Memory

Have you ever opened the fridge, stared at the shelves and wondered what on earth you went there for? Or been introduced to someone, repeated their name and then lost it before the handshake was over? This week, I have been immersed in memory because it is one of the areas I am measuring on participants in my upcoming brain-health study (ps if you want to be involved in the study and missed last weeks memo, keep reading, details are below.) Your replies to last week’s Memo made the subject feel even more relevant. So many of you described words disappearing halfway through sentences, names hovering frustratingly out of reach and thoughts being drowned out by a brain that feels permanently busy. The word that appeared again and again was noise. That got me thinking. How often do you blame your memory when the problem began with attention? Your brain cannot bring back information it never properly received in the first place. Let’s dive in...

Data

Where insight becomes impact

What I’ve been looking at this week…

What is memory? Memory sounds like one function. You either remember something or you do not.

Your brain is doing something much more intricate.

Imagine you are at a busy dinner and the person beside you says, “Hello, I’m Rebecca.” At the same moment, someone across the table is asking you a question, your phone lights up and you are deciding whether the food in front of you contains something you might not like.

Rebecca’s name has some serious competition.

Your attention decides whether the name receives enough priority to enter the memory process. Attention is the front door. If Rebecca barely gets through it, there may be very little for your brain to retrieve five minutes later.

Studies of divided attention have found that distraction while information is first being encoded can have a greater effect on later memory than distraction during retrieval. In other words, the damage may happen while the memory is being made.

This is something many people get wrong. They interpret the missing name as proof that their memory is deteriorating. Sometimes the name was never recorded clearly enough to survive. Your short-term memory then has to hold “Rebecca” for a few seconds. Think of it as the mental equivalent of writing something on your hand. It is useful, immediate, but very easy to rub off. If you repeat her name and connect it with something else, your working memory becomes involved. Perhaps you think, “Rebecca from Richmond, wearing red.” You are holding the information and actively doing something with it.

Working memory is the mental surface on which you organise information, compare options, calculate figures and follow a conversation while deciding what you want to say. However, it has limited space. Picture trying to prepare dinner on a kitchen worktop already covered with post, shopping bags, dirty dishes and three different appliances. Theres's not much space. You can still cook, although everything takes more effort. That is what a brain full of unfinished tasks, incoming messages, worries and decisions can feel like.

Later in the evening, you see Rebecca again. Her face looks familiar, although her name refuses to appear. That is your recognition memory working. Your brain knows it has encountered her before, even though it cannot retrieve the label.

Recognition and recall give you different routes into a memory. You may be unable to produce the name of an actor, yet recognise it instantly when someone says it. This happened to me yesterday when I was watching The Odyssey (great watch by the way in case you haven't already.) I recognised Matt Damon instantly but just couldn't recall his name instantly!

The following morning, you may remember where Rebecca was sitting at dinner, what you discussed and the moment she spilt water across the table. That is episodic memory, your memory for experiences and events. Episodic memory gives your life its scenes. It connects what happened with where it happened, when it happened and how it felt. The intriguing part is that episodic memories have different levels of resolution. You may remember the dinner clearly while being unable to recall who sat opposite you. You can retain the outline of an event while some of its detail becomes blurred.

This is one of the areas modern cognitive testing can explore. It can look beyond whether you remembered an object and examine how precisely you remembered its colour, position or orientation.

Cambridge researchers asked participants to remember everyday objects and then place them back in their exact location. They found that older adults often remembered the object but placed it less precisely, suggesting that ageing may blur the detail of episodic memory before the memory itself disappears. {PMID: 37300913} That's why I'm also doing an object-placement memory test in my brain study and testing biological age - this will be so interesting!

Then there is long-term memory, the extraordinary archive that allows you to remember the telephone number of your childhood home, the lyrics of a song you have not heard for twenty years or how to ride a bicycle after a decade away from one. You may have excellent long-term memory and still struggle to find a word under pressure. The information remains in the archive, while the search function slows down.

That search function involves processing speed, which describes how efficiently you take in information, interpret it and produce an accurate response. Processing speed is not a race to answer first. I look at speed alongside accuracy and consistency. Someone may respond very quickly and make repeated mistakes. Another person may answer accurately but require longer to do it. A third may begin well and become increasingly variable as attention fades. You notice processing speed in fast conversations. You know you have something valuable to say, but by the time you have found the exact word, the conversation has moved on. You may leave thinking, “Why couldn’t I remember?” when part of the difficulty came from the speed required to access and express the information.

Finally, there is executive function, the brain’s ability to plan, prioritise, resist distraction, change direction and keep track of what it was doing.

You use executive function when you listen to a question, hold the first part in your mind, consider several possible answers and select the most appropriate response. You also use it when you open your phone to send a message, notice an email, follow a link and somehow end up watching a video about sourdough starters seven minutes later. The brain has lost control of the order in which competing stimuli receive attention.

This is why there is more to explore if you find yourself saying “my memory is getting worse” or "I get distracted really easily."

And here's the most important thing... you can improve all of this!

Here's how...

Devices

Track it to hack it.

