Memory Expert Answers Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm Nelson Dallas five-time USA memory champion and memory coach and today we're going to be answering your questions on Twitter this is memory support [Music] at gulab zamman asks does lack of sleep affect memory yes definitely if you don't get enough sleep you're not going to be able to pay attention or have tremendous Focus the next day and focus is a huge Cornerstone of having a good memory on the other side of things sleep is super important for consolidating memories During certain deeper states of sleep your hippocampus is actually transferring data from short term to

the long term and if that process doesn't happen you will potentially lose that information so it's a way to consolidate that day's information for the long term at Joe guy 358 asks does memory loss or weakening always mean Dementia or Alzheimer's definitely not although I will say if you are worried I would consult a doctor just because you're getting older doesn't mean that your memory has to get worse my family has a history of Alzheimer's My Grandmother Had Alzheimer's and that's actually what spurred this journey for me into the world of mnemonics I didn't have

a good memory before I learned about memory technique weeks of memory championships and it all started because seeing my grandmother passed away made me question you know is that my future the encouraging message here is that we all can improve our memories so if you feel like you have a bad memory or you're worried that your memory is aging you can turn it around at Bobby meow asks how the can someone solve a Rubik's cube blindfolded so what people will do is they'll assign each of the pieces a letter of the alphabet so technically each

part of each piece has its own letter so the top here might be an a whereas the back here might be a Q and if you can remember the sequence in which the pieces need to be solved you can create a sequence of letters which could equate to a series of words at Barnaby farn asks how the actual does memory work so it used to be thought that memories were stored entirely in the hippocampus which is a part of the brain parallel to your ear about the size of your thumb recently they discovered that it's

actually different kinds of memories are stored in different parts of the brain at orbital railgun asks what the is it about moving that totally wipes my memory I get up to do something and I instantly forget what that thing was so it's there's an interesting study that was done by a psychologists at Notre Dame where he talked about this phenomenon that we forget things when we move through doorways when you open the fridge and you forget what you opened it for or you walk into a room and you forget what you were walking in there

for we forget things where we cross an event boundary and so there wasn't really any solution to it other than maybe when you're trying to memorize something stay where you are rather than Crossing some kind of barrier mid learning or mid-memory I not casually cruel me asks how the I can memorize Taylor Swift lyrics but not physics formulas there are a few things at play here one is procedural memory that's basically muscle memory when you sing a song or listen to a song over and over again you are building it into your long-term muscle memory

second at play here is the emotional response you know you're connecting to her music her lyrics the way it makes you feel and that's a lot more interesting than say a physics formula and then the third thing at play is encoding the way that the song is structured the beat the Rhythm the way things rhyme lends itself to being easier to memorize that hashtag life Greg asks got any hacks for how to remember a list of 11 items let's say you want to remember a list of grocery items all right let's say that we have

asparagus bread bananas sour cream and coffee beans to memorize that list we can use a technique called the linking method which basically takes each of the items on our list turns them into some kind of fun interactive image and connects it one by one to the next one in the list so maybe this is how we picture it right we have asparagus so maybe I take those asparagus Spears and stab the bread and break it down into pieces and it reveals that there was a banana inside I then peel that banana and maybe some sour

cream liquid just pours out of it right and then finally maybe I scoop up that sour cream and just dump it in my coffee which is filled with coffee beans so that list would be asparagus bread bananas sour cream and coffee beans and what we've done is each of those individual images has a element of a story that can connects it or links it to the next thing in the list at JJ Pierce asks how do you memorize lines overnight asking for a friend yeah so there's this technique I called the first letter method and

basically you take a passage that you're trying to memorize and you read it a few times then write it down this is important just the first letters of each word as they show themselves in the actual text then you'll be surprised that you can actually read from that first letter only script and remember the full words for the whole thing you do that a few times then take it away close your eyes and see if you can remember it and most times like nine times out of ten you'll have the whole passage memorized at orcana

