RULES OF ORDER/MOLD INFORMATION
Frank entered my office for the first time accompanied by the opening chords of the rock-and-roll song “Sweet Home Alabama.” Startled, I realized it wasn’t his entrance music; it was his cell phone. A wiry fellow with a mustache, tattoos and a shaved head, Frank looked at me, held up one hand in a “Why me?” gesture of resignation and picked up the phone with the other. “Hello” he said gruffly, as he stood in the doorway. “Yeah, this is him, but I can’t really talk...what? No, I...they didn’t? Jeez, I thought I told him to...huh? Okay, okay, look, I’m sorry; we’ll take care of it right away. Lemme get right back to you.”
He rattled off an apology—“Really sorry, doc; gotta make a quick call”—then tapped in a number.
“Hey, it’s me...about that job in Brookline...didn’t I tell you to make sure we cleaned out that stuff from her driveway? She has people coming over Saturday, remember? I didn’t? I could have sworn I...You sure I didn’t?” He sighed heavily. “Okay, just get over there as soon you can and collect all that stuff, okay? She’s pretty ticked off. Thanks.”
He started to make yet another call and then clipped the phone back on his belt. “She can wait. By the time I’m outta here, it’ll be taken care of anyway.”
I grinned and nodded. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
He sat down. “Sorry, doc,” he said sheepishly. “That’s the way my business is.”
Frank wore patched and faded jeans, work boots and a paint-spattered T-shirt.
“Let me guess,” I asked. “Are you a contractor?”
“Yup,” he said, fishing out a business card. It read, “Frank’s for the Memories. Home Improvements That Last a Lifetime.”
“Nice card,” I said.
“Thanks, doc, but there’s nothing nice about my business, especially in this economy. It’s a bear.”
(Note: I’m paraphrasing Frank’s actual choice of words here and throughout this recounting.)
“So, is it your work that brings you here?” I asked.
“No,” he said, with a crooked grin. “It’s my wife.” He laughed. “Actually, it’s something we heard on the radio the other day. They were talking about ADD or ADHD or whatever you call it. They were talking about these people who had it and how they were acting...” Frank now grew a bit sheepish. “And well...my wife said, ‘that sounds just like you. You should get that checked out.’ So here I am.”
I’m not sure Frank thought he had ADHD. Many people who have the disorder have a hunch about it, but go for decades without an evaluation and diagnosis. At the behest of his wife Frank had decided to seek treatment and like many other people he finally, perhaps on impulse, came in to get a better handle on a long-term problem that was affecting his life.
“I’m glad you came in,” I said to him, as his cell phone started ringing again. He clicked it off and apologized.
“It’s like that all the time,” Frank said. “Kind of the nature of the business. What happened here is that I was supposed to tell one of my guys to get rid of a Dumpster we’d left at a job site. That call was from the client; she was flipping out because she’s having her daughter’s communion party there Saturday, and the Dumpster is still there....”
“So you forgot to tell him to get it out of the client’s driveway?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
I went out on a limb. “Frank, is this the kind of thing that brought you here?”
I noticed that he slumped in his chair ever so slightly—as if the admission of this was a weight on his shoulders.
“When my wife and I heard that show on the radio, and they were describing these people as ‘distracted, forgetful, fidgety’...it was like, wow, that is me.” He chuckled as he nervously shifted in his chair. “Good thing she reminded me about the appointment with you three times...otherwise, I wouldn’t have remembered it.”
He was making light of it, and it was good he could do that. But there’s really nothing funny about problems with memory. And in his case, it was short-term memory—or working memory. Think of it as the interaction between memory and attention. Working memory allows you to hold and process information over short periods of time and to use information as a guide to future behavior—even after the information is out of sight (something we call “representational thinking”). It’s a kind of clearinghouse for the information we need to function on a day-to-day basis. When working memory isn’t working well, all kinds of problems can arise. People often fluff these off as “brain freezes” or “senior moments” or describe themselves as being in a temporary “brain fog”; certainly we all forget things from time to time, particularly when we’re under stress. However, I was getting the sense that Frank’s lapses in working memory were not occasional. I needed to make sure.
“Tell me something. Does this kind of thing...you forgetting to tell your workers about moving the stuff from that client’s driveway...does that happen a lot?”
