We all have things we want to remember. And whole industries have developed around helping you have experiences worth remembering. Our brains know how to form the required neural networks. And we can help them — like gardeners helps their plants grow.
Let’s say you wanted to plant a flower. You would choose the very best soil, put the flowering plant in sun or shade – as it prefers – and water it enough until it has a viable root system. We now know that a similar thing happens when you form a new memory.
First, you expose yourself to the information you want to remember. Let’s say it is something you are reading that’s really important — so important that you read it out loud. Maybe you even act it out. Those are smart things to do, because they strengthen the neural network you’re building to keep that memory in your brain’s easy-recall library. If your exposure to the information is strong enough and your sleep, deep and relaxing, that memory will be replayed at night while you are sleeping and your neural network that encodes your memory will be strengthened.
Your ability to form the supportive neural networks that reinforce a memory depends partly on how healthy you are and also on how effective your brain training program is.
Taking a vigorous walk will help the new memory form too, as reported in the CR Way Getting Smarter forum: Exercise preserves hippocampus and memory too. Exercise increases neurogenesis (brain cell formation) and even increase the size of your hippocampus, which is all-important for memory.
When best-selling author, David Shenk comes to the Brain Booster teleconference on August 15th, he’ll undoubtedly talk about how we can work to form new memories. What may be unique for him is that he will be talking to super healthy CR folk whose memories are sharp and ready for the best ideas about how to improve them even more.
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