Why Can’t I Remember Anything?

Faulty memory happens to us all. You can't find your car keys -- again. You meet someone at a party, and 5 minutes later you forget her name. You leave the grocery store and have no idea where your car is parked.

Relax. No one has a perfect memory, and it's OK to have some lapses, even if you're still young.

What’s Normal?

Things you learned only recently -- like a name at a party -- are the hardest to remember, because they haven’t yet taken root in your mind.

Also, your brain has only so much storage space. It needs to make room for new, useful items. And to do that, it has to get rid of less important details, as well as those that you don't call on often.

It’s also common to forget where you put something or an appointment that was on your schedule. Most of the time that happens because you weren’t paying close attention in the first place. Maybe you were focused on not spilling your glass of wine instead of learning that new person’s name, or you might have been thinking about your grocery list instead of where you left your car. You also tend to forget things when you're tired, sick, or stressed out.

Quick Tricks

There are things you can do to improve your recall day to day. You may have to organize (or reorganize) your life a little:

o    Get organized. Stash the items you misplace often in the same spot, and they'll be less likely to go missing in the future. Install a key hook and cell phone charging station so they have dedicated places.

o    Write it down. When it comes to keeping track of your schedule, phone numbers, and birthdays, put pen to paper. Even if you don't look at your notes, the act of writing them down can help you recall things.

o    Consult your calendar. Get a date book or wall calendar and write meetings, appointments, family outings -- and everything else -- in it. Look at your next day’s schedule before you go to bed to help keep events fresh in your mind.

o    Play word games. Create an online password you’ll never forget by using an acronym. Come up with an easy-to-recall sentence or phrase. For example, you could use the year your favorite sports team won big: SSSBC14 could stand for Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl Champions in 2014. It means something to you, so you’ll remember it, but isn’t easy for a hacker to figure out. If the password was assigned, make up a sentence that fits it.

o    Repeat, repeat, repeat. From a name of someone you just met to an address you need to get to, saying something again can help it stick with you.

o    Work at it. Do something to challenge your brain -- learn a new language, discuss books with your friends, or curl up with a crossword puzzle.

o    Get social. People who volunteer, or just keep up with friends and family, are more likely to stay alert.

Lifestyle and Memory

Lifestyle affects memory. For example, your diet plays a role. If your cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar are too high, the blood vessels in and around your brain can get clogged or damaged. A Harvard study showed that people who eat more saturated fat (found in meat and dairy products) do worse on memory tests than those who eat less. If you're trying to make better food choices, consider the Mediterranean diet. This way of eating -- which features omega-3-rich fish, heart-healthy olive oil, and plenty of fresh produce -- has been linked with protecting thinking and memory.

Guess what else is just as good for your memory as for the rest of your body? Regular exercise. It promotes blood flow to the brain. You should be getting 30 minutes each day. And you need regular sleep, which helps your brain file memories so you can access them later on.

If you smoke, stop. It damages blood vessels. If you’re a heavy drinker, lighten your intake. Research shows heavy drinking will mess with your memory. Moderate drinking (no more than 1 drink per day for women or 2 for men), though, might actually protect it.

Memory and Aging

Memory slips do seem to get worse through the years. You slowly start losing brain cells beginning in your 20s, and certain chemicals that these cells need also decline. It makes sense that your memory is sharper at 25 than at 55 or 75.

Major memory changes don't always signal Alzheimer's disease. They can be caused by strokes, head injuries, lack of vitamins in your diet, or sleep trouble. They might even be a side effect of one of the drugs you’re taking. When in doubt, see a doctor to sort it out.

There are red flags that might reveal a more serious problem. If your slipups happen often (you forget where you parked every day) or get in the way of daily life (you can’t balance a checkbook or you don't remember where you live), see a doctor. Get checked out if your family or friends tell you that you weren’t sure who someone was -- and it was a person you know well, such as a close friend or relative.

And if you live with someone whose personality has changed or seems confused -- he's not sure where he is or what year it is -- get him to a doctor.

Source: WebMD

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How to optimize your memory?

Every day, and throughout our lives, we ask for our memory: conversations, intellectual work, and preparation for exams ... Memory is the key to learning since it allows the recording, storage and retrieval of information.

But with the aging of the population, more and more people are prone to memory problems. This phenomenon affects more than 850 000 people with 200 000 new cases per year *. The causes are multiple: age, heredity, unbalanced diet, lack of cognitive stimulation...