“Oh, yeah. I probably lost a really good job a couple weeks ago because of it. It was a big kitchen and bathroom renovation. I remember finishing the initial phone call with them, running through some good ideas about the job—and then something else must have come up. Doc, not only did I forget the details of that phone call, I forgot to show up at their house when I told them I would for an estimate. I mean, I just totally blanked it out!”
“Well, do you keep an appointment book? Or take notes?”
“Yeah, I got a book. But, I dunno, it just didn’t work. I used to say I kept it all in my head. Now I joke that there must be a hole up there, ’cause it keeps leaking out.”
“So you used to be really on top of things? You never had this problem of being forgetful in the past?”
He sat up straight. “Doc, I’ve got a good memory. I remember things growing up; I remember a lot of details about things that happened when I was in high school and in the army.” He stifled a laugh. “Oh man, some funny stuff I could tell you about those days....”
“It’s good that you can remember all those things from the past,” I replied. “But we’re talking about a different kind of memory here. This is remembering things that just happened in the last few days, or in the last few hours...or even minutes.”
“Minutes?” he asked.
“Yes.” I went on to describe working memory to Frank. “Have you always had problems there?”
“I’ll just tell you this one time in the army; I had a late-night detail and I guess it was so dark and I was so tired I forgot where my barracks were...and I ended up going to sleep with another platoon,” he said. “The funny thing was nobody even realized it until the guy next to me woke up the next morning and said, ‘Who the heck are you? Would you kindly remove yourself from our barracks?’”
(Again, I’m paraphrasing Frank here.)
Interesting, I thought to myself, as he broke up laughing in his chair, in the retelling of what was obviously one of his favorite anecdotes. Frank was able to use his long-term memory to recall episodes of short-term memory loss! I was about to ask another question when he leaned close and asked me one instead. “Doc,” he said in almost a whisper. “I’m only 45. Is it possible that I could have Alzheimer’s?”
I’d heard this question before from young or middle-aged people who have problems with memory.
“Did anyone in your family have Alzheimer’s at an early age?”
He scrunched his face up, remembering. “Nah. My grandmother was a little out of it by the time she passed, but she was in her late nineties. I think the nursing home did it to her.”
“And you have noticed these kinds of memory issues, forgetfulness, since the army and since childhood?”
“Oh yeah, absolutely,” Frank replied. “Drove my folks nuts. I forgot more coats then I can remember at school, at the park, friends’ homes, you know.”
“Okay, then it sounds more like ADHD and working-memory difficulties than dementia.”
“Huh?” Frank looked confused. “Working memory? What are you talking about?”
“I thought I just told you....”
He broke up laughing again. “Just kidding. I got you going, doc.”
Now it was my turn to laugh and shake my head. You couldn’t help but like this guy. Still, impairment in working memory is no laughing matter. “Frank, I think we need to work on this issue,” I said seriously. “I expect you could work much more effectively with an improved working memory. So why don’t we...” I was interrupted by Frank holding up his index finger, and reaching for his cell phone. “Sorry again, doc,” he said. “I just remembered that I got an electrician doing a job for me in Newton, and I think I forgot to give him the address.”
MOLD INFORMATION
We call this next Rule of Order “Mold Information,” but it really has a lot to do with working memory, the kind that Frank has a problem with.
First, let’s make sure we’ve got our memories clear here.
When we talk about working memory, we’re not talking about the memory of years gone by or the memory that recalls obscure facts or figures. We are referring to the active, working, need-it-to-function-on-a-daily-basis kind of memory—the kind of memory that can hold on to recent information and work with it, mold it so to speak, to allow information that is no longer right in front of you to be useful and accessible to you.
As Frank’s case shows, that kind of memory—or the lack thereof—can cause all kinds of problems in your life. Indeed it may be one of the reasons you’re feeling disorganized.
We’ll look at that kind of memory in a second. But while working memory is a distinct form of the human ability to recall, it’s useful to look at the other types—because, in general, problems with memory, in any form, are a “red flag” for many people. Start forgetting, start having the so-called “senior moments” everyone jokes about, and we begin to wonder seriously:
“Do I have dementia? Do I have Alzheimer’s disease?”
