CHAPTER 17

SHARPEN YOUR MEMORY

BRAIN WORKOUTS FOR A RICHER LIFE

We must challenge the brain. It gets bored; we know that well.

MARIAN DIAMOND

Use it or lose it. The old adage is as true of your brain as it is of your muscles. When you learn something, new neural connections are created, which improves your capacity to remember. In fact, regardless of your age, mental exercise has an overall positive effect on your brain. On the other hand, when you stop learning, cognitive performance suffers as the internal connections in your brain begin to break apart.

Neuroscientist Marian Diamond, PhD, from the University of California, Berkeley, spent four decades researching the brain, and her findings revolutionized our understanding of brain health and neuroplasticity. In a lecture to the American Society on Aging, she said, “We now know that with proper stimulation and an enriched environment, the human brain can continue to develop at any age.”

Diamond and her colleagues reached that conclusion after studying middle-aged rats, comparable to 60-year-old humans, as well as older rats, some equivalent in age to people in their nineties. When the researchers provided the rodents with toys, balls, mazes, and other active rats to provide companionship, the size and cognitive ability of the rats’ brains increased. This was evident from the sprouting dendrites, nerve cells, blood vessels, and the thicker cerebral cortex of their brains.

Dr. Diamond, who died in 2017 at age 90, summarized the findings this way: “We can change the brain at any age. We’re saying that if you use your brain you can change it as much as a younger brain.” Although learning may take a bit more effort as we grow older, our brains can change for the better, especially if we keep them healthy with diet, exercise, challenge, newness, and love.

JIM KAROL: THE BRAIN’S MEMORY MAGIC

Jim Karol

Mentalist Jim Karol is the human embodiment of Dr. Diamond’s research. Jim grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he was a mediocre student who was bullied because of his large frame. He attended a local college and ended up working in a steel mill. At the age of 29, he hurt his knees and was laid off from his job. It was then that he started working in a magic shop, where he discovered he had a talent for it. At 31, he started performing magic shows, and word spread about this “madman of magic.” Before he knew it, Jim found himself on the front pages of newspapers across the country for correctly predicting the Pennsylvania lottery. He was asked to appear on several television shows, and his popularity began to grow. He became a hit on college campuses and was even invited to the White House.

Just before turning 50, Jim had a health crisis and was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and an enlarged heart. His doctor told Jim that his heart looked like that of his 93-year-old mother, and there was nothing Jim could do but “enjoy the ride.” Unsatisfied with the prognosis, Jim started a course of exercise under the direction of a physical therapist. Instead of watching TV as he rode a stationary bike, he started to use his mind. This man with such humble beginnings began memorizing the states and their capitals, more than 80,000 zip codes, every word in the Scrabble dictionary, and thousands of digits of pi. He knows the day of the week for every date from AD 1 on. If handed a just-shuffled deck of cards, he can memorize the order in less than a minute!

Jim was about to head overseas on a USO tour to entertain the troops when I met him through a mutual friend at Andrews Air Force Base. After I watched him memorize a deck of cards and then guess which card I had picked in my mind, I was completely blown away. As I got to know Jim, it became clear that he was focused on growing his brain.

Memory athlete is a term coined for people like Jim who are adept at these kinds of memory feats. Now, exciting new research from Stanford University School of Medicine and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich[649] has shown that mnemonic training, one of the methods favored by memory athletes, can be successfully taught to people without any special memory skills and that it “bulks up the brain’s memory networks.”[650] First, a group of brain athletes took a 72-word memorization test and, on average, were able to recall 71 words correctly. Then study participants who had no previous training practiced the techniques of these brain athletes and were tested 20 minutes and 24 hours later. They were tested again four months later (with a different set of words) and were able to remember nearly as many words as the brain athletes. (If you want to try some of these mnemonic exercises, see “Memory Strategies” on pages 295–298.)

The best mental exercises involve acquiring new knowledge and doing things you haven’t done before. Even if your routine activities are fairly complicated, such as teaching a college course, reading brain scans, or fixing a crashed computer network, they won’t help your brain as much as learning something new. Whenever the brain does something over and over, it learns how to do it using less and less energy. New learning, such as memorizing zip codes or learning a new game, helps establish new connections, thus maintaining and improving the function of less-often-used areas of the brain. When scientists tested Jim’s hippocampus, it was in the top one percent for a person of his age and size.

