By Rick Nauert PhD

Emerging research suggests the hormones that trigger the menstrual cycle influence the way a woman’s memory works. Practically, investigators discovered cognitive and spatial abilities were influenced by the time of the month.

Researchers from Concordia University designed the study to show that the female brain works differently. Drug development and treatment protocols are typically designed using male models.

In the current study, researchers investigated whether hormones associated with the menstrual cycle could change brain patterns and capabilities.

“Women have sometimes reported to doctors that their memory works differently depending on which phase of the menstrual cycle they are in — even during and following pregnancy, or following menopause.

This has led scientists to wonder whether estrogen and progesterone could affect memory and problem solving,” said psychology professor Dr. Wayne Brake, who co-authored the study.

“Our research shows that, rather than impairing memory in general, estrogen and progesterone may instead cause the brain to favor one memory system or strategy over another.”

For the study, researchers tested 45 women who had regular menstrual cycles. Participants were asked to complete a “hormonal profile” questionnaire that gathered detailed information on their periods, past pregnancies, contraceptive, and synthetic hormone intake history and general life habits.

The participants were then given a verbal memory task, such as remembering a list of words, as well as a virtual navigation task, such as finding their way through a maze in a video game, that could be solved in several ways.

At the end of the experiment, participants were debriefed on how they solved the tasks from beginning to end.

Results were clear: women who were ovulating performed better on the verbal memory task. On the other hand, women tested in their pre-menstrual phase were better at solving spatial navigation tasks.

Researchers said that proves that women tend to use different strategies to solve tasks — such as navigating a maze or remembering a list of words — depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle.

Essentially, the study shows that the hormonal changes women experience throughout their cycles have a broader impact than previously believed, and have significant effects on how women approach and solve problems.

“This is important scientifically. We and others have previously shown that the levels of estrogen and progesterone in rodents influence different brain regions, affecting various memory systems involved in task-solving,” says Brake.

“For example, when estrogen levels are high, female rats will use one type of memory system or strategy versus another to solve a maze. This is the first study to show that this is also true for women, who solve tasks in different ways based on their hormones.”

The findings clearly show that additional research is needed to deepen the understanding of the female brain.

For recent Ph.D. graduate Dema Hussain, the study’s lead author, these results point to an ongoing bias in scientific research.

“Traditionally, researchers and scientists have relied on using male participants — and male rats — in studies to develop drugs and treatments for the general population. But we now know that women respond differently than men,” she says.

“I hope that this study emphasizes that more research is needed to deepen our understanding of the female brain, and that efforts must be made to tailor future research to improve our understanding of the effects of female sex hormones on cognition and memory.”

By Rick Nauert PhD

Need help in remembering a difficult concept? A solution may literally be at your fingertips as new research suggests drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered enhances memory.

“We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top,” said the study’s lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.

“We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor, and semantic information.”

In the study, researchers presented student participants with a list of simple, easily drawn words, such as “apple.” The students were given 40 seconds to either draw the word, or write it out repeatedly. They were then given a filler task of classifying musical tones to facilitate the retention process.

Finally, the researchers asked students to freely recall as many words as possible from the initial list in just 60 seconds.

“We discovered a significant recall advantage for words that were drawn as compared to those that were written,” said Wammes.

“Participants often recalled more than twice as many drawn than written words. We labelled this benefit ‘the drawing effect,’ which refers to this distinct advantage of drawing words relative to writing them out.”

Drawing the words or concepts, however crudely appears to be the best method for retention.

In variations of the experiment in which students drew the words repeatedly, or added visual details to the written letters, such as shading or other doodles, the results remained unchanged.

Memory for drawn words was superior to all other alternatives. Drawing led to better later memory performance than listing physical characteristics, creating mental images, and viewing pictures of the objects depicted by the words.

“Importantly, the quality of the drawings people made did not seem to matter, suggesting that everyone could benefit from this memory strategy, regardless of their artistic talent. In line with this, we showed that people still gained a huge advantage in later memory, even when they had just four seconds to draw their picture,” said Wammes.

While the drawing effect proved reliable in testing, the experiments were conducted with single words only. Wammes and his team are currently trying to determine why this memory benefit is so potent, and how widely it can be applied to other types of information.

By Rick Nauert PhD

New research suggests the ability to ignore distraction is often associated with a better working memory.

Specifically, investigators from Simon Fraser University discovered differences in an individual’s working memory capacity correlate with the brain’s ability to actively ignore distraction.

A research team led by psychology professor Dr. John McDonald and doctoral student John Gaspar used EEG technology to determine that “high-capacity” individuals (those who perform well on memory tasks) are able to suppress distractors.

