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Most people think that memory lapses are for the hopelessly disorganized. This is because some have systems. For instance, the keys go into the key jar.

The point is, compulsive list makers never come home from the supermarket without the items they intend to buy. Imagine their annoyance when eventually they take three trips between two places before they remember why they went from one place to another anyway!

A lot of us, faced with these glitches, worry that Alzheimer's is just around the corner. Experts are reassuring us that memory lapses are part of the normal wear and tear that goes along with middle age.

No one is exactly sure why memory goes downhill. It may be that we lose brain cells as we age or the remaining cells do not communicate with one another as effectively. But, the result is well known: mental gaffes cause embarrassment and inconvenience.

For example, Linda, 35, went to her son's school with a big cake thinking it was Family Day. As it turned out, the schedule of the Family Day is set on the next day. Her son was surprised to see her and overjoyed when she brought out his favorite chocolate cake. Of course, she had to bring the same thing the next day, this time for real.

Attention is the gateway to retention. Multitasking makes it hard to commit things to memory in the first place. If the information does not get in to begin with, forget trying to save it and access it later. If multiple activities crowd your day, do not rely on your recall skills. Make lists, take notes, and ask others to do the same.

Interestingly, people tend to blame age, rather the busy nature of their work for their slips.

Take the common lapse of forgetting someone's name. It happens to everybody, young and old. Names are difficult to handle because they are abstract. The person's face and his name are not logical ideas for the brain to link together. According to neurologist Barry Gorden, M.D., Ph.D., the older we get, the more data we have to sort through in our brains. Some mental lapses are nothing but congestion.

Also, we blank on names because we know too many of them. Anxiety makes it worse by creating more traffic. That is why the name often pops into our minds later when the mental traffic has died down.

There are three kinds of memory, with each one responding differently to the aging process.

Episodic memory is for recalling the name of a restaurant or a movie plot from last week. It starts to decline in our early forties.

Semantic memory is the type that gives us the ability to collect and retain new facts and figures. It holds up pretty well, which is why we know what a blog is but forget your dentist's address.

Procedural memory is for tasks we do automatically, such as playing the piano or driving a car. This is fairly resilient. So, even if we can't think of our friend's phone number, we can press the right keys on the phone's pad.

Certain medical problems can interfere with our ability to recall. These may include depression, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, a concussion, diabetes, and side effects from some drugs. While these can affect how we recall things, it does not mean that we can treat memory lapses the same way we treat illnesses. Improving our diet and lifestyle can help us get back on track.

Let us manage our stress. Try whatever works for us – yoga, gardening, walking, etc. Not only does tension distract you, making it hard to learn and remember things, but it also takes a direct toll on the brain.

Be aware of the reasons for such memory lapses and we will be more understanding and tolerant of our selves.

Posted by Leon Edward at 09:55 PM | Permalink

It is a fact that memory deteriorates as a person grows older. It is also true that there are some people who just have a hard time remembering names, sequences, and figures. These people may even think of this as a problem.

The good news is that memory can be improved, especially if you are still in your tender years. To give you an idea of how you can actually improve your memory, here are some good steps to follow:

1. First, digest the information. This is your first perception of the data. Concentrate. Try not to process the information too lightly. Attempt to take in all the facts and figures as much as you can.

2. Associate the data to something you really know. The process of association is very powerful. Connect the data to anything you identify or feel deeply about. It can even be anything entirely unrelated. Your main goal here is to easily recall the data every time you are reminded of that something.

3. Recite the data in your mind. Now, it is time to actually use your memory. After taking in the data and associating each individual item to something, start recalling them one by one in the right order in your mind. Do this until you get everything correct.

4. Pause for five minutes and recall the data again. Rest your mind for a few minutes. Then go back to your data and try to recall all of it once more. If you are successful, do this step for about three times. Give yourself another five minutes, then recall. If you are still able to remember the data after three times, this means the data is now residing in a part of your brain and it will stay there long-term.

5. Go over the steps again until you can recite the data on your own. If you fail to recall all the data given to you after the five-minute lull time, go back to step one. Repeat the steps until you can accurately remember every single piece of data fed to you.

These are relatively easy steps that will stimulate your mind and improve your memory. It is okay to fail the first few times. Just regularly apply this simple guide whenever you need to memorize something.

Then, observe yourself. After several tries, you will notice that it is taking you less time to recall the things given to you as you go along. You’ll be amazed at how you can become a memory genius in no time.

Posted by Leon Edward at 10:07 PM | Permalink

It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The mearnings of thousands of everyday perceptions, the bases for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory.

Memory can be defined as the capacity to keep information available for later use. It includes not only remembering things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves. Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because he has sniffed something suspicious in the grain pile. Memory is also involved when a six-year-old child learns to swing a baseball bat.

There is no magical formula available yet for making everyone a wizard of memory. Many of the gimmicks that one hears about have proven to be mostly wishful thinking. For example, learning in sleep has never been shown to be effective. Indeed, one of the most important requirements for learning is to pay attention.

This also relates to the use of hypnosis, another potentially 'magic' learning aid. Under hypnotic suggestion people do learn a little faster, but the advantage is of just the magnitude expected if a person concentrates harder for any reason.

