Key Messages
Unlock The Secrets Of Your Memory: A Guide To Understanding And Enhancing Your Memory Power
It’s no secret that success and failure can depend on how well we retain information.
That’s why it’s important to understand how the brain forms memories, so that when you study, you remember what you’ve learned.
With this knowledge, you can optimize your study sessions to help boost your GPA or expand your vocabulary!
In the book How We Learn by author Benedict Carey, readers are given insight into how their mind works and practical methods to maximize their learning potential.
You’ll discover helpful tips such as remembering someone’s name at a party; choosing the right kind of music to listen to while studying; and identifying skin rashes quickly by becoming an expert in no time!
This book is perfect for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of how their mind works and learn strategies for optimizing study sessions for better results.
The Brain’S Process Of Making And Retrieving Memories
When we remember events and experiences, our brains rely on the connections between neurons or cells.
These connections in turn form networks of synapses that store memories.
The formation of memories involves stimulating our neurons so they can communicate with each other and create these networks.
Each time a memory is retrieved, the synapses become thicker and make remembering it easier and faster.
However, memories aren’t stored all in one place – different types of memory are held in various areas of the brain.
One such area, called the hippocampus, stores newly learned information such as a name of a person you just met.
The neocortex is where older memories are stored, divided further into parts responsible for movement and visual processing; this is why recalling details about your first day at school will register differently for example if you remember the dingy green color of the hallway versus what was said by your teacher during your introduction to class.
All in all, by understanding how memories are formed through neuron connection and can be located within specific areas of the brain helps us gain insight into how our minds function and how we can better recall information when necessary.
The Importance Of Sleep For Learning And Memory Retention
A good night’s sleep is an essential part of retaining and remembering what you’ve learned.
Research has shown that getting a full night’s sleep helps to form and consolidate new memories, boosting your ability to recall information later.
For example, in one study participants were divided into two groups: one that slept before taking a memory task and another that took the test without sleeping first.
The results showed that the group that got some sleep performed significantly better – they remembered 93% of the rankings while the sleepless group only remembered 69%.
Additionally, different stages of sleep are important depending on the kind of task you need to complete.
Going to bed earlier is great for memorizing facts, while staying up late can help to boost creative thinking if you get a couple of hours’ REM sleep just before sunrise.
So, next time you have an important exam or need to remember something crucial make sure to squeeze in a good night’s sleep – it will pay off!
How Environmental Cues Can Help Us Remember What We’ve Learned
If you want to make sure that you remember the information that you learn, it is important not to always use the same study routine.
This is because changing (or varying) your study environment can have a positive effect on how well your brain retains information.
An experiment was conducted which showed that when participants studied a list of words with different types of music playing in their environment, they were able to remember twice as many words if the same kind of music played during their test than when there was other music or no music at all.
These observations show that by surrounding yourself with the same cues while taking an examination as those while studying will help your brain recall the information you’ve learned in class.
So try alternating between taking notes on a computer and by hand, and use different environments for studying like your kitchen one day and outside another.
This will ensure that you are able to store the new knowledge in various parts of your mind and thus increase retention.
Use The Spacing Effect To Maximize Your Learning And Retention
If you want to remember information for the long-term and really internalize the material, then cramming isn’t the best strategy.
We’ve all done it right before a test; we spend hours trying to commit every fact, schematic and formula to memory.
But that kind of rapid-fire study actually does little to help us remember what we learn on the long term.
Instead, we should adopt the “spacing effect”.
Basically, this means breaking up our study time over multiple days instead of cramming it into one intensive session.
This kind of activity mimics how our brains naturally learn and is proven to lead to more permanent knowledge retention in the long run – without taking up more time.
For example, say you have a test in two weeks and you plan to study for nine hours total.
Rather than studying for all nine hours on one day, try interspersing three hour-long sessions on different days – this way your brain will be exposed to new (or old) material again which helps form neural pathways that provide additional reinforcement for that information or fact.
Cram today, forget tomorrow; if you want to make sure your knowledge sticks around for a while, then apply some space between your learning sessions!
