Everyone forgets things from time to time. It’s not only natural, it is inevitable, especially with age. But with the increased awareness of Alzheimer’s and other cognitive diseases, a slip of the mind can ignite a range of fears for many who worry that their past and present is slipping away as their inability to recall events, people and places fade. What’s the reality? It’s mixed but understanding how memory works and how it can be supported at any age is crucial to personal wellbeing. Dr. Tracy Packiam Alloway, an expert in the field, recently spoke to WellWell about the myths, misconceptions and workings of memory. She also laid out ways to recognize problem signs and how individuals can help themselves build stronger memory functions. Read on.
Can you define what causes memory loss short of disease?
I think a healthy starting point would be to conceptualize memory loss into one of two categories, one where it is connected to a disease like Alzheimer’s or a traumatic brain injury. The second, which is far more pervasive and something that we will all experience or might have already experienced in our lifetime, is this idea of memory issues, where it is often compounded by perhaps a stressful event, maybe changing jobs, maybe the birth of a family member or the loss of a family member, when we experience a stressful event that often drains our memory resources. It uses up our attentional resources as well, and this can result in us having these episodes every day of forgetting events where you walk in a room and you think, I walked in here, what did I need? Or I’ll have clients mention that they drive the same route they’ve taken for years, but now can’t remember where they’re going. Oftentimes it could be a sign that stress is overwhelming their memory resources, resulting in this temporary pause or inefficiency in the memory capacity.
Does stress or other factors play a role in memory function?
The one thing that we do notice is that stress impacts a specific type of memory, specifically, our working memory or our active memory, and that memory is housed in the front of our brain, or our prefrontal cortex. And when we experience stress, that is the part of the brain that is most susceptible. And so, our active memory, our working memory, is the one we use when we’re having to juggle multiple things. Whether that is a conversation where you’re keeping track of different threads in the conversation, whether it’s giving a presentation, interviews or juggling schedules, that’s the memory that we see the most loss when we experience a stressor event.
Are you seeing this more geared towards older or younger people?
I’d like to say it’s across the board. But we do know from lifespan research, my work included, that our memory does decline once we hit our 30s. By the time we’re in our 50s or 60s, our memory capacity can start looking like it did when we were 10, 12 or 13 years of age. Now, that’s not to say that we cannot be as efficient and develop shortcuts or ways around circumventing that prefrontal cortex when it is overwhelmed and part of that is automating a lot of that information. So, the more things that are automated, we can pull away from that working memory resource and say, hey, this is something that I’m very well versed in, it’s very automated for me, I don’t need to rely exclusively on my working memory to carry this video.
What exactly is the working memory and how is that being affected?
The best way to think about working memory is that it’s your active memory. The memory that’s working when you’re having a conversation. The memory that’s working when you’re trying to balance a lot of different things. So, it’s the memory that’s present. If you think of a conductor maybe in the front of an orchestra, that’s the person that’s standing in front bringing in information from other parts of the brain. The working memory may be drawing on your long-term memory information. You might have read information that you might know. It may be drawing on your muscle memory information from your movements that you’re familiar with when you’re driving a car, information from your broker’s area. How do you form a sentence? What are the right words you want to use in this context? The working memory works together with other parts of the brain and again, it’s that active memory that we use in everyday decision-making and everyday conversations. It’s a really vital part of our memory.
What other aspects of memory are out there and how are they working?
Long-term memory is probably the most common and there are different types of long-term memory. So, in the context of disease, if you think of Alzheimer’s for example, long-term memory you have your autobiographical memory, which is your childhood memories. Things that you remember from very early on in your past. And then you also have what’s called semantic memory, which are things about categories, maybe facts, different political information or travel information. And we know that from research on the decline in Alzheimer’s and dementia, one of the first things that starts going is the memory. It relates to our working memory, this idea of word-finding difficulties where people are having difficulty using their working memory to access that long-term memory. And they start saying things like, oh, you know, we did the thing yesterday, you know, when you have a pole, a rod and you know. They may be trying to talk about fishing and they’ve forgotten the word. We do know that that type of memory tends to be the first to start declining as we get older and it can be a sign of cognitive impairment. If you’re noticing that you’re having difficulty remembering words, that’s a good indicator to maybe do a quick memory check to reach out to your family doctor and to make sure that your memory resources are intact.
