HAUORA / HEALTH
An octogenarian neuroscientist says naps, novels and cooking are key to keeping the memory sharp, explains Rhys Blakely.
We’v el ong been intrigu edb y how memor ywo rks. For Aristotle, the world resembled a signet ring and the mind a tablet of wax. Whether a memor yw asf ormed depended on t he q uali tyo f the impression tha tt hef ormer made on the latter. This 2300-year-old analogy stands upp retty well in the face o fm odern research, says Richard Restak, a neuroscientist at George Washington University ,anda uthor of The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind.
He argues, though, tha tw en ow experience an anxie ty t hat didn’t bother the ancients. “In America today , an yone over
50 lives in dread of the Big A – Alzheimer’s disease,” he writes on page one of this slim, thought-provoking book. The 81-year-o ld a uthor describes h owt his worry looms over the dinner parties he attends.
You wonder whether he shou ldc onsider spending time with a less gloomy se to f friends. But Restak, t he a uthor o fs ome 20 books on the brain, offers a different solutio n: b y exercising and improving your memory ,hes uggests that it might be possible to fend off dementia.
He says memory lapses are the single most commo nc omplain tt ha tp eople over the age of 55 raise with their doctors. Mos to f the time there’s nothing to worry about .F orgetting exactl yw here you’ve parked at t he s upermarket is n ormal, he says.
Similarly ,f orgetting what you came into ar oom fo ris to bee xpected. For t he m os tp art, these kinds of lapses are the resul to f us being distracted. As Samuel Johnson put i t260y ears ago: “The ar to f memory is the ar to fa ttention.” If we’re not concentrating, Aristotle’s signet ring will not be pressed firmly enough in to t he wa xo f the brain to “encode” a memory.
But other glitches may be m ore serious. If you find yourself a tt he s upermarket and you can’t remember whether you drove there or were giv enalift– that ’s a red flag.
So too are abrupt changes. If an elite bridge play er s uddenly finds she has difficulty keeping track of her cards, it’s worth looking into. Restak says that he has also noticed that man yp atient s in the early stages of dement ia s top reading fictio n.Hes uspects tha tt his is often a sign their working memory is faltering.
Working memory is especially important , he explains. Falling somewhere between immediate recall and long-term memory ,i t’s what you would rel yo n to multiply two two-digit numbers in your head. It’s als ow hat you mus tu se to kee pt rack o fa large cas to f characters in a lengthy ,c omplex novel. In a sense, it’s where consciousness happens. And it’s worth preserving.
When you improve your working memory ,“you coincidentally increase you r in telligence”, he writes. So Restak urges us to d ow hatever we can to keep reading novels. They are better than non-fictio nb ooks, he argues, because with the latter you can dip in and out and don’t have to kee pt rack so much. He also reviews techniques that can boost memory powers. One of the oldest is the “mind palace” or “method o fl oci”, said to have been invent ed b yt he Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. Typically, it involves a set of locations that you kn owv er yw ell and that you can visualise, in fine detail, using your mind’s eye. You can then adapt these places to incorporate what it is tha tyouw an t to remember.
Restak’s personal mind palace includes about a dozen locations–the fron to fhish ouse, his local library ,ands oo n.To remember to buy milk and bread, he might imagine that his home has been transformed into a carton of milk tipped on its side and spilling over t hes treet, and tha tt he shelves of the library are stocked wit hl oaves of bread rather than books. The trick is to make the images (for most of us, it is far easier to remember images than words) as detailed and as odd as possible. It’s all about making the initial encoding step successful.
Much of Restak’s other advice comes down to “use or lose it ”. If you’ read river, refrain from using a GPS device occasionally. A small study has suggested tha tp eople wh ou sed GPS more frequently show a steep er cognitive decline in spatial memory. Following cooking recipes is another good way to exercise working memory ,hesa ys. Bridge and chess are great too, but so are simpler games. His favourite is 20 Questio ns– where one player thinks o fa person, place or object, and the other person, t heq uestioner, asks 20 questions with yes-or-no answers. The questioner must hold all of the previous answers in memor yto guess t hec orrect answer.
He also strongly recommends a short daily afternoon nap – 30 minutes to an h our, after lunch. A ndl ook after your sight and hearing: they are important for reading and socialising, which are linked to bett erc ognitive functio n. O ther suggestions are less fun. He advises his patients to quit alcoho lb y 70 “a tt he latest … alcoho lisa very, ver yw eak neurotoxin,” he says.
The book seems to have been mostly market edasa self-help guide o nh ow to avo id“the Big A”. This does it a slight disservice. This is a slender volume tha tt ips it s ha t at some very big ideas. There is, for instance, t hee xtraordinary stor yo faR ussian man, know nas “S”, wh ow asf ound to have virtually limitless powers of memory, and wh ow as ultimatel yto rment edb y his inability to forget.
But perhaps the best bits are Restak’s short meditations o nh ow memory makes us wh ow e are. “The more you can remember of your life, t he m ore chance you have of making meaningful insights,” he says. Which seems like a good reason to t ake more naps.
Look after your sight and hearing: they are important for reading and socialising, which are linked to better cognitive function.