The parts of your brain that you use will grow, and the parts of your brain you do not use will atrophy, or shrink. That tells us something about how to exercise the brain. Just doing crossword puzzles or sudoku won’t give you the full possible benefits. That’s like going to the gym and leaving after doing right bicep curls. Here are some ideas for doing “whole-brain combination workouts.”

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) exercises

Temporal lobe exercises

Parietal lobe exercises

Basal ganglia exercises

Cerebellum exercises

Soothe and Strengthen Your Brain with Scripture Meditation

Meditation, like prayer, is a well-known form of stress management. What may surprise you is the impact this practice has on your brain. Brain imaging shows that, rather than having a sedating, calming effect, meditating on a phrase or short portion of Scripture actually activates the prefrontal cortex, the most human and thoughtful part of your brain.

If you want to try meditating, first choose a favorite Bible verse. Then sit quietly and spend two to twenty minutes repeating the words over and over. If other thoughts come into your mind, imagine a big broom sweeping them away, so you focus only on the verse. During this time, allow your breathing to become slower, deeper, and more regular.

As an alternative, you might ponder a prayer or quote from a great Christian thinker. One of my favorite prayers for meditation is the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love . . .” Meditation isn’t a brain teaser; as you ponder and consider these truths, you will gain wisdom, perspective, and fresh insights.

MEMORY WORKOUTS BY BRAIN REGION

Diagram of a brain with regions labeled. Each region has associated activities listed. Prefrontal cortext: Language games, such as Scrabble, Boggle, and Words With Friends; crossword puzzles; speech and debate classes in college; strategy games, such as chess, Rail Baron, Axis and Allies, and Blokus. Temporal lobe: Memory games; memorization of poetry and prose (increases hippocampal size). Basal ganglia: Balancing, synchronizing arm and leg movements, and manipulating props like ropes and balls. Parietal lobe: Math games like sodoku; juggling (occipital lobes and cerebellum); golf, even for novices; map reading without a GPS device. Cerebellum: Coordination games like table tennis (also involves PFC), dancing (learn new dance steps), yoga, tai chi, and basketball.
Bright Minds Tip icon

The list of ways to stimulate your brain with new learning is endless. Just follow Marian Diamond’s guidelines: Each activity should be challenging, new, and something you love.

Learning has a very real effect on neurons: It makes it easier for them to fire and to continue firing. There are approximately a thousand trillion synapses in the brain, and each one of them may wither and die if it is not actively firing. Like muscles that don’t get used, idle nerve cells waste away. The brain has many different circuits connecting neurons in various parts of the brain. Any set of circuits that is not used grows weak.

Middle-aged people who go back to college, for example, often feel slow and stupid at first, and it takes a few semesters of mental exercise before they find academic studies easy again. Not only do they have to get back up to speed, the enzymatic activity in people’s brain cells starts to decline as they get older. The cells become less efficient, so the 50-year-old’s brain isn’t quite as agile as an 18-year-old’s. However, in some ways, younger people are at a disadvantage. The 50-year-old may actually do better in academic studies than his or her younger classmates because as one ages, the frontal lobes are better developed, which usually helps a person pay closer attention in class and ask better questions.

More developed frontal lobes allow you to take better advantage of new knowledge, know what to focus on, and relate that information to life experiences so it has more personal value. The 18-year-old may be able to memorize facts more easily, but his or her frontal lobes aren’t as good at selecting which facts to memorize.

10 More Ways to Exercise Your Brain to Boost Your Memory

Mental exercise is as important as diet and physical exercise for keeping both your body and brain strong. Here are activities that have been shown to make a difference.

