Short term memory loss

There are various diseases connected with memory loss and one of them is short term memory loss. It is not quite usual as other illnesses of the kind, but it does still happen. There is a very good movie that you could see, which shows exactly how a person can lose all of his most recent reminiscences forever, yet remember what happened to him years ago (with very small details). 

That movie is called ‘Memento’ and stars Guy Pearce (writer and director: Christopher Nolan). It is about a man who suffers from short term memory loss and who uses various notes and tattoos to find the man who had killed his wife. You would highly recommend you seeing the movie just to see what the condition looks like. 

You may already know that our short term memory stores information for a very short period of time and it may not necessarily go to long term memory. However, it is still important and one should take care not to cause additional problems to our memory processes. 

Some of the most obvious causes for short term memory loss are: 

Various brain traumas (car accidents, sports injuries and etc.

Bad habits: abuse of alcohol, drugs and other chemical substances.

Various cardiovascular diseases and conditions, especially a stroke. 

There are various ways to prevent the condition, but this is the scope of another article. Hope it will come pretty soon. In the meantime you should remember that if you are facing serious memory problems you should consult your doctor and do not try to solve everything by yourself.

Have a nice day!

P.S. Go to see (or rent) the movie ‘Memento’. 

See also: 

General information about short term memory

How to increase visual memory

There are a lot of ways how we remember things. One of the main ones is through accepting of visual images to our brains. This is area of visual memory and I want to mention a couple of activities that will help you to increase its’ capacity and functioning.  Nothing comes easily if you do not practice. So be ready to set aside some time to exercise the things that I am going to mention. 

Firstly, you need to take some object and to remember its’ shape. Is it oval, square, triangular shape or in the form of a stick, ball and etc.?

Secondly, try to remember the size of the object. Is it huge, gigantic, big, average size, small or tiny? Do not think I am asking you to do something stupid and unnecessary. These seemingly foolish exercises help you to train your power to concentrate and ability to memorize without concentration is virtually impossible. 

Thirdly, remember the color of the object. Maybe you consider yourself to be color-blind. Do not worry about this. It most probably is a preconceived belief and you can change it with practice. 

Fourthly, take a break to ‘digest’ what you have seen and go over the above mentioned details in your mind. Try to visualize the object now with your eyes closed. 

Fifthly, make another break, go do your work (or other things) and try to come back and remember the object in full details after one hour. Repetition is very important for general training of your memory, not only of visual one. 

Ok, I hope the post was useful. I hope to continue on the topic soon.

See also: 

Visual memory mechanism and activities

Some worrying signs of your memory

We are humans and we are not perfect in all areas of our lives. The same can be said about our memories. We do forget things on a daily basis. And this mere fact should not worry us too much. However, there are certain signs that our memories might be giving that actually should make us worry. One might have serious signs of dementia or Alzheimer and do nothing about it. Mnemonics does not help here. One should see a doctor and take serious medication for the conditions. 

Again, some things might come with age, although it may not necessarily be so. We can train our memories as long as we are alive. But having an above mentioned disease is different. 

So, when should one get worried about memory problems?

If this starts interfering with you daily job activities: you forget about meetings, tasks and other daily activities that you used to remember very well. The causes for that can be different. It might be due to: being tired over a prolonged period of time, depression, aging, living under constant stress or it might be an early sign of the above mentioned diseases. 

If you start losing orientation in familiar places: not finding exit from the shop, or forgetting how to get home from the store. That’s a pretty serious problem and might show early signs of a much bigger problem than just daily forgetting. 

If you start losing orientation about time of the day or a season or even year, it is no longer some minor thing. And it does not sound like you are being tired or slightly depressed. These signs might be a good reason for you to visit your doctor. 

If these memory losses are followed by unexplainable feeling of being tired, angry (or other negative emotions), loss of joy of life you should not wait any longer, but go to see your doctor as fast as it is possible. Why wait for the snowball to become gigantic!

Some people are scared of doctors as they are afraid to face ‘possible truth’. However, it might be good to find what your problem is in its’ initial stages (when you can stop its progress or even solve it) rather than wait till it becomes too big to handle. 

On the other hand, your problem might not be as serious as you suspect. Going to the doctor for help will not do you any harm in that case too. 

Good luck in solving all your memory problems!

See also: 

How to do your memory test

Most common memory problems and disorders and their causes

How to do your memory test

Today while thinking on what to write I came with an idea of writing on testing your memory. Again, it sounds like checking your pc, but it is not what I am really talking about. I want to write a few useful ideas on how to test where you are regarding your remembering skills. You have to see whether you are progressing or regressing in the area. In order to do that, you have to ask yourself a number of questions and to answer them. You will also have to decide whether you want to make some improvement or you are just happy with the way things are at the moment. 

Let me give you a word of encouragement first. Daily forgetting happens to everybody and it is not a very serious problem. Even those who practice various memory techniques experience that. And it will probably not be a sign of Alzheimer or something similar. However, you see more and more of forgetting you should ask yourself whether it is not a good time to start exercising your brains. 

So, let us do a little testing. 