Conversely, “low-capacity” individuals are unable to suppress distractors in time to prevent them from grabbing their attention.

The suppressed memory capabilities has implications for individuals challenged with attention deficit disorders. Academic performance and individual safety concerns may be influenced by the attention deficits.

The research has been published in the journal PNAS.

“Distraction is a leading cause of injury and death in driving and other high-stakes environments, and has been associated with attentional deficits, so these results have important implications,” said McDonald, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience.

The study is linked to two previous papers in 2009 and 2014 in which McDonald’s research team showed that when people search the visual world for a particular object, the brain has distinct mechanisms for both locking attention onto relevant information and for suppressing irrelevant information.

The study is the first to relate these specific visual-search mechanisms to memory and show that the suppression mechanism is absent in individuals with low memory capacity.

Source: Simon Fraser University

By Traci Pedersen

Young adults with a high body mass index (BMI) may have poorer episodic memory (the ability to recall past events) than their healthy weight peers, according to a new study at the University of Cambridge.

While only a small study, the findings add to the growing body of evidence that excess body weight may be associated with changes to the structure and function of the brain and its ability to perform certain cognitive tasks optimally.

Nearly 69 percent of U.S. adults and about 60 percent of U.K. adults are overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk of physical health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety.

“Understanding what drives our consumption and how we instinctively regulate our eating behavior is becoming more and more important given the rise of obesity in society,” said Dr. Lucy Cheke.

“We know that to some extent hunger and satiety are driven by the balance of hormones in our bodies and brains, but psychological factors also play an important role — we tend to eat more when distracted by television or working, and perhaps to ‘comfort eat’ when we are sad, for example.”

In previous studies, obesity has been linked with dysfunction of the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory and learning, and of the frontal lobe, the part of the brain involved in decision making, problem solving, and emotions.

Based on these associations, researchers wanted to know whether obesity could have a direct effect on memory.

“Increasingly, we’re beginning to see that memory — especially episodic memory, the kind where you mentally relive a past event — is also important. How vividly we remember a recent meal, for example today’s lunch, can make a difference to how hungry we feel and how much we are likely to reach out for that tasty chocolate bar later on,” said Cheke.

The researchers evaluated 50 participants aged 18-35, with BMIs ranging from 18 through to 51. A BMI of 18-25 is considered healthy, 25-30 is overweight, and over 30 is obese.

The participants completed a memory test known as the “Treasure-Hunt Task,” where they were asked to hide items around complex scenes (for example, a desert with palm trees) for two days. They were then asked to remember which items they had hidden, where they had hidden them, and when they were hidden.

The findings revealed a link between higher BMI and poorer performance on the tasks.

The researchers say the findings may suggest that the structural and functional changes in the brain previously found in those with higher BMI may be accompanied by a lowered ability to form and/or retrieve episodic memories.

Since the effect was demonstrated in young adults, it adds to growing body of evidence that the cognitive impairments linked to obesity may be present early in adult life.

Since this was a small, preliminary study, the researchers caution that further research is needed to fully determine whether the findings can be generalized to overweight individuals in general, and to episodic memory in everyday life rather than in experimental conditions.

“We’re not saying that overweight people are necessarily more forgetful,” Cheke said, “but if these results are generalizable to memory in everyday life, then it could be that overweight people are less able to vividly relive details of past events such as their past meals. Research on the role of memory in eating suggests that this might impair their ability to use memory to help regulate consumption.”

“In other words, it is possible that becoming overweight may make it harder to keep track of what and how much you have eaten, potentially making you more likely to overeat.”

Cheke said this work is an important step in understanding the role of psychological factors in obesity.

“The possibility that there may be episodic memory deficits in overweight individuals is of concern, especially given the growing evidence that episodic memory may have a considerable influence on feeding behaviour and appetite regulation,” she said.

The findings are published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Source: University of Cambridge

By JANICE WOOD Associate News Editor

People with a high level of education who complain about memory lapses have a higher risk for stroke, according to new research.

“Studies have shown how stroke causes memory complaints,” said Arfan Ikram, M.D., associate professor of neuroepidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. “Given the shared underlying vascular pathology, we posed the reverse question: ‘Do memory complaints indicate an increased risk of strokes?’”

As part of the Rotterdam Study, 9,152 participants 55 or older completed a subjective memory complaints questionnaire and took the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).

By 2012, 1,134 strokes occurred: 663 were ischemic, 99 hemorrhagic, and 372 unspecified, according to the study’s findings.