  1. Dedicate yourself to new learning. Devote just fifteen minutes a day to a new hobby, activity, or subject matter. Einstein once said that people who spend 15 minutes a day learning something new will become an expert within a year. As in school or business, commitment is critical if you want to reap the benefits.
  2. Be purposeful about cognitive training. Community-dwelling seniors who took just a few weeks of cognitive training experienced significantly improved reasoning and speed of processing skills, as well as fewer difficulties with the activities of daily living 10 years later, compared with those who didn’t get such training.[668] On our online portal Brain Fit Life (www.mybrainfitlife.com), we have cognitive brain training games for just this purpose.
  3. Take a class about something new and interesting. Community colleges and online groups offer low-cost courses on a wide variety of subjects. Challenge your brain to learn novel and interesting things by enrolling in a class that is unrelated to your work or daily life. Examples include square-dancing (great exercise), conversational Spanish, chess, tai chi, astronomy, or sculpture. Working with modeling clay or Play-Doh can help children or adults develop new neural connections, as well as agility and hand-brain coordination. 
  4. Cross-train at work. Learning someone else’s job or even switching jobs for several weeks provides workers with better skills and brain function, and may offer the employer greater flexibility. In a grocery store, for example, employees can be taught to work as checkout clerks and to stock shelves, order products, and rotate among the produce, grocery, and dairy sections of the store.
  5. Limit television for kids and adults. Adults who watched two or more hours of TV a day had a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Watching TV is usually a “no brain” activity. To be fair, these studies did not specify if watching programs that teach you something, such as one of my shows on public television, had the same effect as situation comedies or sports.
  6. Alter daily routines to stimulate new parts of your brain. Do the opposite of what feels natural to activate the other side of your brain and gain access to both hemispheres. When you write, dress, brush your teeth, set the table, shoot basketballs, play table tennis, or use your computer mouse, use your nondominant hand. These changes make your brain feel uncomfortable —in essence, breaking the patterned routine in your life and challenging your brain to make new connections.
  7. Travel to new and interesting places. Exposing the brain to unique experiences, scents, sights, and people strengthens the brain. Using maps stimulates the brain in different ways and also exercises the parietal lobes, which are responsible for visual-spatial guidance.
  8. Develop friendships with smart people. You become like the people you hang out with. You can trade ideas, get new perspectives, and generally stretch your mind if you are surrounded by fascinating folks. Most of us know that to improve when playing any game, we have to play with people who are better than we are. The same principle holds true in pushing your brain to new heights. Spend time with people who challenge you.
  9. Use music to enhance your mind. There is significant research suggesting that both learning to play music and listening to music, especially classical music, can enhance memory and mood. Classical music also enhances memory and cognitive function.[669] Listening to Mozart or Strauss for just 25 minutes, for example, has been shown to lower blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, while listening to ABBA has been shown to lower cortisol.[670] Listening to peaceful and joyful music lowered anxiety and depression.[671] Learning to play music helped to increase the size of the hippocampus.[672] Grab your guitar! Stevie Wonder once said, “Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories.” Research shows that listening to happy or peaceful music leads to the recall of positive memories, while listening to frightening or sad music dredges up mostly negative memories.[673] Music matters.
  10. Treat learning problems. Numerous studies show that better-educated people are at a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. Yet millions of children, teens, and adults struggle in school or with learning, despite having normal or even high intelligence. Often these difficulties stem from ADD or other learning issues. Recognizing and addressing these problems are essential to making “lifelong learning” a reality. You can take an online test to help you determine whether you have ADD at www.amenclinics.com.

MEMORY STRATEGIES

Given all the information on rescuing your brain in this book, you may still be asking: Are there specific exercises I can do to boost my memory? Yes! BRIGHT MINDS is an example of a mnemonic, or a memory aid. It helps me immediately remember all 11 risk factors, so when I teach or talk about them on TV, I can sail through rather complicated material without any notes. It took my staff and me a while to come up with the mnemonic, but it was worth it.

I’d like to share three other memory magic tools that I’ve used with my patients and that I use myself to improve my ability to store and retain information. They are the types of tools that Jim Karol and other memory athletes use.

  1. Rhymes are a very popular tool for recalling rules or organization. As children, most of us were taught certain popular rhymes to help us learn to spell, understand the time change each spring and fall, and familiarize ourselves with the number of days in each month of the year:
    • “I before e except after c”
    • “Spring ahead in spring; fall back in fall.”
    • “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; all the rest have thirty-one, except February, which stands alone.”

    Rhymes help connect into a metrical pattern those items that otherwise may seem totally unrelated. They help establish a definite informational progression because any mistake in the order of recall will destroy the rhyme. Following is an example of using a nursery rhyme (“One is a bun; two is a shoe,” etc.) to help retain a sequence of facts:

    To use this mnemonic, choose 10 facts that you need to remember in a preciseorder and mentally picture an association between each one and its corresponding number’s object. In less than a few minutes, you can easily memorize their order. Try this method with unrelated facts to observe its usefulness to you.