A good way to distinguish the types of memory is as follows:
Short-term Memory: Who just called on the phone a moment ago; where you put your keys when you just came in the door
Recent Memory: What you had for lunch yesterday; what television show you watched last night
Long-term or Remote Memory: The name of your first-grade teacher; incidents from your childhood
As people get older, it’s that “middle” type of memory that can be affected: the recent memories. This is a normal part of the aging process. But it can worsen quickly and may suggest a serious medical problem known as dementia. In dementia, memory can get much worse quickly—even over several months. With dementia, people forget about things they have done recently, including things they have done many times before, such as how to get to a friend’s home or to the store. They can get lost in familiar places, become disoriented about what time it is or not recognize the people around them. They may not be able to keep track of what happens in a day.
Dementia is not simply caused by people being “stressed out” or overwhelmed by the demands put on them by jobs. Young or middle-aged adults who feel like they can’t focus or that they don’t know what to do next can still usually remember what they did last night or what happened at work yesterday—and certainly wouldn’t frequently forget things to do. Their issue tends to be with short-term memory—as was the case with Frank. In addition, regardless of the kind of memory problem, the pattern or course of memory problems matters tremendously. As Frank described, his problems with memory (and some of his other issues) can be traced back to early childhood, through his days in the army and right through to the present. This is consistent with a lifelong issue, such as ADHD, and not with a recent or sudden onset of problems in later adulthood (such as with dementia).
Getting back to Frank, the problems he was describing—missing an appointment, forgetting to call someone—seemed to be related to the type of memory that keeps immediate information accessible: working memory. Let’s look a little more closely at how information is processed in this form of memory.
Here’s an example: The hostess of a dinner party looks at her dining room and realizes that there may not be enough space to accommodate all the guests that have been invited. As she continues on with other chores for the party, preparing the hors d’oeuvres or driving to the wine store, the image of that dining room is played back, considered from different angles and weighed with constraints of budget and time. Views of the adjacent rooms are considered, as are the menu and the guests. All of this information is weighed, evaluated and compared at the same time...and then, voilà, the solution of serving the dinner in buffet style instead of sit down is arrived at. Most of this thinking was done without looking at the dining room itself.
Let’s stop for a moment and appreciate this working-memory ability: the brain’s ability to hold streams of information, analyze them, process them and use all of this information to guide a future action is remarkable and necessary in order to be organized. Imagine the experience of Frank faced with the task above. Okay, maybe a fancy dinner party is not his thing, but he wants to try it out. However, just as he is driving away from the house, contemplating seating solutions, “Sweet Home Alabama” blares at him, and...it’s over. He pulls over, takes the phone call, attends to whatever the crisis is on the job and completely forgets about the seating arrangement. That information—the layout of his dining room, who’s coming, what he had been thinking about where to seat them—is all gone and unavailable. He must head back to the house to start over.
You can consider this brain skill as reflective, not gut-reacting, seat-of-the-pants thinking—as valuable as that can be in certain cases (and we should note that someone like Frank may be very good at that kind of thinking—what to do when one of his workers calls and says he just spilled a can of paint all over the client’s floor, for example).
As a management theorist once put it, the brain that is good at molding information and representational thinking is the “tomorrow” mind, as opposed to the “yesterday” mind. That doesn’t mean that someone with good working memory can’t think about the past or that someone without it can’t function in the present. What it means is that the mind that is adept at this Rule of Order is the mind that takes information, steps back, considers and reflects—often looking at things in new and different ways. The ability to mold information is a problem-solving step, as well as an analytical and creative step. And here again it can apply to anything, not just business situations, and it is so critical in the process of being organized. Although, chances are, some people are more comfortable molding the information visually, verbally or spatially, this is a skill to know, embrace and develop.
THE SCIENCE OF WORKING MEMORY
Because working memory is considered to have such a key role in how we think and act, there is a wealth of scientific study on the topic. The mental workspace, as working memory is called, can be seriously disrupted in different forms of emotional and neurological disorders and diseases, and there is a range within that that is considered “normal” as well. Researchers are actively debating and studying the topic—trying to decide how best to study it, how best to describe it, and what the fundamental limits of working memory are.