1. How much do you remember about things you did yesterday?

2. What about today? How much do you remember things you did today?

3. How many things you can remember (from shopping list) without actually making a list?

4. Can you remember people names easily?

5. Can you remember people phones easily?

6. Can you remember driving directions easily?

7. Do you remember of your friends’ birthdays without any problem?

8. Do you often forget where you parked your car after you get out of the shopping mall?

9. Do you find having problems to calculate elementary tasks from calculus ‘like five multiplied by seven’?

10. Do you forget what you promise and fail to remember to do things from your daily routine?

I might go on and on, but if most of the answers to the question are ‘yes’ you should get worried about the state of your memory. Better safe than sorry! Start training it and if that does not help you might also consult your doctor (just to be sure you don’t have something serious to worry about). 

Ok, I will try to continue the topic tomorrow and talk about something that might help you to identify whether you have serious memory problems or not.

Have a nice day.

See also:

Most common memory problems and disorders and their causes

List of world memory champions

Those of us who want to increase our brain power need some positive examples to follow. We need to see somebody who being humans with the same tendencies and ways to excuse ourselves for failures was able to overcome various obstacles and achieve great things in memory improvement. Such people do exist. There have been various competitions since ancient times that would test people abilities to memorize things, but modern world memory championships started only in 1991. Let me give you a list of the winners of the events and maybe say one or two things about each one of them. So, here we go.

1. Dominic O’Brien (English). He has been world memory champion even eight times. He actually won the first championship that took place in London in 1991. He started training his memory at the age of 30 after seeing a television program on the topic. See how far he has gone! Dominic wrote a lot of books on memory development and is probably the best expert in the field.

2. Andi Bell (English). He has been world memory champion three times. He managed to achieve this great success by using a method of loci. 

3. Ben Pridmore (English). He has been world memory champion three times too. Ben likes creating a story for remembering things. He often creates images (in his mind) around his old school. This helps him to pattern his story much better. 

4. Clemens Mayer (German). He is the first German who has won the title of world memory champion. He was able to repeat the success one more time. He planned to be a runner, but later changed his mind and decided to go to mental sports. He also (like Andi Bell) uses the method of loci. 

5. Wang Feng (Chinese). He has been world memory champion two times. He did it two years in a row in 2010 and 2011. 

6. Jonathan Hancock (English). He has been interested in mnemonics for a long time and written eleven books on memory and studying. Many would be surprised but he works as a teacher in primary school. For many years he worked as a radio presenter. As you may understand he is not a theoretician, but practices what he has learned in the field of mnemonics in his studies. 

Ok, I do not know if you were inspired by the post, but I sure am writing it. It is time to finish, but the good news is: I am going to describe how these world memory championship tournaments take place in my future posts. Have a nice day!

Write mental diary to improve memory

Writing a diary has been a usual way to remember events of one’s daily routine for a long time. However, you do not carry it (diary) with you all the time and certain things can be forgotten if you don’t have your it around. Now we have modern technology at our disposal to help us with that and we can program event reminders on our pc’s, telephones and other electronic gadgets. And yet, these can fail us too as all equipment is not perfect. But it is not the main problem! As we are lazy to train our bodies, so we are lazy to train our brains. That is the main reason why our memories start failing us with age. We get lazier and lazier. We have to find out ways to change this tendency. One way to keep our minds busy is by writing a mental diary. The process will definitely help to improve your memory. 

Mental diary will work on the same principle as a physical one does. You will have certain dates marked on your mental calendar in the same way as you do it in your real diary. The best way to do it is to use ‘the journey method’ or ‘the method of loci’ to help you create this diary. 

Route with 31 stages – month with 31 days

You will have to choose a route (physical) that is familiar to you and have 31 stages representing one day in a month. By route I mean, let’s say a familiar way from your home to the store or something similar. You need some specific place or object on that way for you to mark it as a separate stage (day). 

Let me show you what I mean.

Stage no1 – exit from your house, stage no 2 – the gate of your house, stage no 3 – a tree near your neighbor’s house, stage no 4 – large stone near the road, stage no 5 – bus stop, stage no 6 – hotel and etc. You will need to select 31 these special objects that would symbolize a day. Each object – one day. So, stage no 1 (exit from your house) is the first day of the month. Stage no 2 (the gate of the house) is the second day of the month and so on and so forth. 

How does writing your mental diary work?

If you know all the details about your next month agenda in advance you can start writing your mental diary now. Let us say you have a meeting at your work on the first day of the month. 

So, you imagine your boss and the employees standing near the exit of your door and (let us say) singing (about a meeting) or doing something else funny. Remember the more optimistic and positive the images are: the better it will be for you to remember those. If you have an appointment with your dentist on the fifth day of the month you imagine your dentist standing at a bus stop (fifth stage) with all of his equipment right beside him. 

I hope you understand what I mean. This is how you go through all of the events of the month in your mind and make an unforgettable monthly diary. Just make an association of an event (which you have on that day) with something funny and place at the stage of the route that represents that specific day. You will be surprised how easy remembering your monthly events becomes. 

If you have to remember a few months in advance you can choose a few routes with 31 days going through the same process with the second route too. 

Ok, enough about mental diary for today. Hope to come back to the topic some day and speak more on the theme of ‘the journey method’ more. 

See also:

Top 35 memory improvement tips and exercises