Memorize How to Memorize.
시 성운
1. Introduction
You are in Ms. Choi’s class, taking a Word Smart quiz. Very confident you are, since you have literally spent the whole night memorizing vocabulary. Ms. Choi starts to read the definition, “to pacify, to calm down by giving into……”. Blood drains from your face. You remember memorizing that word. You can even remember the lousy joke that your roommate made when you were memorizing this word. However, no matter what you do, you cannot remember this word. Other students start to write furiously but you can’t. You pull your hair out in frustration, but no breakthrough. Almost tangible, yet just out of your grasp, the situation seems to be taunting you. Before you write a single letter, Ms. Choi starts to read the next definition. Your brain perceives one word: doomed. Your head feels light and you hate yourself.
We can all easily think of one situation that we forgot to do something, or were unable to remember something. In our daily lives, we face situations in which we cannot clearly remember something. Such as: Where did I leave my cell phone? What was the homework? (or even was there any homework?) What is my password? When was her birthday? And so on. These situations are annoying, and in some cases, detrimental to relationships and businesses. We often waste our precious time and money due to the inability to remember things. Memorizing things is really important, and we need to find ways to memorize things more efficiently.
2. Memory and Our Brain
Before anything else, let’s start by defining what memory is. Memory is a set of cognitive reactions that allows an organism to remember past experiences, information, etc (Stanford). There are many disputes as to what the exact process that allows us to store information in our brain is. However, there is a general idea about this process. We also know what role each part of the brain takes during the process. There are three major parts of the brain that participates in the process of memorizing: frontal lobes, temporal lobes, and hippocampus. Frontal lobes are in charge of the long-term memory, storing certain memories for a long time (Levenson 56-59). Temporal lobes is the part of the brain that gathers the stimulation from different body parts. This stimulation is, depending on their importance, sent to the frontal lobes or just forgotten. Hippocampus is the part of the brain that determines what information should be stored long-term. Another role that hippocampus performs is that it stores short-term memories (Learning). Therefore, the first door to enhancing our memories would be to better understand the hippocampus and what kind of information that it considers worthy to be put into the long-term memory.
3. Easily memorized Information
Take a few seconds and memorize these sequences of numbers: 485-6359-6976. Sure you are ready? Read on.
An interesting point is that due to some differences, some things are more easily memorized. While we tend to easily forget most things, we can remember some other things quite easily. In fact, the information that we do remember is easily accessible, and comes forth without even the slightest hesitation. For instance, the chances are, you would have already forgotten the 11digit numbers above. However, everyone would be able to remember their phone number, which is also 11digits. This difference in our ability to memorize some things sheds a light to the problem of forgetting things. If we find more and more examples of easily memorized things, and find commonness in those examples, then we could memorize other, hard-to-memorize things with the same technique.
There is no doubt to the fact that brain favors certain information over others. One kind of information that brain favors is the repeated information. That is, when our brain selects the few memories that it considers useful, it has a tendency to look at information that are repeated. There are immeasurable amount of information that goes through our brain each day. I am talking about 24hours worth of high-quality video, sound, smell, touch, taste and emotions. This is not a small amount of data by all means. Repetition of certain information can stimulate the brain in a way so that the brain will feel more natural to the information, thus fitting in quite easily (Rosen 16-17). Therefore, it would be an effective way to memorize something by repeating it. This isn’t exactly a secret. It is well known through our society that repetition helps memory. People who have done a simple job like flipping donuts for a long time become extremely skilled at it. Their body memorizes the action through repeating it over millions of times. School teachers advise students to review the things learned in class. Repetition is road to memorization. There can be no doubt on that.
We often see people saying things aloud when memorizing something. Many believe that this method helps memorizing because one ‘speaks it aloud’. However, the increased efficiency isn’t because of ‘saying’ it. It is rather due to ‘hearing’ it. Hearing the information helps to memorize the information (Rosen16-17). Hippocampus is right next to the temporal lobes in our brain. Temporal lobes is closely related to auditory signals. This is because of the fact that while other stimulations are passed all the way through the body to reach temporal lobes, eardrum is right next to the temporal lobes, and thus gives stronger stimulation. Since temporal lobes has such an affinity for sound stimuli, hippocampus also tend to take sound information best.
Auditory information is easily remembered, but the combination of multiple senses is remembered even more efficiently (Sin 78-82). This means that if you were to memorize the instructions to make a chair, it would help if you read it with your eye, while speaking it aloud and actually building one with your own hands. When single information is expressed through multiple parts of our brain, much percentage of the brain will be activated. Thus, the brain conceives the information as ‘emphasized’ and puts it to the long-term memory.
Can anyone ever forget the moment of first kiss? Memories with deep, profound emotions will be engraved into one’s brain easily. This is because hippocampus is right next to amygdala, which is the part of the brain that expresses emotions. Much of the information that comes to hippocampus comes through amygdala (Kim 52). Naturally, emotion-soaked information and memories are the best remembered.