Here’s the latest thinking on this kind of thinking: while it has been suggested that three to four “items” (thoughts, impressions, facts) is the limit of typical working memory, it is also possible that there is no set number, that instead there is a flexible range that depends on the memories being loaded—e.g., the more complex the information, the fewer total items. In an important study published in the journal Science, authors from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London, concluded that there are highly flexible limits to information capacity stored in working memory. The researchers described the process of working memory this way: as you direct your attention to something (as seen by the movement of the subject’s eyes), you dedicate more memory resources to it than other things, so it is remembered in more detail. But this detail can fade, as you move on to focus on the next piece of information. It’s as if your brain is like one of those old “instant” cameras. Long before the days of digital imaging, these were cameras that printed out a picture, and everyone huddled around it excitedly, watching it “develop” in front of you, the image gradually coming into focus. Think about that happening as you focus in on something—the picture of what you’re seeing takes shape and becomes crystal clear—but now, when you turn away, imagine the picture fades back out, as you move on to the next “scene,” the next piece of information. Perhaps some people can hold on to precise details for longer periods of time, but everyone has a limit.
Brain wave and neuroimaging studies have examined working memory in order to test its limits and see which brain areas are involved. These studies have shown increased activity in specific brain areas as an individual “flexes” his or her working memory, perhaps representing the firing of large groupings of nerve cells, active at the same time but slightly out of step with each other so that different information is actively held. The areas involved include the frontal and parietal lobes and the horseshoe-shaped hippocampus, located within the temporal lobe near the amygdala, a key structure for learning and the development of long-term memory.
In these studies, researchers have shown evidence of an interaction between attentional and memory brain systems—meaning that your attention and memory networks are working closely together to produce this remarkable and valuable skill of working memory. In a study of this interplay between attention and memory (with the provocative title “Conducting the Train of Thought”), researchers described working memory as limited by the ability to sustain attention to a task.
Now, let’s put all this in perspective, in terms of the bigger picture of this book.
Remember, we are building a more organized brain. After taming our frenzy and achieving sustained focus, we can now mold information as we hold multiple streams of information in our working memory. Things are starting to come together nicely on our quest to become better organized.
In following these first three Rules of Order, our brain networks are truly active, engaged and firing away. And it takes networks—brain networks working together—to get to this stage of the game and this level of cognitive complexity. Specifically, with molding information, we are talking about the interface (or networking) between attention and memory. We want to support these networks; we want to improve these abilities, knowing that, like all things, our abilities can decline with age. But the good news is that brain function can improve. Before we turn it over to Coach Meg to find out how we can make those improvements, let’s close with one last example of the remarkable modern science in working memory.
A group of researchers from Japan discovered evidence of a “dose-dependent positive effect” (researcher talk for more memory training with greater effect) on the integrity of white-matter brain connections involved in working memory. White matter is the connections of brain cells, the communication highways in the brain. This finding supports theories about the plasticity of the brain—that the brain is plastic, flexible and mutable as opposed to hard and inviolate; this means that skill building can yield brain changes for the better.
That’s encouraging news for individuals like you who want to improve the quality of their thinking and the quality and capacity of their organizational abilities. The organized brain we’ve been discussing is indeed within your power to create.
COACH MEG’S TIPS
Recently, we heard a commercial speaking to the issue of working memory—in a very different way.
Do you walk into a room and forget what you went in for?
Do you forget the names of people you know well?
If so, we can help end that ‘brain fog’ today!
Yes, improved mental clarity and focus is just a phone call away!
This commercial wasn’t for a research project but rather for a product—and a questionable one at that: a drug, available by mail order, that allegedly sharpens memory and clears away this so-called “brain fog.”
The truth is that there is no magic bullet for memory improvement. While there are pharmacological treatments that can help in some clinical cases of ADHD—such as in Frank—these are not the same as non–FDA approved, mail-order drugs, the kind being touted in commercials like these. We certainly don’t recommend them.
However, despite some encouraging findings like the study in Japan that Dr. Hammerness referred to, it’s worth noting that the whole question of whether working memory can be improved is still contentious. “There is no penicillin for memory,” says Dr. John Hart, a neurologist at the University of Texas’s Center for BrainHealth in Dallas. “It’s clear that pharmacologically, you can change someone’s working memory abilities. There have been other studies and techniques that people have tried and are using. But I have not seen one that has worked 100 percent.”