h j asks is there a correlation between exercise and memory yes both indirectly and directly indirectly you know being fit and working on exercising makes you feel good it lowers anxiety reduces stress improves sleep all of those things improve your memory and then directly it improves blood flow to the brain it reduces inflammation in the brain and it encourages brain health Alex Fran disco asks what is a Memory Palace and how do you make one inquiring minds want to know all right so Memory Palace it's a technique where you use a physical space that you

map out in your mind and you place images for the things you're memorizing along that pathway some of the best memory palaces are going to be places that you're super familiar with and then when you want to recall the information all you got to do is go back to that same physical space in your mind and walk through the place so let's say that you wanted to memorize the five largest countries in the world in order those happen to be Russia Canada USA China and Brazil since we're doing this together maybe we could use this

table now our pathway that we're going to decide on is going to start at the brain and make its way to this side of the table to the headphones one image per location now in terms of what are we putting on each location well with countries you can maybe think of an association that's natural to you for example for Russia I might think of a martini Avant called Martini so I would imagine maybe on the brain is a balanced martini glass filled with vodka then I go to the next location I'm on the laptop we

have to memorize Canada I think of Canada I think of a hockey stick they play a lot of hockey right so maybe a hockey stick is just slap shotting the crap out of this thing and sending it flying into the wall and exploding into bits next one would be the third location the deck of cards an association for USA I might think of like a hamburger so maybe I would imagine instead of an actual burger patty in my bun but it's a deck of cards stuck in there next we go to the fourth location and

that would be the fourth thing that I'm trying to memorize which is China I think of chopsticks for Chinese food so I'd have to incorporate that image with this object so I'd imagine maybe picking this up with chopsticks and having a hard time kind of rotating the cube trying to solve it and then finally the last location here would be our Brazil I think of Brazil I think of soccer ball they play soccer really well so I would maybe imagine putting these headphones around a soccer ball so you can listen to some jams now we've

just just memorize the list doesn't really feel like it but if we wanted to remember the list and recall it we just go back through our little Memory Palace and pull up the images that we left there Martini Russia hockey stick Canada Burger USA Chopsticks China soccer ball Brazil what's kind of beautiful about this technique is that you can say that list now forwards or you could say it backwards or you could just jump to any location and get any piece of information as you wanted at ABDO Viper asks how to memorize a deck of

cards at the memory championships one of the events is to memorize a full 52 card deck in sequence as fast as possible now the way I do that I do a combination of changing the Cards into images and then storing them in a Memory Palace how do I come up with the images there's a system called the Pao system person action object every card I've given a preset person action and object to so whenever I see it I don't see the call hard I see the person or the action associated with that or the object

and for every three cards I group them into this mini scene the first card's always the person the second card's always the action or the verb and the third is the object so to take an example the first card that we had was eight of clubs which to me is Bear Grylls the action Adventurer guy I probably can't even remember why it became that but there was a reason whenever I see eight of clubs it's Bear Grylls it feels like I'm looking at them it's so ingrained then this next card is the second in a

sequence of three so it's the action and my action for four of Hearts is urinating so we have Bear Grylls urinating and then the third card in this set Ace of clubs is a thong that's my image for it so I have Bear Grylls urinating on a thumb weird but memorable uh and I place it in one of my memory palaces the first location of which is my high school bedroom I imagine that action that little story happening in a location at a Memory Palace then we go into the next location essentially it's a person

action and then an object and then do that for every subsequent set of three and I move through my memory Palace as I place down those different sets of images and then I continue that process for every subsequent set of three until there's no more cards left seven of diamonds uh King of Spades two of spades Ace of Spades three of Spades you get the idea at tanvi Agarwal asks how are bad memories so so clear and exact in our minds but happy memories Fade Away back in the Medieval ages they would throw kids in

the river after memorizing something and it was so that they could actually remember the information better because their adrenaline spiked right after learning and there are studies that show that in situations of high stress or where your adrenaline is peaked you're actually going to remember that information better at summer arens asks how does memory have fragrance like why can I summon the smell of fall 2019 into my brain explain how I can smell my kindergarten classroom but I don't know what I did yesterday so smell is one of the earliest evolved senses in our brain

