Elva Arulchelvan from Trinity College Dublin highlights five tips to improve your working and long-term memory.
A version of this article was originally published by The Conversation (CC BY-ND 4.0)
As a researcher investigating how electrical brain stimulation can improve people’s memory, I’m often asked how memory works – and what we can do to make it more effective. Fortunately, decades of research have given us clear answers to both questions.
Memory actually works in three stages, with different brain regions contributing to each other.
Sensory memory, which lasts only milliseconds, registers raw information such as sights, sounds and smells. These are first processed by the five main brain senses (visual cortex for sight, auditory cortex for sounds and so on).
Working (short-term) memory holds and manages small amounts of information for a few seconds or longer. Think of this as your brain’s mental workstation: a system that allows you to do mental math, follow instructions and understand what you’re reading. So it mainly involves the prefrontal cortex – the front part of your brain that supports attention, decision making and thinking.
Finally, long-term memory stores information forever, from minutes to lifetimes. This includes both ‘obvious’ memories (facts and life events) and ‘obvious’ memories (skills, habits and emotional associations).
In long-term memories, the hippocampus and temporal lobes – located deep in the brain, on the sides of your head near your temples – contribute mainly to memories involving facts or life events, while the amygdala (near the hippocampus), the cerebellum (at the back of the brain) and the basal ganglia (deep in the brain) process emotional or ongoing memories.
Working memory often acts as a conscious gateway to long-term memory – but it has its limitations. In 1956, American psychologist George Miller proposed that we can only hold seven ‘chunks’ of information in our working memory at any given time.
Although the exact amount is still debated to this day, the principle is: working memory is limited. And that limitation can shape how well you learn and remember things.
But you can also find your memory working effectively. Here are five simple steps to improve your working and long-term memory.
Put your phone away
Smartphones reduce your working memory capacity. Even having a phone nearby – even if it’s face down and on silent – can slow down performance in memory and cognitive tasks.
The reason is that part of your brain is still subtly monitoring it. Even resisting the urge to check notifications consumes mental resources – that’s why researchers sometimes call smartphones a “brain drain”. The solution is simple: put your phone in another room where you need to focus. Not being seen frees the mind.
Stop your mind from running
Stress and anxiety can take up significant mental space. When you’re worried about something or distracted by racing thoughts, part of your working memory is already being used.
Relaxation training and mindfulness practices can improve both working memory and academic performance, possibly by reducing stress levels. And if meditation sounds intimidating, try breathing techniques such as ‘circular sighing’. Inhale deeply through your nose, take a second short breath, and slowly exhale through your mouth. Repeating this for five minutes can calm the nervous system and create better conditions for learning.
Get chunking
Everyone can expand their working memory using the method of grouping – grouping information into meaningful units. In fact, you’ve probably already done it for memorizing phone numbers or a list of names – breaking a long sequence into bite-sized chunks that your brain can remember as a small group.
The same principles apply when you’re giving a presentation, to help your audience remember your key points more effectively. Chunking would involve grouping 10 lessons, say, into three or four themes, each with a short topic and one key takeaway.
Repeat this structure on each slide: one idea, a few supporting details, and move on. By organizing information into logical patterns, you reduce the mental load and make it more memorable.
Become a retriever
In the 19th century, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus showed how quickly we forget information after learning it. Within about 30 minutes, we lose about half of what we’ve learned, and much more fades the next day. Ebbinghaus called this the forgetting curve. The light blue line in the chart below shows this.
The forgetting curve – and how to disrupt it
The forgetting curve. Photo: Elva Arulchelvan (CC BY-SA 4.0)
However, there is a way to ensure that more is absorbed when trying to learn a lot of information in a short amount of time: practice retrieval.
When preparing to give a speech or study for an exam, rather than just reading your notes, keep checking how much you remember. Use flashcards, answer practice questions, or try to explain things out loud without notes.
Memory works through associations. Each time you successfully acquire information, you link the material to new instructions, examples and situations. This creates more clues to access information, and strengthens each memory pathway. Usually when we ‘forget’, the memory doesn’t go away – we just lack the right cue to retrieve it.
Give yourself a break
Research shows that memory works better when study or practice sessions are spread out, rather than grouped together. When you’re studying for a test, build solid blocks of time off into your review schedule. The dark blue line in the chart above shows how spacing out your practice sessions can help you remember more information over time, by correcting the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.
One study suggests leaving gaps between each review session equal to 10-20pc of the time remaining until your test or presentation. So, if your deadline is five days away and you are doing revision hours a day, you should still take between half and a full day off between sessions. In other words, don’t overdo it – you probably won’t see the rewards!
If you remember only one thing from this article about improving memory, do it this way. Memory isn’t just about intelligence, it’s about strategy. Small changes in the way you study or work can make a real difference in how well you remember, and how long you remember important information.
Written by Elva Arulchelvan
Elva Arulchelvan is completing a PhD in psychology and neuroscience for the Lab for Clinical and Integrative Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland. He is also a Psychology lecturer for social studies students at TCD. Arulchelvan’s PhD research focuses on memory and forgetting processes. In particular, his PhD research involved investigating the effect of peripheral nerve stimulation on memory and forgetting in both clinical and non-clinical groups.
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