The memory is a function to maintain daily to preserve and optimize its performance. There are some tricks to increase memory capacities (memorization capabilities):

• A good sleep: essential to the preservation of cognitive abilities, sleep is essential to strengthen and consolidate memory.
• Regular sport practice: good memorization is directly linked to good oxygenation of the brain. To optimize memory abilities, it is essential to practice a sport activity that stimulates the brain, attention and neuronal communication.
• A biological rhythm respected: certain moments of the day are more conducive to learning and concentration. The middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon are periods of quality for the process of memorization.
• A healthy and diversified diet: the brain consumes about 20% of the energy provided by the diet. A major consumer of glucose, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and trace elements, it needs a varied and balanced supply to support its cognitive functions. Consumption of fruits, vegetables, cereals and fish is preferred.
• Targeted supplementation: Any impairment can impair the functioning of the nervous system. Targeted supplementation is recommended to help maintain brain function, promote deep, restorative sleep, and cope with the stress experienced during exam periods.

 * Helmer C et al. MEDICINE / SCIENCES 2006; 22: 288-96.

Source: Lescuyer Laboratory

The memorization factors

Revisions are often characterized by an active effort of repetition of information. This mental work would transfer knowledge from short-term memory to long-term memory, for more sustainable storage. 

Nevertheless, the consolidation of knowledge seems to be easier and more lasting when the memory is associated with knowledge previously acquired; making it meaningful.

The process of memorization is also sensitive to 4 other essential factors:

• Attention: the degree of concentration
• The emotional state: the affective values attributed to the material to be memorized
• Motivation: the interest or the need to memorize
• The context: lighting, noise, smell, place...

Source: Lescuyer Laboratory

Learning and memory

Learning is defined as a process involving change. Indeed, during learning, physiological transformations occur in the brain, under the effect of knowledge and experiences. These transformations are at the root of the mental aptitudes of learning, memorization and knowledge.

Thus, the more synapses (connections between neurons) are activated, the more efficient they are to transmit and process information; and conversely, the less they are used, the less efficient they are.

Memory, on the other hand, allows the recording, storage and retrieval of information captured by the brain. Memory is in a sense the trace of learning.

The memorization process is divided into 4 phases:

• Sensory memory: it corresponds to the phase during which the brain analyzes the information captured by the 5 senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste).
• Short-term memory: arising from the sensory memory, it allows to temporarily record the information of the current life.
• Long-term memory: allows you to group and store the information you have learned.
• Recall of information: this phase corresponds to the restitution and the re-use of the stored information.

Source: Lescuyer Laboratory

To Boost Memory: Study, Wait, Then Exercise

Learning requires more than the acquisition of unfamiliar knowledge; that new information or know-how, if it’s to be more than ephemeral, must be consolidated and securely stored in long-term memory.

Mental repetition is one way to do that, of course. But mounting scientific evidence suggests that what we do physically also plays an important role in this process. Sleep, for instance, reinforces memory. And recent experiments show that when mice and rats jog on running wheels after acquiring a new skill, they learn much better than sedentary rodents do. Exercise seems to increase the production of biochemicals in the body and brain related to mental function.

Researchers at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior at Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Edinburgh have begun to explore this connection. For a study published this month in Current Biology, 72 healthy adult men and women spent about 40 minutes undergoing a standard test of visual and spatial learning. They observed pictures on a computer screen and then were asked to remember their locations.

Afterward, the subjects all watched nature documentaries. Two-thirds of them also exercised: Half were first put through interval training on exercise bicycles for 35 minutes immediately after completing the test; the others did the same workout four hours after the test.

Two days later, everyone returned to the lab and repeated the original computerized test while an M.R.I. machine scanned their brain activity.

Those who exercised four hours after the test recognized and recreated the picture locations most accurately. Their brain activity was subtly different, too, showing a more consistent pattern of neural activity. The study’s authors suggest that their brains might have been functioning more efficiently because they had learned the patterns so fully. But why delaying exercise for four hours was more effective than an immediate workout remains mysterious. By contrast, rodents do better in many experiments if they work out right after learning.

Eelco van Dongen, the study’s lead author and a former researcher at Radboud University (he is now a policy officer at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), hopes that future studies will help determine both the optimal time to exercise and the ideal activity to reinforce learning. Workouts that are too strenuous “could be less positive or even detrimental” to acquiring knowledge, Dr. van Dongen says, while gentle exertions — “a short, slow walk,” he adds — might not prompt enough of an increase in the biochemicals needed to influence how the brain learns.

For now, he says, if you are trying to memorize a PowerPoint narrative or teach yourself macroeconomics, it could be beneficial to exercise a few hours after a study session. “Long-term memory is not only influenced by what happens when you learn new things,” he says, “but also by the processes that take place in the hours and days afterward, when new information is stabilized and integrated in your brain.”

Gretchen Reynolds

nytimes