonstrated how drawing may take advantage of these “relatively well-preserved brain regions” to boost memory. In a series of experiments, Meade and her supervisor, University of Waterloo psychology professor Myra Fernandes, asked a group of 48 adults ranging from college age to their 80s to write down 15 words and draw pictures or “doodles” of 15 other words. The subjects then did an unrelated task, like listening to and rating […]

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