A stroke occurs when a blood vessel that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain is either blocked by a clot or bursts or ruptures. When that happens, part of the brain cannot get the blood and oxygen it needs, so it and brain cells die.

According to the American Stroke Association, about 795,000 Americans have a new or recurrent stroke each year.

In the latest study, the researchers found that memory complaints were independently associated with a higher risk of stroke, but a higher MMSE score wasn’t.

The researchers also found that those with memory complaints had a 39 percent higher risk of stroke if they also had a higher level of education. The finding is comparable to the association between subjective memory complaints and Alzheimer’s disease among highly educated people, according to the researchers.

“Given the role of education in revealing subjective memory complaints, we investigated the same association, but in three separate groups: Low education, medium education, and high education,” Ikram said. “We found that the association of memory complaints with stroke was strongest among people with the highest education.

“If in future research we can confirm this, then I would like to assess whether people who complain about changes in their memory should be considered primary targets for further risk assessment and prevention of stroke.”

For this study, the researchers defined low education as primary education only; intermediate education as primary education plus some higher education, lower vocational education, intermediate vocational education, or general secondary education; and high education as higher vocational education or university training.

“The study results apply evenly to men and women,” Ikram added. “More than 95 percent of the study participants were Caucasians living in Rotterdam, so future studies should include more racially diverse groups,” he added.

The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Source: American Heart Association

You may think you know your own mind, but when it comes to memory, research suggests that you don’t. If we’re trying to learn something, many of us study in ways that prevent the memories sticking. Fortunately, the same research also reveals how we can supercharge our learning.
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We’ve all had to face a tough exam at least once in our lives. Whether it’s a school paper, university final or even a test at work, there’s one piece of advice we’re almost always given: make a study plan. With a plan, we can space out our preparation for the test rather than relying on one or two intense study sessions the night before to see us through.

It’s good advice. Summed up in three words: cramming doesn’t work. Unfortunately, many of us ignore this rule. At least one survey has found that 99% of students admit to cramming.

You might think that’s down to nothing more than simple disorganisation: I’ll admit it is far easier to leave things to the last minute than start preparing for a test weeks or months ahead. But studies of memory suggest there’s something else going on. In 2009, for example, Nate Kornell at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that spacing out learning was more effective than cramming for 90% of the participants who took part in one of his experiments – and yet 72% of the participants thought that cramming had been more beneficial. What is happening in the brain that we trick ourselves this way?

It’s better to spread out revision before the big exam (comedy_nose/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
It’s better to spread out revision before the big exam (comedy_nose/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
Studies of memory suggest that we have a worrying tendency to rely on our familiarity with study items to guide our judgements of whether we know them. The problem is that familiarity is bad at predicting whether we can recall something.

Familiar, not remembered

After six hours of looking at study material (and three cups of coffee and five chocolate bars) it’s easy to think we have it committed to memory. Every page, every important fact, evokes a comforting feeling of familiarity. The cramming has left a lingering glow of activity in our sensory and memory systems, a glow that allows our brain to swiftly tag our study notes as “something that I’ve seen before”. But being able to recognise something isn’t the same as being able to recall it.

Different parts of the brain support different kinds of memory. Recognition is strongly affected by the ease with which information passes through the sensory areas of our brain, such as the visual cortex if you are looking at notes. Recall is supported by a network of different areas of the brain, including the frontal cortex and the temporal lobe, which coordinate to recreate a memory from the clues you give it. Just because your visual cortex is fluently processing your notes after five consecutive hours of you looking at them, doesn’t mean the rest of your brain is going to be able to reconstruct the memory of them when you really need it to.

(Thinkstock)
Merely thinking hard about what’s on the blackboard isn’t enough to make learning actually happen (Thinkstock)
This ability to make judgements about our own minds is called metacognition. Studying it has identified other misconceptions too. For instance, many of us think that actively thinking about trying to learn something will help us remember it. Studies suggest this is not the case. Far more important is reorganising the information so that it has a structure more likely to be retained in your memory. In other words, rewrite the content of what you want to learn in a way that makes most sense to you.

Knowing about common metacognitive errors means you can help yourself by assuming that you will make them. You can then try and counteract them. So, the advice to space out our study only makes sense if we assume that people aren’t already spacing out their study sessions enough (a safe assumption, given the research findings). We need to be reminded of the benefits of spaced learning because it runs counter to our instinct to relying on a comforting feeling of familiarity when deciding how to study

Put simply, we can sometimes have a surprising amount to gain from going against our normally reliable metacognitive instinct. How much should you space out your practice? Answer: a little bit more than you really want to.