As people age, memory can easily be lost causing annoyance, confusion, and doubt. While this is normal, it is never fun to be in the middle of your favorite joke and to forget the punchline. In some cases this lack of memory can be early onsets of dementia, however, this post’s purpose is to show ways that those of us looking for an increased amount of memory recall can improve our cognitive function. Your brain is like a muscle and it is important to exercise your brain just like you would the rest of your body.
We’ll take a look at some leading-edge technological and pharmaceutical ways to improve one’s memory and increase the power of your recollection for fun, school, work or all three. As the reader will see, memory and its cousin intelligence can be improved if the right conditions are met and enough effort is made. One of the takeaways from this post should be that you now know how to exercise your brain to experience improved cognitive performance.
Is Intelligence a Gene?
In a very significant recent study, child and social psychology researchers from Stanford University sought out to answer as best they could the age-old question of whether intelligence and learning ability is baked into a person at birth or if it can be largely learned with enough effort and the right mindset.
To sum up the findings, the researchers showed rather convincingly that kids who truly believed and had the mindset that learning can be cultivated and improved with effort improved markedly in comparison to another, control group of middle-schoolers.
What these studies show is that the brain is malleable for middle-schoolers as well as adults. The analogy that is most apt here is that the brain is like a muscle. Exercise and new connections between neurons will be formed, leading to improved cognitive abilities and making doable all sorts of wonderful new learning possibilities, no matter your age.
Video Games Aren’t Bad
On the other hand, one might just desire to stay generally sharp and maintain mental acuity. Methods over the years have ranged from crossword puzzles and mind teasers to herbal supplements and an increase in one’s antioxidant intake. While such solutions could very well help here, these remedies’ effects on memory and mental acuity aren’t so easy to measure.
As was mentioned above, pharmacology and data cleansing technology are both presenting intriguing new possibilities in the emerging field of memory and learning aids.
Princeton and University of Rochester researchers were certainly intrigued enough by questions bearing upon video games and learning to conduct a study. This science team wanted to find out if some of the older research pointing to video games as causing positive cognitive changes in gamers’ brains was an accurate assessment.
Looking at the results, the researchers had to admit that the conclusions reached by the other, more dated studies actually matched up very well with their own conclusions –- video games, in particular fast-paced ones, seem to improve users’ learning and memory capabilities. The takeaway here is that -– while sitting for 8 hours straight staring at a screen is generally not good for you -– playing video games not only won’t make you more stupid, it will actually provide cognitive enhancements.
Feeling Mentally Foggy?
If you’d rather not waste your time in a video game but desire a cognitive boost, there’s likely a vitamin or supplement for your needs. Nootropics are a range of supplements in pill form that can give you a mental boost, relieve stress or supercharge your brain in accomplishing executive-function tasks, among other things. Like avid gym goers need to make sure they are taking the right amount of protein, for a healthy brain you need to make sure you are taking the right amount of vitamins and supplements.
Conclusion
The scientists whose job it is to do the core research on exactly how new forms of technology –- including memory enhancing activities and pills -– will ultimately affect adopters are currently struggling to keep up with the breakneck pace of change. While technology is generally good, the pace of advancements seen in the past 40 or so years has been unprecedented in human history. In the end, living a healthy life with an optimal balance of different activities is one trick at least that’s sure to aid you no matter what.