    As an example from my own life, here is a list of items I need to get at the store:

    1. Salmon
    2. Turkey
    3. Unsweetened almond milk
    4. Eggs
    5. Stevia
    6. Kale
    7. Sparkling water
    8. Spinach, olive oil
    9. Oranges
    10. Coconut

    It took me about two minutes to make the following associations:

    1. One is a bun: I picture a salmon trying to jump out of the bun.
    2. Two is a shoe: A turkey walks around in colorful high heels.
    3. Three is a tree: An almond milk tree drips milk on the kids below, who are crying.
    4. Four is a door: Someone has thrown eggs at the door, and I’m really mad about it.
    5. Five is a hive: Bees are flying around a stevia plant.
    6. Six are sticks: A kid at the fair holds organic kale on a stick, instead of cotton candy, and refuses to eat it.
    7. Seven is heaven: I am handed a flute of champagne, but since it is heaven, it is really sparkling water.
    8. Eight is a gate: Popeye stands outside my front gate, eating spinach with one hand and picking up Olive Oyl with the other.
    9. Nine is a line: Oranges are lined up for miles in Orange County, where I live.
    10. Ten is a hen: A clucking chicken runs around the yard dressed in a bikini with a coconut on its head.

    Once I’m in the store, I run through these images in my head so I can remember the items I need to pick up —no written list needed. The more you do this exercise, the easier it becomes and the bigger your hippocampus may grow.

  2. Make words or phrases from the first letters of the words you need to remember —like BRIGHT MINDS. When I have a series of facts to memorize, I immediately write down the first letter of each one to see if I can arrange them into an associative word or phrase. An example of this method:

    On old Olympus’ towering top, a Finn and German viewed a hop.

    I learned this rhyme in medical school. Each first letter corresponds to the first letter of the twelve cranial nerves in their proper order: olfactory, optic, ocular, trochlear, trigeminal, abduceus, facial, acoustic, glossal pharyngeal, vagus, accessory, and hypoglossal.

    BRASS is used by marksmen to remember the steps in firing a rifle: breathe, relax, aim, stabilize, and squeeze.

  3. Use places to remember specific things. The Greek poet Simonides[674] was said to have left a banquet just before the roof collapsed and killed all those inside. Even though many bodies were unrecognizable, Simonides was able to identify them by their places at the table. The practical use of this technique involves visualizing what you want to remember in a certain location. Then when you go back to the location in your mind, the object or fact should come back to you. For example, when memorizing a speech that you have organized and outlined, choose the ideas or the major subdivisions and associate them in some way with the different rooms in your home. As you deliver the speech, imagine yourself walking from room to room discovering the associations you have made in the proper order.

    In order to make this effective, use these two tips:

    1. Make it active: Your brain does not think in still photographs, so the more action there is, the more details you can employ in a scene.
    2. Make the picture as crazy and disproportionate as possible: It will be easier to remember the details as you recall the strange or unique things in the picture.

    If you practice this technique, your associative powers will become limited only by the number of locations you can think of. I imagine walking in my front door, then the living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, and so on. You can associate literally hundreds of items and ideas with the insides of most homes.

USE YOUR MEMORY TO FEEL GREAT ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

Many people struggle with anxiety and depression because they have trouble forgetting their fears, their frustrations, and the negative events in their lives. Their undisciplined minds constantly go to places of anger, regret, and sadness. Recognizing these tendencies in others, I have developed a memory technique that relies on the power of associations and places to help you feel great anytime, anywhere. Using your memory will help you counteract the negative and accentuate the positive.

Begin by writing down your best 10 to 30 memories of all time (constantly update them as new memories come into your life). Then peg them to specific places in your home or another location. Here is an example from my own life.

As of this writing, 12 of my favorite memories are:

  1. Marrying Tana and going on our honeymoon, which continues to this day
  2. Being completely in love with our dog, Aslan, and cat, Miso
  3. Helping my dad get well at the age of 87 and sharing his amazing story with the world
  4. Having Discover magazine list our research on brain imaging as one of the top 100 stories in science for 2015
  5. Eating dinner with my teenage daughter Breanne when she told me, “I kicked butt in a debate today, Dad”
  6. Sitting at the dinner table playing strategy games with my son, Antony, when he was a child (he is now 40) and having him whip me
  7. Having the world’s most amazing, consistently loving mom
  8. Standing at the stove with my grandpa when I was four years old
  9. Being one of the chief architects with Pastor Rick Warren and Mark Hyman, MD, of The Daniel Plan, a program to make the world healthier through churches, done in thousands of congregations around the world
  10. Watching my daughter Kaitlyn, now 30, perform in Pocahontas in second grade
  11. Sitting with my then-two-year-old daughter Chloe, now 14, atop my shoulders at a Los Angeles Lakers game as she kissed my head and told me she loved me
  12. Playing in the 1999 US Nationals Table Tennis Tournament

Walking through my home, here is how I peg these 12 memories to specific places using action and exaggeration.

