Ways you can improve your memory

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How to improve your memory, spending only fifteen minutes every day

We look with envy at those able to remember every detail of inconsequential chapters of their lives, but we can imitate

The past we continually slip from the fingers, and just have our memories to access it. We all know, however, memory is treacherous, and is able to make us forget even the happiest moments of our existence. Therefore we look with envy at those who are able to remember even the smallest details of insignificant chapters of their lives. These happy owners of a powerful photographic memory are neither geniuses nor freaks, and not so complicated to reach its capacity long as we are willing to work a little.

With the name of eidetic memory or photographic memory (of "eidos", "form" in Greek) is known to the ability to remember things seen or heard a very precise level of detail. Both the character played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Barry Levinson's film, as Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory or Olivia Dunham on Fringe flaunted a powerful memory capacity, but fiction has contributed to myths about the photographic memory They do not correspond to reality.

Ignore this ability and not use it may cause their complete disappearance

On the one hand, the name given has led many to think that, once recorded in the memory print, eidetic can access it when and how they want the same as you would a documentary to a file. In fact, these memories are subject to the same kind of fluctuations that any kind, so that the time of exposure to them, the time or the attention that has been given the same influence retention.

Do not forget that a good memory does not have to amount to possess a photographic memory and even some have denied their existence, such as the cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky in The Society of Mind (Ediciones Galápago) ensures which is nothing more than a myth created by "professional magicians or charlatans" is because there is no one who can remember all the details of a text or image at a glance. Furthermore, although films like Rainman have indicated otherwise, the amazing brain power to show some autistic usually not by a photographic memory.

Three key factors

From what I have no doubt, however, it is that some people enjoy greater ease than others to remember visual details. There are three major factors that attempt to explain this difference. On the one hand, purely genetics: some people are born with a higher eidetic ability, although these are not an inherited quality. However, ignoring this ability and not use can cause their complete disappearance.

Our memory works by association eminently visual memories

Environmental circumstances also greatly determine the amount of information to be remembered. A proper diet and adequate rest are essential conditions for optimal memory performance; exercise, which improves the oxygen supply of the brain, also contributes positively. Similarly, the ability to concentrate which promotes sport can make a difference when it comes to remember certain information. The fewer distractions claim our attention, the easier it will be to focus on what we want to remember.

None of this matters if you do not train enough memory. This is not only to take care, but to dedicate a part of our daily lives to perform exercises that allow our brains operate and, above all, to know the procedures and exercises that allow sharpen our attention. One is that of the palaces of memory used by great orators like Cicero and was based on the principle that our memory is eminently visual.

As a result, we can generate our own mental mansions where we deposit in the form of paintings, sculptures and decoration everything we need to remember. A particularly useful when we have to memorize a speech, a long explanation or a list of tasks to be performed process. In this article we explain this process in detail before, but it is not the only one.

Association and mnemonics

The mental palaces is a procedure that is based primarily on partnership. It's the way our minds work, traveling from one thing to another continuously encouraging information related to each other, and the base of mnemonics, which use short sentences, rhyming internal and simple way to remember to facilitate memorization more complex formulas.

Similarly, it is much easier to remember someone's name if related to another concept. It is called Margarita? If we think of the flower we will remember it instantly. Your name is Pepe? Well, maybe the Real Madrid center-back serves as a shortcut. At other times, mere phonetic similarity can serve. Something similar happens with the images. If we come to mind a snapshot will be even easier to remember facts, dates, names and a long list because of its abstraction, recall cost themselves.

There are various methods to train this ability. One has been used by the US military for the past 70 years since the Second World War it became necessary for the Flyers identify themselves and quickly reminded of the components of the enemy, consisting of the following steps:

Find a dark room, where there is no distraction and a lamp can be placed on the floor. The bathroom can serve.

Sit on the floor so you can turn off and turn on the lamp without moving. Get a piece of paper and cut it to a paragraph corresponding space.

Take the book or that you're trying to memorize and cover with foil that has previously cut, exposing only the paragraph does not cover the hole. Place the book at a suitable distance to open your eyes you can quickly focus on the words.

Turn off the light and let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Briefly turns on the light and Bring it to turn off: you've got left in your eyes printed text in front of you.

When disappears printing again briefly turn on the light to repeat the procedure.

Repeat the process until you can remember every word of the paragraph in the correct order. If you do it right, say the advocates of the method, eventually you get to see the entire paragraph in your head and start to improve memory capacity.

The Internet has both testimonies of people that the procedure has allowed him to improve, ultimately, their skills, and those who believe that there is more than an eccentric procedure not confirmed by science. One who want to check their real eudética capacity, can use the pages as designed by the Open University where the user can undergo a test that only takes 10 minutes.

                           7 Ways to Improve Your Memory

They are only seven but could be more. Memory loss is something that concerns us, much more from certain ages ... so you have to get down to work to find out what we can do to preserve this important and so present in our daily capacity. The latest research can guide us in this important task:

1. Use tricks. In more professional terms we talk about memory techniques. A study by the University of Arizona has found that the "self-imagining 'is a useful way to enhance learning and subsequent recall of information. It is to imagine yourself in a situation or act in a particular way associated with the meaning of what we have to learn. For example, if I have to remember to buy apples and milk, it would be something like imagine yourself picking apples from the tree or by pouring milk into a glass.

2. Sleep enough. Rebecca M. C. Spencer of the University of Massachusetts in March 2013 published a review of the neurophysiological basis by which sleep affects memory and cognition. He explains that sleep is an important process not only in the consolidation of memories, but also in the selection of those data to be discarded and be forgotten or in learning motor skills.

3. Practice Brain Training. Research published in the journal PLoS ONE in early 2013 insists on the benefits that training only 15 minutes a day with a program of computer games. In this work, the group of people who played test improved performance in working memory, executive functions and processing speed.

4. Exercise. An increasing benefits for the brain associated with sport. According to I. Kirk Ericson, University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with a group of researchers from various American universities, aerobic exercise increases the size of the anterior hippocampus and entails improvements in spatial memory. It concludes that it is a good way to reverse the volume loss associated with age in this brain structure critical for memory.

5. Eat chocolate. Taking Care of excess, a curious study published in February 2013 in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology says that a component type cocoa flavanols could be related to better cognitive functioning, as they stimulate the cerebral perfusion, favor neurogenesis and promote changes in areas related to learning and memory.

6. Use meditation. This is another interesting fields in terms of brain benefits are concerned. Mrazek and colleagues at the University of California published in March 2013 in the journal Psychological Science that two weeks of meditation training improved working memory capacity of a group of students and their performance on a test of reading comprehension and got reduce the frequency deviation of thought, ie, 'ramblings'.

7. Associate. Maintain relationships with friends and have a wide social network has proven to be a factor associated with better memory, such as concluding a team of Australian researchers in a recent publication in the Journal of Aging Research. In the study, those who kept more in touch with close friends in particular and greater social network generally maintained better performance on memory tests after a follow up of 15 years.

You already have the instructions for improving your memory. Now up to you how to combine to keep your brain in shape and perform at one hundred percent.