Neither have I. But there are experts in working memory and health professionals on the frontline who have found techniques that are effective at least most of the time and that I believe can help you as you develop your skills in this Rule of Order—the ability to mold information and to use your working memory—which is a vital step in our journey toward a more sane, better organized life.
But first, just as Dr. Hammerness did earlier in this chapter, we need to step back and remind ourselves of the big picture here: at this point in our pursuit of a better ordered, saner life, we’ve tamed the frenzy, our attention is focused, and we’ve learned to control our impulses and apply the cognitive brakes when necessary.
Now it’s time to really get organized.
Our last three rules are where the rubber hits the road, where we plug in all of the channels of our working memory and leap to new insights. From there, we can connect the dots and see the bigger picture—whether it relates to losing keys, having a difficult conversation with a work colleague or figuring out where we’d like to be ten years from now—which is hard to do when you can’t seem to get through today without losing something or getting distracted.
One of the great things about being a coach is that I get to go through this process every coaching session; the intense collaboration of two brains produces an expansive working memory, sparks plenty of insights and delivers a fast path to higher ground—where one can look down on the frenzy left behind. When doing this, I often look for metaphors to help explain some of our change strategies. The one I use for working memory comes from my love of music.
As an audiophile, I imagine working memory as multichannel stereo speakers, a jazz band or an orchestra. Lots of channels or voices all plugged in at the same time, layered one on top of each other and working together to make an integrated whole. I sometimes stretch out my hands and fingers before a coaching session as if to switch on ten channels of my working memory and call them to the task at hand. I can feel my eyes and my mind grow wider as I stretch to hold all of the channels in the moment. It’s pure pleasure to draw on each channel of working memory, one after another, when working on a task. You can harmonize these memories or shine a spotlight on one channel—or, to keep to our musical metaphor, turn up the dial and listen as this memory sings to you, sometimes loudly, other times more faintly. Like isolating the string section in a symphony or the bass line of a great jazz song, you can tune into it. Take a bit of memory and turn it over and side to side in your mind, savoring what it has to offer before moving the spotlight to another bit of memory. Amazingly when you shine the light on a bit of memory and it’s gone—ugh! It’s gone, can’t remember it!—you can move on without fretting, and that forgotten nugget of information will pop up later.
I offer that to you as a way to look at working memory—not as work, as its name implies, and not as an obstacle, as it often seems when we can’t remember a specific fact or name at the moment, but rather as a process or maybe even a pleasure.
Let’s look now at ways to help sharpen your working memory—one of the key steps on the way to better organization.
For our tips on how to improve the ability to mold information, we depart slightly from the approach in the last few chapters. I’m drawing on some tried-and-true advice from professionals in the “memory game,” in particular Dr. Marie Pasinski, MD, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Beautiful Brain, Beautiful You, and Martha Wolf, Director of the Alzheimer Center at Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation in New Hyde Park, New York, one of the country’s foremost treatment centers for Alzheimer’s patients. Martha is a frontline professional in a field where memory loss is not just an inconvenience but a critical function.
Some of their memory-sharpening techniques are evidence-based; others are common sense or tested in the crucible of a rehabilitation center where the anguish of age-related dementia gives us all pause to put our own organizational challenges in perspective.
Either way, these can help us sharpen and improve our ability to remember and to mold information more effectively.
You’ve heard me stress the importance of sleep. But according to Dr. Pasinski, it’s particularly important for this Rule of Order. “The role of sleep in memory consolidation is huge,” she says. “It’s during sleep that we actually process new information.”
How much sleep? The general recommendation is seven to eight hours. “Some people can get by on six hours a night, but most people think they can get by on less than they need,” she says, adding that quality of sleep is as big a consideration as quantity. “I think what’s important is that you wake up and feel rested. You should be able to wake up in the morning and feel refreshed, not be dragging or dependent on caffeine to get you through the day.”
One other tip for restorative sleep, Pasinski says, is to keep regular sleep and wake cycles. When our circadian rhythms are disrupted, hormonal levels and neurotransmitter functioning in the brain can all be affected. This, in turn, will compromise our brain function, and our ability to use information. “A regular sleep schedule is what your brain needs,” she says. “If you’re not getting adequate and regular sleep, you’re not going to remember things as well.”
When you choose to learn important new material and information will affect how well you remember it and how available it will be when you need it.