What I’ve been monitoring this week…

The device I have found most revealing this week is one I already carry everywhere: my phone. And that's exacly what I'm trying not to do - not to carry it everywhere! My daughter is home from University over the summer, so it's even more important for me to be fully present with her and not distracted. That is why I have been looking at Screen Time, particularly how frequently I pick up my phone and the notifications that are being given permission to enter my attention. Why does that matter for memory? Every notification asks the brain to make a decision. Shall I look? Is it important? Can it wait? What might I be missing? Even when you resist opening it, part of your attention has already been recruited. In one experiment, researchers found that receiving phone notifications significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not interact with their phones. The level of disruption was comparable to the effects seen when people actively used their phones during the task. That is quite a finding. Your phone does not have to be in your hand to interrupt your cognition. It only needs permission to call for your attention. I don't have any notifications active on my phone, which means I look at it when I want to rather than when it wants me to! Also when I'm focusing on something specific, like writing this memo, I keep my phone in a drawer. Out of sight, out of mind as my mum likes to say.

This week, have a look at your own Screen Time data. Do not start with the total number of hours. My daughter is horrified when she sees my total screen time. But that number also includes useful activities such as reading, working, navigating or speaking to family. Instead, look at the number of pickups, the first app you open and which notifications repeatedly fracture your day. I've put my screen time as on the front page of my phone so I'm much more mindful of it.

You'll also know from last weeks memo that I use the Exomind device in my clinic, with transcranial magnetic stimulation to help my patients improve focus and attention and reduce distraction and noise. I wasn't quite expecting the overwhelming response from you all when I shared this last week. Which means I'm now opening up a small additional cohort of 4 spaces for my October brain-health case study. As a reminder, in case you missed last weeks memo, I'm selecting a small number of people for six weekly sessions of non-invasive brain stimulation with Exomind, cognitive memory and focus testing on alternate weeks (which will be all they types of memory I've mentioned in this memo), cortisol-rhythm and biological-age testing before and after the programme, and six consultations with me. I want to explore what changes when mental noise reduces and the brain has more capacity for focus, processing and memory.

If you would like to be considered, reply BRAIN and tell me what you would most like to improve and why.

Decisions

From knowing to doing.

What this means for YOU…

Here are 3 things to can start to do straight away for better attention and memory. I call it Three Cs of Cognition: Capture, Connect and Call Back.

Capture the information When something is worth remembering, give it five seconds of undivided attention. Five seconds sounds almost laughably small. Notice how rarely you give information even that. When somebody tells you their name, stop preparing your next sentence. Look at their face, listen to the name and repeat it aloud. When you put your keys down, notice where you are placing them rather than doing it while thinking about something else. When you read an important paragraph, finish it before looking at the message that has just arrived. Attention tells the brain, “This is worth recording.”

Connect it to something Your brain remembers meaning, imagery, emotion and association more easily than isolated information. If you meet Rebecca, connect her name to Richmond, red glasses or another Rebecca you already know. It does not need to be clever. It just needs to create another route back to the information. When you want to remember an idea, ask yourself where it fits with something you already understand. When you want to remember an appointment, visualise yourself arriving at the location. When you learn a fact, explain it aloud in your own words to encode it more deeply.

Call it back After reading something important, close the page and ask yourself what you can remember. Do not look immediately. Give your brain time to search. I use a simple 3-2-1 retrieval: What are the three key points? What are two details I found interesting? What is one thing I will do with the information? Every act of retrieval strengthens the route back to the memory. Memory improves when you practise remembering, rather than repeatedly looking at the answer.

There are so many other specific ways to get the best from your brain and change the way your focus, attention and memory work. For those of you in my brain study, I'll be giving you more targeted ways based on your individual results and goals, such as how to reduce your open loops, or how to change state before a demanding event, or how to use sleep for better recall.

💼 Case in point: Someone who contacted me after last week’s Memo described a very specific fear. She is a doctor. She has not lost her medical knowledge. She has noticed that the name of a medicine or procedure takes longer to arrive. She wants to communicate with confidence and does not want a patient to sense that she is searching for the right language. She also described what happens socially. When it takes longer to find a word, people sometimes speak over her or move the conversation on. That makes her more conscious of the delay, which adds another layer of pressure the next time she speaks. Can you see how easily a loop forms? She begins monitoring herself for a lapse. That self-monitoring occupies working memory. Anxiety increases the cognitive load. Retrieval becomes more effortful, and the delay then appears to confirm the original fear. Her knowledge, recognition memory, processing speed, word retrieval, executive control and stress response are all part of this. Telling her to “do more memory games” would miss the richness of what is happening. This is why I am measuring cognition across time and alongside cortisol rhythm. So you discover the point at which your own cognitive chain becomes less efficient and what you can do Your symptoms deserve more curiosity than acceptance. Just reply with BRAIN if you'd like to explore this further for yourself.

🎯 If you'd like to make decisions with precision based on your personal data and using devices that are specific for you, then book a private consultation and let's start to decode your health.

Diary

Where you’ll find me…

Last week: I spent a significant part of the week reading your replies to the last Memo. Thank you so much for sharing so honestly. What struck me was how deeply cognitive confidence affects people. You were rarely asking to become faster simply for the sake of speed. You wanted to contribute to conversations, trust your decisions, return to work, learn something new and feel like yourselves again. We can do that! This week, I've been wearing a new sleep ring this month and am speaking to the sleep scientists behind the ring to review my results and look at the science. Will be fascinating. Will share more about the results and the ring in a few weeks.

Next week, Off to China with the family for a few weeks! So you may or may not hear from me, depending on what connectivity and communication is like when I'm out there.

Distinction

A thought to pause on…

Memory is often judged at the moment information fails to return. I want you to become curious about the moment the information first arrived. "You cannot remember a moment you were never fully present for."

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead (that's 168 hours of your Million Hour life!! Dr Alka

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