Category: Brain and memory

This is the second of a 4-part series covering Dr. Taylor’s conversation with Robin Phillips about the brain. To read the other posts in this series, click here.

 

Graham Taylor: What would be some other examples of what you are calling ‘brain fitness skills’?

Robin Phillips: Another brain fitness skill—and this is one that I feel very strongly about—is the ability to create schemas. In a world where all of us increasingly have access to the same information, the successful people will increasingly be those who can connect the various fields of knowledge and create frameworks for integrating different ideas, fields and facts. All of our minds do this naturally to some extent since the ability to create schemas is one of the most fundamental ways the human brain organizes the vast array of data stored in our long-term memories. You see…

GT: Sorry to interrupt you Robin, but can you explain for our readers what exactly a schema actually is?

RP: Oh, sorry. Yes, the brain’s long-term memory stores information in schematic structures that provide a framework by which we simplify and find meaning in what would otherwise be a vast warehouse of disconnected facts and memories. Schemas are the networks of associations by which the brain organizing everything into meaningful patterns.  The brain often does this when we sleep, which is why sometimes the things we find confusing make more sense in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

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Have you ever had so many windows open on your computer at once that it caused the computer to freeze? It happens on my computer all the time.

The solution, of course, is to close things down. To preserve your computer’s processing power, you sometimes need to prioritize the programs that are the most important to have running.

The human brain is like that as well. Psychologists sometimes use the term “cognitive load” to describe the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory at any one time. If a person has too high of a cognitive load—that is, if the person is multitasking or if their short-term memory is focused on too many things at once—then the brain will work below peak capacity and may even freeze up.
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Researchers are still uncovering the implications of a study suggesting that memory and learning are impaired by over-use of technologies like the internet, TV, social media and computer games.

The landmark study, conducted by Stanford researchers in 2009, overturned the standard assumption that the internet sharpened cognitive abilities and improved users’ ability to multi-task.

Researchers discovered that those who engaged in regularly media-multitasking scored worse than the control group in the ability to focus on and remember information. It was much harder for these people to distinguish important information from trivia. Ironically, media-multitaskers scored worse than the control group in multitasking itself.

“They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing,” said Eyal Ophir, one of the authors of the study. “The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.”

The results of this study have been confirmed in a myriad of subsequent research, with profound implications for those intent on staying focused in college and in the office. In short, the more we allow our brains to be distracted from the task at hand, the more we are literally weakening the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that controls our executive functions like concentrating, planning, and synthesizing.

Focus expert Daniel Goleman explains that “Attention works much like a muscle—use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows.”

Further Reading

• Daniel Goleman on Focus
• Three Skills for Online Learning that No One is Teaching
• When You’re Not Studying, Guard Yourself From Digital Distractions
• Don’t Overcrowd Your Working Memory

 

Grand Master of memory, Ed Cooke, spoke at the Wired 2012 conference about some of the ways anyone can improve their memory using basic techniques. Mr. Cooke walked the audience through some memory exercises that anyone can do. These exercises build on the principle that new memories stick in our brains to the degree that they embed themselves in the pre-existing constellation of memories we already possess. This video is a must-see for anyone who believes they were simply born with a bad memory.