Here again, sleep plays a role. Pasinski cites a study in which subjects were far more likely to learn a new skill when they were taught the night before. Following a good night’s sleep, they showed greater improvement than if they were taught the skill during the day and tested that night. “They really did sleep on it!” Pasinski said. “The study suggests that we actually learn when we sleep.”
Because learning is reinforced during sleep, it’s a good idea to get a good night’s sleep after learning the new material. You will likely perform better than if you didn’t get some shuteye in between the time you learned or practiced the skills and were tested on it.
Also, when you prepare, break your study sessions down to two sessions, so that you can cover the same ground twice. “Repetition is really important for learning,” Pasinski says. If you have an hour to practice something you’re better off practicing in two thirty-minute sessions...covering the same ground twice...which seems to reinforce learning.
In AARP The Magazine articles about how to help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s or senile dementia, you’ll hear about the importance of keeping your brain active by doing puzzles. While Pasinski agrees with the importance of training your brain, she suggests other ways to give your memory a mental workout. “I think a better use of your time is to learn something new,” she says. “That’s a wonderful way to challenge your brain, it’s fun, and gives you a sense of accomplishment.”
If you’re retired or someone with time on your hands, maybe French lessons, stamp collecting or learning how to play the guitar would be an excellent investment of energy. If you’re reading this book, though, chances are you don’t have a lot of time for those kinds of pastimes or hobbies, rewarding as they may be. I suggest you make your mind-stimulating, learning exercises practical.
One way to do this is to direct your reading toward something you don’t normally look at. Instead of, say, Time or Fortune, read The Economist and get a global view of politics and the economy. Instead of Sports Illustrated or Woman’s Day, check out Wired or Salon. Instead of The New York Times, read The Wall Street Journal.
This tip isn’t limited to newspapers and magazines. If you spend a good deal of time in the car, purposive listening to books on tape is an excellent way to sharpen memory. Wolf suggests structuring it for maximum memory-building benefits. “Listen to one chapter or section a day,” she says. “Then before you listen to it on the drive home or the next day, make a point to summarize in your mind exactly where you left off...what’s happened in the plot.” That, she notes, will not only enhance your enjoyment of the book but also make it more valuable as memory training (and of course, if you don’t spend a lot of time in the car and instead read your books the conventional way—in print or on a digital reader—you can do the same thing).
The key point in all this reading and media cross-training: “You’re challenging your brain by learning, by making new connections,” says Pasinski.
And there’s a bonus here: No matter what your industry or profession, it never hurts to expand your perspectives and broaden your horizons. You never know where the next great idea or nugget of information will come from that can help you in your career—and the fact that you’ll be more likely to remember that idea or nugget because you’ve been training your memory muscles makes it even more worthwhile!
Throughout this book, I’ve talked about the importance of writing things down: your goals, your visions, your observations on your own behavior. Martha Wolf has another kind of writing assignment for you that could be very beneficial. Here’s how she explains it:
“Sometimes we can improve our memory, sometimes we just need a crutch. That’s why I talk about things like putting the items you need in a place where you most need them. We get crazed because we can’t remember where we put something. So don’t make yourself crazy!”
To help keep track of these items, Wolf suggests creating a memory book. This is a tool that she has used with the families of her patients, who very often find themselves facing a situation where a parent is incapacitated and they, the children, have no clue where any of their parents’ important papers, accounts or keys are located. But the idea can be adapted for those who are having trouble with more mundane household items of their own.
“It’s a good thing for everybody to do,” she says. “And it takes a lot of pressure off.”
Wolf suggests an old-fashioned composition book for her patient families, but you can create a document online as well. “Make a list of the things you use most frequently—extra sets of keys, eyeglasses, wallet—and find the most logical spot for them. So, for example, if you read before you go to bed, you would probably put the eyeglasses on your nightstand. Then write it down in the memory book.”
Wolf frequently speaks to senior citizen groups. Inevitably, one of the first questions she is asked is how to keep mentally sharp. “I used to tell them, ‘Go start an argument,’” she says with a laugh. “Then I realized that didn’t sound very nice so I modified it.”
