Some forms of memory loss are caused by head trauma, including brain injuries resulting from high-impact sports such as boxing, soccer and football. Memory loss can be part of a primary brain disease. But it can also happen in people with depression, thyroid malfunction and even vitamin deficiencies, all of which can result in improved memory with appropriate treatment.

We also know that stress, fatigue, sleep deprivation and the feeling of being overwhelmed can contribute to short-term memory loss and forgetfulness. Middle age can be a difficult period of life in which our responsibilities can extend to ourselves, our spouses, our jobs, our children, our parents and even our grandchildren.

So how do you know when to visit a doctor for memory loss? If you begin to experience difficulty completing familiar tasks, or have bouts of forgetfulness that extend beyond minor inconvenience and disrupt your day-to-day functioning, there may be something more serious going on than normal age-related memory loss.

When the impairment is largely memory-related, doctors refer to it as amnestic MCI. With normal age-related memory loss, people tend to forget fairly trivial things like where they put their car keys. The other main subtype of MCI is called non-amnestic. Rather than affecting memory, non-amnestic MCI manifests as cognitive decline in other areas such as language, spatial awareness or the ability to focus and maintain attention.

Someone with non-amnestic MCI might find it difficult to keep up with a conversation, pay their bills, make decisions, repair a faucet or understand a speech. Again, however, the impairment is not so severe as to disrupt everyday life.

People whose MCI affects both memory and other types of cognition are said to have multi-domain MCI. Amnestic MCI is the most common subtype. Temporary MCI can be brought on by sleep apnea, depression or medications.

Risk factors for other kinds of MCI include genetics, stroke, head injury, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, smoking, and hearing loss. Many people confuse mild cognitive impairment MCI with dementia. While MCI can in fact be a precursor to the early stages of dementia, dementia is a separate brain disorder.

The symptoms of dementia are so severe as to render the patient dependent on others to carry out the tasks of everyday living. But exactly what is dementia? Although memory loss is one of the most common signs of dementia, the disorder often entails other forms of cognitive decline, including a drop-off in the ability to think abstractly, to make reasonable judgments, to speak and understand, and to relate spatially to the environment.

Perhaps just as alarming, dementia patients often undergo significant changes to their personalities, becoming agitated and sometimes experiencing delusions. But whether these changes are the actual cause continues to be explored. Vascular dementia is caused by an interruption of the blood flow to the brain.

This can happen after a stroke, brain bleed or head trauma, But more often the cause is reduced blood flow from narrowing of multiple small arteries that feed oxygen and nutrients to the brain. Dementia with Lewy bodies arises from an accumulation of harmful proteins in the brain cells causing progressive problems with cognition, memory and movement.

Dementia is the generic term for cognitive and memory decline sufficiently severe that the patient requires assistance with everyday functioning. During the early stages, the patient experiences memory loss but is still able to live independently.

By the late stages of the illness, people require help with even the most basic aspects of daily living, and normal conversation becomes impossible. Two substances play a likely role. Both are naturally occurring proteins. Beta-amyloid accumulates in the brain until it forms plaques in the gaps between nerve cells that are conduits for signals that travel through the brain.

The other key protein, called tau, also accumulates over time and forms tangles inside the brain cells. The two proteins together kill cells in areas of the brain necessary for memory, personality and other cognitive abilities. The good news is that, although with age you should expect to experience some forgetfulness, there is plenty you can do to minimize memory loss and even improve and enhance your memory as you get older.

Among the best ways to improve memory are the same lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. For example, quit smoking, drink alcohol in moderation or avoid drinking completely, and limit intake of sugary and processed foods. But when it comes to how to improve memory, eliminating factors is just part of the puzzle—the other piece is adding in new habits.

For example, eating foods that help memory , such as leafy green vegetables, nuts, berries, tea, coffee and oily fish, is a great way to promote your overall health while strengthening your brain. Regular exercise boosts the growth of brain cells and the production of neurotransmitters, enhancing memory.

A mix of aerobic cardio and strength exercises is best. Aim for seven to nine hours each night. Meditation, stress reduction and keeping up a good network of social relationships have all been shown to stave off the effects of aging on the brain.