There are many variables that may make a difference in how well you learn and remember something. Spacing practice is one of these. It is usually better to study or practice a particular thing a little at a time rather than all at once, at least insofar as its meaning and logic are not impaired. Even the way in which flash cards deck of, say, French-English vocabulary is arranged for memorization can make a difference. If the same card is studied twice in a row, the second practice does almost no good. It is best to study one card for a while, and then put it away while you study at least six or eight others.

After something has been learned, the degree of retention may be greatly influenced by the manner in which practice was organized. If instead of learning just to master, the learner goes on to study more, his rate of forgetting is much less rapid. Tests are even more effective in preventing forgetfulness.

In some cases, less will be forgotten in a month with a properly arranged test than in a single day without one. Tests are probably most effective, as compared with just more studying, when the material is already fairly well learned.

Certain methods of organizing information as it is learned can make it easier to retain and retrieve. These 'tricks' are sometimes called mnemonic devices. For example, medical students often try to remember a sequence of nerves by memorizing a poem in which the first letter of each word stands for the first initial of a nerve. Junior high school students use the same trick to remember the order of planets.

Another technique is to create a vivid visual image – one full of bizarre and unusual features – incorporating the thing or things to be remembered. These memory aids work by organizing the materials to be learned and making them more meaningful. They thus take advantage of things the person already knows to help make new connections more varied, rich and salient. Under what conditions these various memory aids work and do not work has not yet been established.

Does memorizing make a person a better "memorizer"? The answer is complicated. The use of various aids, together with proper organization of practice time and other good study habits, will increase your ability to learn and retain information. But simply doing a lot of memorization will not strengthen your memory. Practice makes you good only at exactly what you have learned.

 Improve Memory Ebooks

Posted by Leon Edward at 08:54 PM | Permalink

1. Get someone's name clearly when he or she is being introduced to you. Don't hesitate to ask the person to repeat his or her name (politely, of course) if you did not hear it right the first time.

    

1. Give the name a chance to sink in. You can do this by repeating the name aloud around two to three times and using it during the succeeding conversation.

    

1. Study the face that owns the name. Note the person's distinguishing physical features. Does he have a mole? Does she have red hair? Does he have unique mannerisms?

    

1. Connect the name with the face. If this is difficult, try to assign something, an image, that's related to the name. For instance, Mr. Butler might actually be a butler or may dress like one. Or, as Carnegie suggests, create a silly image of the person and his name in your head. You're the only one who knows about this, anyway, so you might as well try to see if it does work.

    

The issue of name recall may seem minor, but it is actually serious. It has the power to gain peals of laughter, but it also has the capacity to destroy potential and existing relationships. Thus, we must all seek to improve our memories, especially with faces and names. The ideas recommended by Dale Carnegie have worked for many already, but you might have recalled boosting techniques of your own. Use them.

Posted by Leon Edward at 05:42 PM | Permalink

Images and words can help you in remembering things by bringing pictures in your head instead of just words or figures. Let’s say, in learning the process of cell mitosis or cell division, most of the books that contain concepts or scientific ideas have pictures to describe scenarios that are sometimes difficult to be seen by the human eye. Another example would be the structure of a bacteria or a virus. Graphic elements and visual tools, therefore, may become guiding principles in learning conceptual or precisely scientific ideas.

Another example would be in memorizing the lyrics of the songs or in remembering stories that you might have read before. In these two examples, the memorization process becomes easier if you imagine the images conjured by the lyrics of the song or if you create vivid images in your mind as you read or recall a narrative or tale. Picture the actual scenario described by the sentences or paragraphs.

To further intensify your imagination, you have to actually feel what the character is feeling. If you’re reading a story about a knight in shining armor fighting a dragon, then feel your strength, the power of your sword, the heat of the fire from the dragon’s mouth, and even the kiss of the princess after saving her from the monster. J

Images and the formation of which, in the process of learning or remembering, can therefore help you in improving your memory. Here are some of the valuable methods which you can use in achieving an imaginative memory:

Learn to think with both words and figures. For example, in reading a book, it would be helpful to stop for a while and reconstruct the suggested scenario inside your head. This way, you are also increasing the chances of not only recording linguistic data but also some of the essential cognitive aspect of remembering, like the reconstruction of perceived or imagined senses in your brain. The smell and taste of ice cream, the redness of a strawberry, or the thickness or thinness of blood described in a crime novel that not only gives chill or excitement in reading but also makes your reading experience more memorable.

In learning new ideas, associate these concepts with a very particular image or picture that is very personal or relevant to you. Put some premium on what you already know or on what is easily conjured by your brain in experiencing these words (like in learning a new language or subject). Put some personal relationship with these words like knowing the origin of their meanings (etymology) or by giving them a concrete symbol in your head.

If you’re reading a very technical manual or theory pamphlet, what you can do is imagine yourself doing the scenario suggested by the book. This is also what we call as vivid reading. Words and sentences become alive not with their meaningful connections but with their correlative value with reality. In fact, writing prose or poetry involves a highly developed skill in imagery and mental mapping. Poets and creative writers are said to be good not only in remembering details or facts, but also in the creation of worlds or situations found within the mind.

 Improve Memory Ebooks

Posted by Leon Edward at 07:49 AM | Permalink