Other than cognitive disease, what else inhibits memory?
We do know that there are hormonal changes both in males and females that can also impact how our working memory works and how efficient it is. We know that adolescence is a key period where the shift in hormones can make a big impact on working memory, often resulting in what may be perceived as memory loss. Teachers may be perceiving this as maybe the student not paying attention or even being lazy or not focusing when it could in fact be an indicator that the hormonal changes that the individual is experiencing, are also affecting their memory. We do know throughout the female lifespan, the idea of pregnancy brain. There is science behind that again, because of the influx of different hormones that happen, so there are key periods of forgetfulness. And as we age to the loss of certain key hormones, this also signifies a negative impact on memory.
Can you explain how a memory test works? What do they ultimately reveal?
The goal of a memory test is to be able to look at our capacity or our space to remember something. So, we wanted to work with some fairly random pieces of information, again because we know that our working memory will pull from our long-term memory. So, for talking about a topic that someone is familiar with, we know that person will remember more than someone else. We know from research that when we look at memory for baseball facts, even if we make up random facts, someone who’s a baseball fan will show a bigger memory capacity compared to a non-baseball fan. The main goal of a working memory test is to look to see how big someone’s space is. If you think of a sequence of random numbers and ask people to remember them backward. And that backward sequencing brings up this idea that you’re doing something with that memory. You’re not just remembering it, you have to process it, you have to work with it. We have also used working memory tests. I’ve created working memory tests where we look at random letter sequencing and random phone sequencing with different pitches for example. The goal here is to make it random and to see how much we can keep in mind the average adult as a point of reference. We’ll be able to remember about 5 or 6 numbers or letters in backward order. So, if you want to do a test to check them, you can always ask someone to give you a sequence of four or five numbers and see if you can recall that right away, but in backward or reverse order.
There’s a lot of research going into cognitive diseases and their impact on memory. Is there as much research and effort going into memory function in general?
There’s a huge body of research looking at memory and specific experts like memory for chess and chess experts. And we know that their memory is very connected to that procedural or that automatic wall to the memory. So, if you put chess pieces on a chessboard, a chess player will remember that just within seconds of looking at the board. However, if you put the chess pieces in a random order that doesn’t mimic an actual play in a test game, their memory will look just like a non-chess player, so there is a lot of research looking at memory throughout childhood. Now we’ve talked about Alzheimer’s. My own research has looked at memory in different learning needs like ADHD and dyslexia. There is a big overlap in how memory functions across the lifespan, not just in the perspective of disease for the individual, will they have any indication of what’s causing their memory loss, whether it’s disease or are there any symptoms that they would say oh maybe this versus that?
The first question that we can all ask ourselves is, is there a specific stressor event? Is there something that’s happening that’s draining my resources? And if you are able to rule that out or you can say, well, it’s stressful, no more stressful than the usual work week or work month, you then may want to move on to other things. Are there hormonal changes that may be touching that and also what type of memory is being affected? Is it your everyday memory? Are you forgetting things like your schedule or your day-to-day that are automated for you? Are you forgetting things at work? Again, that may be automated for you. Or are you forgetting new things? Maybe you are starting a new program, a new certification and that new information is overwhelming. And that’s the information you’re forgetting. So, knowing if it’s new information or things that you’re familiar with and looking at the source of memory loss is also important. If you’re forgetting new information that may be more common, as we get older it can be more challenging to learn new information. But if you’re forgetting information that is familiar then that may be indicative of some signs of cognitive impairment if you’ve already ruled out any stress or event.
Is there a way to strengthen your memory or maybe slow the decline?
Yes, absolutely. And for a long time, we thought that our memory was fixed, that we couldn’t really change it like your height. But we know now from research that have looked into people in their 60s and post-retirement age and has found that our memory capacity and our memory functionality can continue to be improved. And when I look at the research in this area, I’ve talked about it in three ways. A kind of slow release, if you will, and this can take four to six weeks before you begin to see the benefits in your memory. And then I talk about a more medium release where it could take maybe overnight or a couple of hours, but you can see those benefits pretty quickly. And then I talk about the fast release. We know from slow release there’s a huge body of research that is growing and again this is not unique to any age. There are studies across the lifespan in childhood, adulthood, and as I mentioned, post-retirement age as well whereby post-retirement, the studies typically focus on 65 plus. And food is one big factor, specifically food that is rich in flavonoids. Flavonoids are what give you the color of your food. So, the green in kale and spinach and the more rich the food is in flavonoids, the better. Those kinds of foods are great for your working memory. There’s other research shows that when people consume dark chocolate, 70 percent or higher of cocoa solids, after a few weeks they notice their memory improvement. Same with blueberries. One particular study looked at individuals 65 and older and they were consistently consuming blueberries. I think it was four to five weeks and they noticed a significant improvement in their working memory. So, food sources, like flavonoid-rich foods. But if you’re a fan of dark chocolate, DHA omega-3 is another source of memory food.