Self-Testing Helps Us Understand And Retain Knowledge More Effectively
Quizzing yourself and explaining what you’ve learned to others are great ways to cement the knowledge that you have gathered.
Whether it’s through a multiple-choice test or conversations with friends, actively testing your understanding of information is an effective memory retention technique.
At University of California, Los Angeles, psychologists found that when they had students answer questions about a topic they were going to learn about a few weeks later and afterwards gave them the correct answers to the questions, their final exam results scored 10 percent higher on related questions.
This proved that not only could reciting information actually help a person learn the material better, but also that even pre-testing themselves (before they knew anything about the subject) helped them better understand it later on.
Explaining what you have learned to another person can be equally helpful in training your brain too.
Not only does this put in extra effort for understanding and memorizing certain subjects, but it also strengthens connections between neurons as well as making retrieval easier and faster from then on.
How Taking Time For Breaks Can Lead To Creative Solutions To Problems
When it comes to completing a project, more often than not, people want to just get it done as quickly as possible.
But when you dive into a project and finish it immediately, you aren’t giving your mind enough time to absorb everything that you’ve learned.
Interruptions in projects can actually be beneficial to our learning process.
A recent study found that people remembered better the tasks which were interrupted rather than those which were completed right away.
This shows that throwing small breaks into our projects allows us time to think freely and commit things to memory.
Taking a break from the same problem can also help us see things in different ways by loosening up a fixed perspective.
We are better able to find solutions when we don’t force ourselves into trying them while we’re working on a project – they almost seem to come out of nowhere!
So if you have been struggling with something for a while, take some time off.
You’ll soon realize that interruptions don’t knock you off track but instead, help you learn better!
The Benefits Of Varied Repetition: Harness The Power Of Variety To Increase Learning Outcomes
Research shows that if you really want to solidify and store lasting memories, variety is the key!
Instead of solely focusing on one skill, practice different skills at the same time if you want to maximize your study gains.
Take a lesson from the researchers that conducted a study with children tossing beanbags while blindfolded.
They found that those who practiced with two targets, placed two feet and four feet away respectively, performed better than those who only practiced hitting only one target which was three feet away.
Even though these kids had never trained with this specific target distance before, they still succeeded because of the broadened scope of their training.
The added diversification of experiences brings an increased level of challenge and effort when studying – increasing your chances of success in any random situation.
Try incorporating different types of materials and methods into your study session; for example, if you’re learning about geometry, read up on it AND apply it in different context, like sketching out diagrams or creating sample questions.
This will give you more firepower when presented with unfamiliar problems related to what you are studying for!
Bottom line? To maximize retention and gain real understanding from the material: keep your brain on its toes by practicing varied repetition rather than monotony!
Perceptual Learning: Developing Intuition And Making Faster Decisions
Perceptual intuition is a powerful tool that can help us separate important information from the noise of too much information in our environment.
It is the ability to make quick, accurate judgments and decisions based on the signals around us – much like how an experienced baseball player can quickly determine whether or not to swing at a fast ball.
By developing perceptual intuition, we can become more effective in reacting and responding to situations.
For example, novice pilots may be overwhelmed by all the dials and instruments inside a plane’s cockpit, but experienced pilots are able to act on their intuitive understanding of what the readings mean.
To hone this skill, we need to practice with perceptual learning modules – pictures or videos that help build our capacity for making snap judgments from what we see.
A study which looked at medical students showed that by repeatedly making quick decisions from images of different lesions and rashes, they eventually developed an “expert eye” when it comes to perceiving skin conditions accurately.
Through practice with perceptual learning models, we can gradually master the ability to differentiate what matters from what doesn’t; this way, we can better filter out unnecessary information and hone our perceptual intuition for future situations.
Wrap Up
The conclusion made by ‘How We Learn’, is that in order to learn effectively, we need to have a good understanding of our own brains.
Knowing how the brain processes and stores information can help us devise more effective routines for studying that are tailored to match the particular subject we are studying and the type of knowledge we will be using in the future.
By using these kinds of routines, we can save time and effort while ensuring that the information we’ve learned actually sticks with us long-term.
