Training can give you a super-size memory @ Study
Dutch study reports that participants doubled their word recall capacity
A
new study suggests that the ability to perform astonishing feats of memory can
be learned.
After
40 days of daily 30-minute training sessions using a strategic memory
improvement technique, people who had regular memory skills at the start and no
previous memory training more than doubled their capacity.
From
recalling an average of 26 words from a list of 72, the participants were able
to remember 62, researchers at Radboud University Medical Centre in The
Netherlands found. Four months later, without continued training, recall
performance remained high.
Brain
scans before and after training showed that strategic memory training altered
the brain functions of the trainees, making them more similar to those of world
champion memory athletes, researchers said.
“The
training induces similar brain connectivity patterns as those seen in memory
athletes,” said Martin Dresler, assistant professor at Radboud University
Medical Center.
Dresler,
who began the work at Stanford University School of Medicine in the U.S.,
examined the brains of 23 world-class memory athletes and 23 people similar in
age, health status, and intelligence but with typical memory skills.
|
He used functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), a means of measuring brain activity by detecting blood flow
changes inside the brain, to measure differences in the strengths of
communications between brain regions. He used structural MRI to measure
differences in sizes.
|
Initially,
Dresler expected that memory champions might have notable differences in brain
anatomy, the same way one might expect a world champion body builder to have
unusually large muscles. Using structural MRI, however, they did not see
differences.
The
differences they detected between memory athletes and non-athletes were in
connectivity patterns spread across 2,500 different connections in the brain.
A
subset of 25 connections most strongly differentiated athletes from those with
typical memory skills.
The
athletes Dresler studied were not born with exceptional memory skills.
“They,
without a single exception, trained for months and years using mnemonic
strategies to achieve these high levels of performance,” Dresler added.
The
research was published in the journal Neuron.
Source | The
Hindu | 10 March 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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