and it actually bypasses this thing called the thalamus which is responsible for kind of delegating information between different parts of the brain so technically with smell memories they go directly to either the amygdala or the hippocampus which are responsible for dealing with memories that's why usually smell memories are so intense and so instant at everyday innov TR R asks anyone ever competed in the United States memory championship yes many times the five-time USA memory Champion winner this is actually the trophy that I got from my most recent win last year it's in the shape of

the seahorse which is what the hippocampus looks like the competition is pretty interesting in itself it's a day-long event where we basically memorize useless stuff decks of playing cards huge phone numbers lists of words names and faces poetry and more and basically whoever can memorize the most the fastest and the most accurately becomes the USA memory champion at yours not truly asks how do you remember passwords are you mind mapping like homes first of all a password has to be memorable but it also needs to be secure one of the best ways to do it

is to choose a sentence that is funny or weird or bizarre to you Nelson Charles that's my middle name Dallas rocks my socks off take that sentence and just break it down into the first letters capital n capital c capital D lowercase r m s o exclamation keep things that were Capital keep things that were lowercase and there you have a pretty complex password it's not my actual password by the way at above oh add Mala asks how are mnemonics helpful it's just a second thing to memorize when you use mnemonics and the proper technique

you're taking advantage of things that our brains are really good at namely thinking in pictures we remember pictures way better than anything else pictures that have meaning to yourself and then secondly spatial orientation or organization how do you structure the images or things that you're memorizing if you have a way to do that you're making your life much easier at Charlie weather asks how do you remember people's names really tired of feeling like I'm disrespecting everyone I meet all the time this is probably one of the most common questions I get it's only normal that

when we're meeting people we're probably thinking about the smart thing we want to say or looking cool but we're not paying attention to the person in front of us who's about to tell us their name but there is a technique and I actually am pretty good at this this is one of the records that I still hold so let's do an example I've been given 25 different faces here all hiding a name behind the photo and I'm going to take a minute or two to look this over and memorize them first you turn the name

into a picture I would look at the person's face find something quick about them that I noticed usually the first thing that comes to mind whether it's pretty eyes a distinctive mole a big red beard so for this guy Oliver I think of Oliver Twist so I thought of me twisting his beard pretty forcefully he doesn't look too pleased about it in his expression there so it kind of makes the image a little more funny then I just repeated that process through all 25 names I did a quick review just to make sure that I

had it solidified okay so that took me about a minute or two and let's see if I can get them all right so this guy is Max this girl is Georgia Sandy Virginia Stan Tara Lucas Todd William Sean uh Alma Akash um Camila Sophia Emma Sarah Elijah Carmella Eric uh Carla yep uh Keith Noah Mara Cindy and Oliver there we go foreign asks what is your favorite resource for training your memory for tests and quizzes there really are three ways to get something into your long-term memory one is spaced repetition so spacing out over time

the things the study sessions basically what you're trying to memorize give it some room so cramming is not a good idea the second thing is interleaving so in between sessions you actually study something totally different and then come back to the information you're trying to remember that's also very effective third would be active recall so actually trying actively to remember the things that you're trying to remember that sounds pretty obvious but you'd be surprised how many people just look at the thing they're memorizing and think that they'll have it in their memory just by going

through it over and over again when you put that thing away and you just close your eyes and you really try to get it even if it's not perfect that process is so effective at afro Diddy asks anyone know foods that improve your memory yeah there's a few avocado blueberries broccoli turmeric dark chocolate and walnuts I think the main one that I would encourage people to investigate is omega-3 DHA specifically it's a fatty acid found in the brain we don't get a lot of it in our diet but we need it to help improve our

brain health so you can get that from fish oil pills there are certain foods that have it like fatty fish like salmon at bipolar bear dick says Prevagen says it'll help your memory because it contains jellyfish do jellyfish have good memories I don't know specifically about Prevagen but there's a lot of kind of snake oil type brain supplements out there often they're referred to as nootropics some don't really have any proof or the research is very weak or not proven the best pill you can take to improve your memory is not a pill at all

it's just better diet better sleep more exercise and using your memory so those are all the questions for today I hope I inspired you a little bit to start your journey into the world of memory thanks for watching memory support