  1. At the front door —Carrying Tana across the threshold while she pleads for me not to drop her. (I almost dropped her when we practiced our wedding dance the night before we were married. We still laugh about it.)
  2. In the foyer —Aslan and Miso are always there to greet me when I come home, looking for love. Well, Aslan is always there, wagging his tail; you never know about a cat.
  3. In the living room to the right of the foyer —My 88-year-old dad is in his workout clothes, doing jumping jacks, getting ready to go to the gym to lift weights. He once did a six-minute plank, completely dominating me. I wimped out at three minutes but was so proud of him.
  4. In the living room, where we put our Christmas tree —My friend and research collaborator Cyrus Raji, MD, gave me a framed copy of our Discover magazine honor, where our research was listed as one of the top 100 stories in science for 2015. We were listed at number 19. I also see a miniature Tesla car going around the room —Tesla was listed at number 18 —being chased by a new vegan dinosaur species, listed at number 20.
  5. In the dining room, next to the living room —At the table I see my daughter Breanne as a teenager (she is now 34 and the mother to two of my grandchildren). She winks at me and says, “I kicked butt in a debate today, Dad.” In high school, she went from being shy to very confident, which made my heart soar.
  6. In the dining room at the dinner table —I see my son, Antony, playing strategy games with me when he was a boy. He is very intense thinking about his next move. He is so smart; he started beating me at them early.
  7. In the kitchen, which smells amazing —My mom is making a tantalizing salad with lemon, olive oil, fresh crushed garlic, avocados from my dad’s ranch, grilled lamb, and asparagus. She’s excited to hear about my day.
  8. In the kitchen, at the stove —My four-year-old self is standing on a step stool, smiling, next to my grandfather, after whom I was named. He was my best friend when I was growing up. He has on his white apron, and we are preparing sugar-free chocolate-and-cashew-butter cups, a healthy, delicious version of the candy we used to make together. That way I can keep him with me longer.
  9. In the kitchen, next to the sink —On the counter is a copy of The Daniel Plan and the accompanying cookbook. On top of the books, tens of thousands of tiny people are running around waving broccoli florets, symbolizing all the people who have undertaken our program.
  10. In the family room, next to the kitchen —I see my then-seven-year-old daughter Kaitlyn in front of the TV performing in Pocahontas. She loved to perform, and being in front of the TV, blocking our view, never troubled her.
  11. On the way upstairs —I see Chloe’s room and imagine the zebra-hooded sweater she wore as she sat on my shoulders at the Lakers game, where she kissed my head and told me she loved me.
  12. In my office upstairs —I see our Ping-Pong table, triggering the memory of the US Nationals, where I had a great time playing the game my mother taught me as a child.

Try this exercise on your own. Then anytime you feel sad or upset, walk through the house in your mind and trigger the positive memories, which in turn will trigger the release of positive chemicals in your brain to help you feel great.

PICK ONE HEALTHY, MEMORY-SHARPENING HABIT TO START TODAY 

  1. Dedicate yourself to new learning by devoting just 15 minutes a day to it.
  2. Grow your hippocampus: Break your routine and focus on learning things you love that are new and challenging.
  3. Do whole-brain workouts, including exercises to boost your prefrontal cortex (language and strategy games, prayer and meditation), temporal lobes (memory games and musical training), parietal lobes (math games, golf, and juggling), and cerebellum (coordination games, such as table tennis and dancing).
  4. Sign up for a course or conference on an unfamiliar topic that interests you.
  5. Use your nondominant hand when brushing your teeth this week.
  6. Cultivate friendships with smart people.
  7. Listen to classical music and/or learn to play music.
  8. Treat any learning problems as soon as possible.
  9. Improve your recall with memory devices or mnemonics, especially rhymes and place anchors. Learn how to use them to your advantage.
  10. Boost your mood anytime, anywhere, by writing down your top 10 to 30 memories and anchoring them to places in your home.