More than once, after finishing a book on philosophy, I was unsure what to make of it. I had no idea what I had just read, and couldn’t remember any of it, even though I took notes during my reading. The opposite happened when I was reading a novel. Regardless of the half-dreaming state I was in while reading, I was able to remember the whole plot with clarity. Our brain prefers story over scrambled facts (Jung 32-34). Story is like a long chain. Story makes things much easier to memorize and remember because all you have to do is to memorize or remember what comes next. Uncovering little things one by one will ultimately lead you to seeing the whole picture. In fact, it is quite like holding onto a rope and following it on and on, one information helping to reach another.
4. Conditions that Change our Efficiency in Memorizing.
Another interesting fact about our memory is that we have different efficiency in memorizing things under different circumstances. This is another shed of light on the subject of memorizing. What are the conditions that enable us to memorize things more efficiently? What is the commonness between these conditions? If we could find answers to these two questions, the efficiency of memorizing would increase dramatically. I chose two main conditions that would affect the efficiency in memorizing. One is the diet, and the second is the nap that the person takes.
A study was done in a small, poor city in Indonesia called Jatinegara, where most students were not properly fed. The researcher would go to a school and give a certain class a glass of milk per day for 6 months. The effect was unbelievable. Students who were given milk almost doubled their ability to memorize things (Kim 72-73). Similar research done to the elderly showed the exact same result (Jung 38-39). It was later found out that vitamin B12 in milk had prevented the loss of memory cells. Therefore, milk, and other foods that contain vitamin B12 enhances your memorizing ability (Jung 38-39). What other nutrition help increase the efficiency in memorizing? Glucose is the sole fuel for the brain. Without glucose, brain would simply stop functioning. It is necessary that we give enough fuel for the brain if we want it to work well. One food that can be easily converted to glucose would be chocolate. Therefore, it wouldn’t hurt to eat some chocolate bars before you memorize something. Fat makes up the cell membrane of every cell, including the cells inside the brain. Fat is the highest in calories and adequate intake of fat will increase the efficiency of brain function (Kim 75-77).
The second condition that affects our memory is the sleeping patterns. More specifically speaking, napping. Napping gets rid of the tiredness our body suffers from, and helps empty the brain for new things to memorize. A study has shown that brains feel the need to rest every eight hours, and failing to do so will decrease our efficiency (Neuroscience). Few high schools in Japan that had officially put napping into their daily schedule had dramatic increase in the test scores (Neuroscience). There is no question as to whether napping is good. However, the amount of time you spend napping should be determined as to what kind of work you are going to do next.
Sleep is divided into 5cycles. If one wants to be simply focused and efficient, one should sleep until the second cycle, which takes about 20 minutes of sleep. The second cycle is the stage that brain rests, cutoff from the rest of the world. This stage is the reason that after sleeping we feel as the head is cleared. If one wants to reach the state of being able to memorize things easily, one should sleep about 60 minutes so that he or she will be able to reach the 3rd and the 4th cycle. These cycles are the deepest in sleep, and will assemble the events that happened before sleeping, and put them into organized forms. If one wants to be fully rest, one should sleep about 90minutes, reaching the last cycle, REM. This cycle is the time when the most brain activity during sleep happens (Sin 23). This is the period that decides what information should be stored long-term and what should be forgotten. Therefore, it would be efficient to sleep 20minutes before manual work, repetitive work, 60 minutes before memorizing things, and 90minutes after the studying is done.
5. Conclusion
There are many different ideas on what learning is. Whatever the theory is, there is no difference that at the end students have to memorize stuff. To me, this research had been of great help. Knowing way to be more efficient in memorizing things had led to overall increase of productivity. By doing this research, I could save a lot of time that I usually would have had to spend memorizing information. During the time that I saved, I was able to learn stuff and do things that I want to do. Most people around the world would agree that knowing better ways to memorize something is helpful for themselves as well. However, this research holds a even more value when it comes to the world. It is not just about the individuals. This research would show people the need to live more healthily, having enough sleep and nutrition to be effective at their work. Also, people who worry about the educations of people in the 3rd world would see that the best way to enhance the people’s learning skills is to give them right food and teach them the right sleeping habit. Indeed, my research will, in end, benefit the whole world.
Works Cited(Reference):
Jung, SeongGil. World-dazzling Jungmoniques Memorization Techniques.
Seoul: Dukyou, 1995.
Kim, Sun. Understanding and Training the Memory.
Seoul: Education Science, 1998
Learning and Memory Home Page
July 7, 2004 Extinction Memory Improvement by the Metabolic Enhancer Methylene Blue
F. Gonzalez-Lima and Aleksandra K. Bruchey. May 4 2011
Levenson, Robert W “Milk and Memory” Neuton 23.5-6(2006): 56-59
Neuroscience Online
1997 John H. Byrne Department of Neurobiology and Anatom>
Rosen, Howard J “Memory.” Neurocase 15.3-4(2009): 16-17
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Home Page
February 3rd 2010, Metaphysic Research Lab, CSLI Stanford University. John Sutton.
Sin, Minsub. Secrets Of Memory.
Seoul: Book Polio, 2011
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