The interesting thing here with Omega-3 or DHA is that research is a little different whether you’re a child or an adult. Children will have memory benefits from supplement forms of omega-3, whereas adults tend to get the most benefit from food that contains omega-3. So, slight difference in the source, but regardless, Omega-3s are a powerful way for us to boost our working memory.
There’s research to show that if you fall into the camp where you’re concerned that you have to learn new information whether it’s for a job or for education purposes and you’re really struggling, you feel like you’re spending a lot of time with the information and it just isn’t sticking, one strategy that has been reported in scientific journals is to learn before bedtime. There’s something that happens at sleep, a consolidation process that by learning at night before bed, so don’t pick up your phone, no iPad, no TV app. You learn it almost locks that information in. And studies have found that a week later, 2 weeks later, even without any additional rehearsal of that information, people will remember more than if they learned that same information at the start of the day or midday or so on.
It seems as if we almost have to let new information plant roots in a certain way.
Yes. After you’ve learned, then you look on social media, you want to relax by watching something or even reading. The idea is that you don’t want any interference in the memory research. So, you don’t want any other information to interfere. It’s not the platform in which you’re learning, it’s more that you don’t want other incoming information.
If you have 20 minutes, grab a blank piece of paper and some coloring pencils and we found that 20 minutes of free drawing was enough to boost working memory and give you that quick boost. If you find that maybe you have a presentation and you feel like your memories are being drained midday or at the end of the workday, take 20 minutes and draw. That free drawing where you have to plan, you have to create something really tends to activate your working memory system.
So, it’s a matter of clearing space, almost rebooting your memory function because it can be overloaded or drained?
Correct. And if you’re a runner, I also published a study on barefoot running and found that just a brief period of time, less than 15 minutes of running barefoot, where you’re paying attention to your surroundings, will also boost your working memory. So, if you have an important presentation at work or an exam that you’re focused on that day, maybe take your shoes off, find a patch of grass and run in place. None of those other factors like speed and so on made a difference. Specifically, when running barefoot.
But it’s not just rebooting or shutting things off, it’s also about creating new attention or focus, correct?
So that’s one of the things I talked about in the research paper for barefoot running. I think that there are two things affecting it. One, there’s a specific time. So, running under 10 minutes wasn’t sufficient to actually boost working memory. There seems to be this sweet spot of cardiovascular activity that we need to bring enough blood flow to our prefrontal cortex and that allows us to use our working memory more efficiently. We also know this is echoed in other research where they’ve had people run on treadmills with a cap to look at blood flow in the brain, and they found that again, similarly, when people are walking. And they found that running at again a modest pace, but we need that physical exertion in order to get that blood flow going to our prefrontal cortex. The second is that we’re running barefoot specifically. In the study, we had our runners run with shoes, without shoes and self-pacing in all instances. But we also had them run in some cases where they had to specifically hit targets on the ground, and that allowed them to focus their attention. When we’re barefoot, we are far more focused on the ground where oftentimes running is to turn off your brain. But what running barefoot does is it forces your working memory, your prefrontal cortex, to be attentive. It’s almost like you’re giving that working memory a bit of a workout by focusing on the ground.
Is there a difference between how we support, build and nurture our different memory functions?
