Memory: How to Boost It
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. So we're back with a bunch of brand new episodes. Did you miss us? We missed you. Thanks so much for joining us again. And if you like what we're doing here at Science Versus, please tell your friends about us. Share the love. All right, let's get into it. This is the show that pits facts against science. Facts Against Memory. That's right. Today, we are pitting facts against memory. Because a lot of us think that our memory has gone down the toilet. Senior producer Meryl Horne got to chatting with some of our colleagues at Spotify about this.
Do you worry about your memory?
Oh yes, I certainly do, yeah.
I definitely would give it a D. Yes, I worry about my memory and I have for a very long time.
It's like kind of like a blurry fog, like a gauze over everything.
And people were really noticing this in their day to day at home.
I certainly lose things around the house a lot more often.
Like what?
Just like keys, phone, glasses. And sometimes it's in the matter of like five, like five minutes. Like I put it down five minutes earlier and I'm like, where is that?
I often forget if I've closed the garage door and I have to go back and I have forgotten once and someone else has texted me. And so now I'm very conscious about that. I mean, it's definitely frustrating. It's a little embarrassing. It's a little scary, because the catastrophizing part of me is like, oh, it's all downhill from here.
And it is so scary, this idea of losing our memory. Some of our colleagues had seen it happen to people they love, like their grandparents, and it was really hard to watch. Another person we talked to, Connor, he's the guy that keeps losing his keys, he was worried that he wouldn't be able to hold on to important memories in his life.
It causes me concern about how that will affect the rest of my life, especially like when Luke and I, Luke, my husband, and I decide to start a family. I want to be able to, you know, like my brain to be able to capture those moments more, just better, be able to do it better.
And so with the stakes being so high here, it's not surprising that online you'll hear people claiming to have the solution, telling you that you've got to train your brain with puzzles or giving you some secret pill or hack to save your memory.
Struggling to remember things? Here's a brain hack that could boost your memory by 80%. Morning ritual to improve your focus and memory. If you do daily crossword puzzles, you could have a sharper brain later in life. There's certain nootropics, and you can take those and they can enhance memory. It's not horse sh** or snake oil or placebos. It's real.
And the folks that we were talking to just wanted to know, is this stuff for real or not? I mean, bottom line, they had one big question for us. Can you tell me what I should do to have a better memory? So today on the show, what actually works, if anything, to improve your memory? Is there anything you can do to keep it sharp as we all get older? Because when it comes to our keys or wallets, a lot of us have been wondering... Where is that? Then there's science. Science vs. Memory will be back just after the break.
Welcome back. Today, we're looking at memory. And with me is senior producer Beryl Horn. Hey, Beryl. Hey, Wendy. Do you worry about your memory?
How is it? Mine's really bad, I think. Oh. I was thinking about this a lot for this episode. And I remembered this time when I was in college that I just, like, forgot my PIN number for, like, several days to this debit card that was, like, my main debit card that I used for years. Oh, yeah. And it was just, like, gone one day. And then... eventually just came back to me randomly when I was like in an elevator. But like, what was that? Like, that feels worse than normal.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that stuff has definitely happened to me as well. I'll go to do something and go, oh, oh. So how worried should we be about our memories, Meryl?
I called up Charan Ranganath, professor at the University of California, Davis, to talk about this.
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