Ayumu,
a 7-year old chimp living in a lab at Kyoto University, was in the news the last month for his remarkable cognitive performance. In a test of working memory, Ayumu and 5 other chimpanzees were able to outclass college students. Watch him go at it here.
Have you got what it takes to outsmart a chimp? Pit your wits against Ayumu in the Chimp Game.
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
Hopefully some of us have or will set some realistic and flexible New Year’s resolutions for 2008. Of course a good resolution doesn’t necessarily translate to reality, as they tend to fade from our everyday recollection. To remind you of your goals throughout the upcoming year, the following mnemonic might be helpful.
First, write down your resolutions and strategically place these notes in your home, car, and work area to constantly remind you of what you want to accomplish. Second, send yourself email reminders or mark your calendar. Creatively using associations and visualizations can help you remember and ultimately reach your goals by the end of the year. As you might have noticed, a recurring theme in our previous memory tips is that association and visualization are key strategies in making it easier to remember important information. These tricks help your brain become more conscious and attentive to the things you want to remember, which in turn makes them easier to recall later.
Recent activities in the Lumosity brain training program:
We just released the latest memory exercise, titled Moneycomb, in which you must remember the location of coins in a honeycomb layout. This exercise targets attention and spatial working memory, and is now available from the trainer.
We also just introduced “Lumosity Points”, which are awarded for completing games and courses. Your Lumosity Points track your progress and succinctly show how much
training you’ve done. We’re still adding to and refining the Lumosity Points, so your comments are valuable.
Finally, we’re planning to launch the new Memory Boost training module at the end of next week. This will be a 10-session course focused on memory exercises, including memory tips and strategies. It will be available to all Lumosity members once they have completed the Basic Training course.
Adults with memory problems are still able to improve their cognitive performance with cognitive training, according to research published this week in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.
Though adults with memory problems did not improve their impaired ability to memorize new material, they still had the capacity to improve in other areas. Specifically, the individuals with memory impairment improved just as much at reasoning and processing speed as those with normal memory.
The press release suggests:
“These findings could indicate the ability for older adults to maintain skills that allow them to carry out daily tasks and lead a higher quality of life.”
This finding is the result of further analysis from the ACTIVE (Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly) study, which is perhaps the largest and most ambitious study yet conducted to explore the effects of cognitive training. The ACTIVE study previously demonstrated that through training, elderly adults can improve in memory, processing speed, and reasoning. Last year, they additionally showed that some of these benefits are maintained 5 years after the training period.
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
Although acronyms are usually used to shorten a lengthy phrase, coming up with your own acronyms can be a helpful aid in remembering long grocery lists or building up your vocabulary for an upcoming exam. For those who don’t know, acronyms are formed using the first letter of each word in the phrase to be abbreviated. The encoding process becomes even stronger when the acronym can be associated with a previous experience or memory. It may also help if you are able to come up with a little chime or creative story. This is most effective if it relates to what you are attempting to put into memory.For example, the acronym PEMDAS can be used to remember the order of operations in mathematics; starting with parenthesis, followed by exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. To make memorizing this acronym easier it can also stand for ‘Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally’ or ‘Panda Express Makes Delicious Avocado Soup’. The importance of association, again, refers back to our previous memory tip on improving effective encoding of peoples’ names.
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
Researchers from Stanford might have found a biological marker for Alzheimer’s disease via a simple blood test. This is exciting news given that it might predict the onset of the disease several years before the symptoms begin. The procedure involves examining 18 key proteins in the blood that are typical in Alzheimer’s patients. Preliminary tests have been 90% accurate at detecting the disease. Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said that “Early diagnosis is essential if we are ever to develop treatments that can change the course or halt the progression of dementia rather than just treat the symptoms.”
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
If you are like me and have trouble remembering the names of people you first meet, then this mnemonic is dedicated to you. A helpful way to remember names is to say that person’s name after meeting him, and from then on associating his name with something interesting (i.e. his appearance, a rhyme, or an image). By making associations with his name, it strengthens effective encoding in the brain. Inventing the association helps your brain encode the information at least twice, by hearing it from the person and by verbalizing it yourself. It also helps to use the name throughout the conversation, since rehearsal and attention are the key components for memory retention (just don’t overdo it).
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
Memory strategies – or mnemonics – can be used to help you put things into memory so that they’re easier to rememb
er later. Those who forget their keys or have trouble remembering peoples’ names could benefit from these tips. We previously described a way to use the linking technique to make it easier to remember a grocery list. What if the elements don’t fit together as a story?
“Chunking” is a common technique used to remember several items. Specifically, chunking is used to break down a long series of units into easy-to-remember groupings. Phone numbers or social security numbers, which are usually broken up into 3 to 4 digits by hyphens, make use of chunking.
Using this strategy in Monster Garden, one of the Lumosity spatial memory games, you can group monsters together into a single memory element. For example, if 5 monsters display but 3 of them form a triangle, try to remember the triangle of monsters plus the other 2 individual monsters. This will require 3 working memory slots as opposed to 5. See if you can improve your Monster Garden score with this approach. Chunking is also linked to advanced skills, such as expertise in chess, and ultimately captures the idea that we can remember more things if we chunk them together into groups.
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