Improve Your Memory (3)

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"Improve Your Memory (3)!"
“Is it not Better to Learn to Learn?”

There are a great number of techniques to improve memory, but they tend to act on a particular type of memory only, whether through mnemonics, repetitions of the same stimulus, or the creation of concept maps (giving meaning to things that they do not necessarily have in order to learn them more easily).

Joseph Novak has devoted considerable study to concept maps (see Novak, 2003) who noticed a significant increase in the ability of high school physics students to resolve problems through the use of these concept maps. This work still lacks a brain imaging study to define the cerebral areas activated during these different processes. Nevertheless, it has been observed that different areas of the brain are activated, depending to whether the subject is a novice or not in the subject concerned.

Neurological studies are thus still needed to understand how memory works. Considerable individual diversities exist, and the same individuals will use their memory differently throughout the lifespan depending on their age.

The science has nevertheless confirmed the role played by physical exercise, the active use of the brain, and a well-balanced diet (including fatty acids), in developing memory and reducing the risk of degenerative diseases.

Questions relating to the use of memory in current teaching methods and, especially to the critical role played by memory in student evaluation and certification in many OECD education systems, will probably have to be reconsidered in the future in light of new neuroscientific discoveries. Many such programmes rely more on memory than comprehension. The question “Is it not better to learn to learn?” cannot be answered through neuroscience but it remains highly pertinent.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 121

Improve Your Memory (2)

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Improve Your Memory (2)!"
Only A few People Have Eidetic Memory

What about those people who have a visual, almost photographic memory, who are very good at memorising a long list of numbers drawn at random or capable of simultaneously playing several games of chess blindfolded? Researchers have come to attribute these performances to specialised ways of thinking, rather than to a specific type of visual memory.

DeGroot (1965) took an interest in the great chess masters, getting them to co-operate in experiments where the layout of the chessboard was briefly shown and these excellent players had then to recreate the layout of the pieces. They succeeded at this challenge perfectly, except when the layout shown had no chance of happening during a real game of chess.

The conclusion DeGroot drew was that the ability of the great players to recreate the layout of the chessboard was thus not due to visual memory, but rather to the capacity to mentally organize the information of a game that they knew extremely well. On this view, the same stimulus is perceived and understood differently depending on the depth of knowledge of the situation.

This work notwithstanding, some people do seem to possess an exceptional visual memory, which can keep an image practically intact. This is “Eidetic Memory”. Some people can, for example, spell out an entire page written in an unknown language seen only very briefly, as if they had taken a picture of the page. The eidetic image is not formed in the brain like a picture, however – it is not a reproduction but a construction. It takes time to form it and those with this type of memory must look at the image for at least three to five seconds to be able to examine each point. Once this image is formed in the brain, the subjects are able to describe what they saw as if they were looking at what they describe.

By contrast, normal subjects without eidetic memory are more hesitant in their description. It is interesting (and possibly unsettling) to know that a larger proportion of children than adults seem to possess an eidetic memory; it seems as if learning, or age, weakens this capacity (Haber and Haber, 1988). These researchers also showed that 2-15% of primary school children have an eidetic memory.

Leask and his colleagues (1969) found that verbalisation while observing an image interfered with the eidetic capture of the image, thus suggesting a possible line of explanation for the loss of eidetic memory with age. Kosslyn (1980) also sought to explain this negative correlation between visual memorisation and age. According to his studies, the explanation resides in the fact that adults can encode information using words whereas children have not yet finished developing their verbal aptitudes.

There is still lack of scientific evidence to confirm or contradict these explanations. Brain imaging studies on this are needed.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 120 - 121

Improve Your Memory (1)

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“Improve Your Memory (1)!”
The Capacity to Forget is Necessary for Good Memorisation

Memory is an essential function in learning and is also the subject of rich fantasies and distortions. “Improve your memory!” “Increase your memory capacity!” “How to get an exceptional memory fast!” cry the marketing slogans for books and pharmaceutical products.

The slogans are pushed with increased insistence during examination time. Do we now know enough to understand the processes and to envisage the creation of products and methods that improve memorisation?

Do we need the same forms of memory today as was called for fifty or a hundred years ago in a world of different skills and professions? Can we talk of different memories – for instance, visual, lexical, or emotional? Do learning methods use the memory in the same way they did fifty years ago? These are relevant questions in this context.

In recent years, the understanding of memory has advanced. We now know that the memory does not respond only to the type of phenomenon and it is not located in only one part of the brain. However, contrary to one popular belief, memory is not infinite and this is because information is stored in neuronal networks, the number of which is itself finite (though enormous). No-one can hope to memorise the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Research has also found that the capacity to forget is necessary for good memorisation. On this, the case of a patient followed by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luri is enlightening: the patient had a memory that seemed to be infinite but, with no capacity to forget, was incapable of finding a steady job, unless it was as a “memory champion”.

It seems that the forgetting rate of children is the optimal rate to build up an efficient memory (Anderson, 1990).

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 120

Nature and Nurture of the Brain

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Nature and Nurture of the Brain

This could lead to downright disturbing interferences. Is it possible that we are born with genetic predispositions that affect the strength of connection tracts in our brains, and these in turn predetermine - predestine - our abilities for the rest of our lives?

The truth is quite different. Genetic predispositions are just that - tendencies that influence brain growth, not absolutes that dictate it. Indeed, it has routinely been found that the genetic features we are born with are likely to be responsible for about half of the differences between one individual and another - with the other half arising from genetic influences, which include environment, parenting, siblings, peers, school, and nutrition, to name but a few.

Comparative studies have been carried out of twins separated at birth, no-twins siblings (biological brothers and sisters), and adoptive siblings. Separated twins shared all genetic features but none their environmental influences; biological siblings share some of their genes and much of their environmental influences, and adoptive siblings share their environment but not genetic material.

Statistically, about half of the similarities among these groups can be accounted for their genetic backgrounds, and the remaining half cannot, and must be attributed to environment. Genetic predisposition is a tendency, but it not clearly a predestination. It is like that brain pathways are influenced in equal measures by nature and by nurture.

Again, the effect may be quite indirect. Studies in identical twins are often interpreted strictly in terms of genes and brains, but of course the twins share body types, hormone levels, visual acuity, an countless other variables, all of which affect the way the world treats them. How a child gets along in school is influenced by their height, weight, athleticism, skin color; and how the child get along will certainly influence his or her mental makeup. This is one reason that some scientists find claims of inheritance of cognitive skills and talents to be only weakly supported.

Moreover, brain pathways may underlie the entire diverse spectrum of individual abilities. These pathways, influenced by genes and environment, play apart in specifying differential abilities in music, in athletics, in affability - in a broad range of characteristic that make us who we are. Far from determining a linear ordering of individuals who will "win" or "lost," differential brain paths arrangements can grant a range of talents and gifts, leading in diverse directions, helping to generate populations of individuals each with unique trails to add to human mix.

"BIG BRAIN", The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence, Gary Lynch and Richard Granger, 2008, pages 127 - 128