Her point is that arguing—not screaming and yelling but reasoned debate—is one of the best mental exercises you can do. “When you have a difference of opinion, you’re listening intently to information, and while you’re listening you’re formulating your response,” she says. “You have to be mentally agile and nimble. It’s like a game of cognitive ping-pong.”
Short of joining your local debating society, a good way to get the mental benefits of arguing is to watch one of the all-news cable channels where the polarization of the American political scene may actually have a salutary effect. “If you normally watch CNN, turn to Fox,” Wolf says. “If you watch Fox, turn to CNN. Listen to what their commentators are saying, develop your response, put the television on mute and talk back to them. Yes, it’s okay to talk back to your television...just make sure you let anyone else in your house know beforehand so they don’t think you’ve gone crazy.”
One of the more unusual but intriguing tips for improving memory comes from another Harvard colleague, psychologist Jeff Brown, coauthor of The Winner’s Brain. “Gesturing in a meaningful way while you are learning may help you when recalling the concept,” Dr. Brown says. “The idea is that you are storing at least two different types of information about something you’ll need to recall later. A good example of this is when kids speak math problems aloud but also ‘work them’ in the air.” (We know some adults who still perform arithmetic that way, so it’s not just children who rely on this method!)
Brown suggests that when you’ve just learned someone’s name, “write” it down on the palm of your hand with your finger. The act of tracing the letters on your palm can help your brain remember it, says Dr. Brown. Or, he says, “air-write on an imaginary map of your grocery store or mall as you name aloud the items or stores you need to remember when shopping.” (As you would when you’re arguing with your television, make sure you perform this memory-enhancing drill discreetly!)
I’ve been touting the benefits of regular exercise throughout this book. If we haven’t convinced you yet of the mental benefits of physical activity, here’s one more piece of evidence.
A 2009 study published in the journal Hippocampus, found a positive relationship in older adults between physical fitness and the size of the hippocampus—a key brain structure thought to be the central processing area for memory and learning. Unlike some other parts of the brain, neuroscientists say it is “plastic”—malleable and dynamic. Although the hippocampus begins to degrade as you get older (its volume shrinks about 1 percent a year after age fifty-five), it can respond to positive stimuli, suggesting that it is a “use it or lose it” organ. In the study, neuroscientist Kirk Erickson of the University of Pittsburgh wanted to see if physical exercise might have a positive effect on the hippocampus. His team tested the fitness levels of 165 adults who were over age fifty-five and also gave them brain scans and spatial memory tests. The findings: “The fitter subjects had hippocampuses that were about 35 to 40 percent greater in mass than sedentary individuals,” Erickson says. The result surprised him. “I wasn’t expecting that big a difference,” he says.
How much exercise do you need to get the brain benefits? Although the fitness levels of the subjects ranged from sedentary to moderately fit, Erickson says, “None were super athletes.” In other words, you don’t need to run marathons to keep up brain size, just regular exercise.
This echoes similar findings in other recent research: A 2008 study in the journal Neurology found that seniors who regularly took walks had a lower risk of developing vascular dementia, a kind of memory loss associated with inadequate blood flow to the brain (it’s the second most common form of dementia, behind Alzheimer’s). The study, which was conducted in Italy, followed 750 older men and women over four years and found that those who were the most active—the top third—were 27 percent less likely to develop vascular dementia than those who walked the least.
The results, notes the website Alzinfo.org, are consistent with other studies on the relationship between moderate physical activity and brain health, including a 2004 study of more than 2,200 older men living in Hawaii, which found that those who walked the least—less than one quarter mile per day—had nearly twice the risk for developing Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia than men who walked more than two miles a day. That same year, the even larger Nurses’ Health Study from Harvard reported that women in their seventies who engaged in regular physical activity like walking did better on memory tests than women who were less active.
The findings of all of these studies are indeed encouraging for older adults, but it’s important to note that the value of walking also applies to younger minds and memories with far fewer years to reflect upon. “Getting your heart going and increasing the blood flow to your brain with a twenty-minute walk can have very positive effects on your brain,” says Pasinski.
This prompts her to offer a suggestion—which is healthier and a lot cheaper than the questionable one on that radio commercial I heard: “When you’re in a so-called ‘brain fog,’” says Pasinski, “get up and get out. The exercise, and just the change of scenery, will get you out of that feeling of mental staleness and help make your memory sharper.”