There are studies that look at the difference between functional use, how we use our memory and how to support memory issues versus structural changes in our memory. Can we actually change the way our brain is wired? And we know both are true from research. We know the more you use a particular skill, the stronger that memory system will actually be structural. So, the taxi driver study is one that’s well known. It’s well-published. This is pre-GPS. A group of taxi drivers in London found that their hippocampus, that’s the part of the brain associated with spatial memory or directions, would have to memorize and know from memory all of the different routes and directions that they can possibly take. And so that was a huge hippocampus, huge spatial memory, encyclopedic knowledge that they would have to have. And they found when they looked at their brains that structurally that part of the brain was larger than a non-taxi driver. So, we do know that the way in which we practice and use our memory system can bring structural changes to the brain. If you are stressed and don’t want to rely on your working memory. You can rely on your spatial memory instead. It knows what to do. It can take over. Divesting a lot of these other resources into various parts of our brain, our long-term memory, whether it’s our spatial memory, whether it’s our broker’s area for language, these are great ways to buffer when it comes to decline in memory loss.
Let me give you another example. This is one that I also talked about in the book, The Working Memory Advantage and this was a study looking at nuns and they looked at nonspecifically in the context of Alzheimer’s because they have a very homogeneous lifestyle. The study looked at a group of asymptomatic nuns when they passed and their brains were studied for signs of Alzheimer’s, and their brains did show signs of the disease. But when they were alive, they showed none of the cognitive signs of Alzheimer’s. Hence the term asymptomatic. They showed no symptoms, which is really puzzling. Even the nurses who would care for the nuns in their older age were shocked. They couldn’t believe that some of the nuns truly did show physical signs of Alzheimer’s when they showed none of the language or cognitive signs and what they trace it back to was the fact of how they use language. They would write a lot. They were very descriptive in their daily journals. This form of using language acted as a buffer, protecting their brain as they aged from exhibiting those signs of Alzheimer’s. So, when we hear things like use it or lose it in the context of memory, there is real science behind how valuable that is.
In another study, they were looking at individuals aged 60 and older and they found that people who were learning three or more new activities were more likely to preserve their memory and not exhibit these kinds of memory loss or memory decline compared to those who didn’t. Social interaction is another way that we can actually buffer and protect our working memory as we get older. This was a large-scale study.
Thousands of people were in the study and they found that people who were more likely to call a friend, meet up with a friend on a regular basis and people who were more socially connected as they aged were far less likely to show signs of cognitive decline. So, learning new activities, moving things to your long-term memory, like automating activities and being socially connected, are three great ways to buffer and protect memory as we get older.
There seem to be endless products, services and supplements being pushed to support memory function. Are these legitimate?
That’s a great question. And sometimes it can be difficult to decide or sift through. We know from research the placebo effect is real. So, if you truly believe something is working for you, it may indeed work for you again because of this placebo effect. But having said that, there is a large body of research documenting with supporting evidence, a lot of different things. We’ve talked about habits like different foods that we know can benefit. We’ve talked about simple things like drawing that we can integrate, there’s even research on different kinds of video games that can be helpful, first-person strategy games and we talked about the physical side of improving memory. There is a lot that’s out there that I would suggest one can look at before you maybe look at a supplement that may have side effects. As a researcher, I think if you’re able to do a quick Google and see if there’s some science behind what the product is you’re interested in integrating into your life because it could be helpful.
What are the biggest misconceptions when it comes to memory issues and support?
I would list three. The first is one we’ve touched on already, which is that memory is fixed. If I’m struggling with memory loss, that’s it. I’m stuck. It’s only downhill. So that’s the first misconception. Again, we know from research our memory is malleable. We can continue to improve it. Not just functionally in the way that we use it, but also structurally we can see changes in our brain structure based on our habits. The second misconception is that memory loss or any kind of memory issue or challenge is automatically an indicator of a memory impairment or disease and that’s a misconception. It can be. It could be an indicator, but in the same way that we don’t automatically assume a headache is a sign of a tumor. We want to also be mindful and consider the other reasons we might be struggling with memory issues. Is it stress? Is it attention? Is it a lack of sleep? There may be a whole host of other things that we may want to explore first before we identify it as a concern. The third misconception is that if we experience at some point just doing something once to improve our memory. We should see results right away or permanent results. Just because I did one quick run or one quick 20 minutes of free drawing doesn’t mean my memory is going to be forever intact. Even for the day or the whole week, and so having that patience and that reminder that it’s habit-building. We want to create habits that are lifelong for our memory.
About Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD
Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD, is a psychologist known for her research on working memory. She is a professor of psychology at the University of North Florida, where she was also the director of the graduate program in psychology. [1] An author of several books, Alloway is the developer of the world’s first working memory test designed for use by educators.
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