One key to keeping your mind young is to keep it busy and challenged through lifelong learning and stimulation. Traveling, learning new languages, picking up a musical instrument, taking art or cooking classes, doing puzzles, playing board games—all these things promote the growth of new brain cells and help the brain forge new pathways.

Memory enhancement can also come from properly managing your physical and mental health. Since many medications can cause brain fog and bouts of forgetfulness, you should review your prescriptions with your doctor and see if dosages can be changed or eliminated.

Especially consider drugs with anti-cholinergic properties, such as the older antihistamines e. Show references Understanding memory loss: What to do when you have trouble remembering. National Institute on Aging.

Accessed Nov. Larson EB. Risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia. Livingston G, et al. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care. The Lancet.

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Department of Health and Human Services. Watson NF, et al. Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: A joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society.

Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Can I prevent dementia? Reducing your risk of dementia. Dementia risk reduction. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Work from general information to the specific. People usually learn best when they get the big picture first, and then look at the details. Eliminate distractions. Multi-tasking—listening to music or chatting on Facebook while you study—will play havoc with your ability to memorize because you will need to reboot your short-term memory each time you switch mental tasks.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Hear the information; read the information; say it yes, out loud , and say it again. The more you use or repeat the information, the stronger the links to it. The more senses you use to process the information, the stronger the memorization.

Write information on index cards to make flash cards and use downtime when waiting for the subway or during a break between classes to review key information. This is a test. Test your memory often.

Try to write down everything you know about a specific subject, from memory. Then go back and check your notes and textbook to see how you did. Practicing retrieval in this way helps ensure long-term learning of facts and concepts. Location, location, location. There is often a strong connection between information and the place where you first received that information.

Associate information to learning locations for stronger memory links. Picture where you were sitting in the lecture hall as you repeat the facts in your mind. Choose a specific fact from each of your classes on a given day.

Now find a way of working that information into your casual conversations during the rest of the day in a way that is natural. Can you do it? What effect do you think that will have on your memory of that information? Arch Chowder Airplane Kirk Paper clip Column Oak Subway Leia Fries Pen Maple Window Scotty Thumb drive Brownies Door Skateboard Cedar Luke.

My Mercury Very Venus Educated Earth Mother Mars Just Jupiter Served Saturn Us Uranus Nine Neptune Pizzas Pluto. For each of the following statements, circle T for true or F for false Flash cards provide convenient tools to review and test memory. T F Multi-tasking enhances your active memory.

T F If you listen carefully, you will remember most of what was said for three days. T F Mnemonics should be applied whenever possible.

Moving information from sensory memory to short-term memory to long-term memory and being able to retrieve it requires repetition and strategies.

To keep information in our memory, we must use it or build links with it to strengthen it in long-term memory. Key ways to remember information include linking it to other information already known; organizing facts in groups of information; eliminating distractions; and repeating the information by hearing, reading, and saying it aloud.

To remember specific pieces of information, try creating a mnemonic that associates the information with an acronym or acrostic, a rhyme or a jingle.

Media Attributions Mastering Memory © Vijaya Jammi is licensed under a CC BY-SA Attribution ShareAlike license How Memory Functions © OpenStax is licensed under a CC BY Attribution license. Previous: 5. Next: 5. License Student Success by Mary Shier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.

Share This Book Share on Twitter. Every discipline has its own language and acronyms are the abbreviations. Acronyms can be used to remember words in sequence or a group of words representing things or concepts.

CAD can mean: Control Alt Delete, Canadian Dollar, Computer Aided Design, Coronary Artery Disease, Canadian Association of the Deaf, Crank Angle Degree, etc. Acrostics are phrases where the first letter of each word represents another word. They are relatively easy to make and can be very useful for remembering groups of words.

For example: King Philip Can Only Find His Green Slippers. This is the classification system of Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. If you need to remember this number: In this case, you could divide it into three chunks, like a social insurance number: By chunking the information and repeating it you can stretch the capacity of your short term memory.

Flash cards provide a convenient tool to test yourself frequently. You can purchase flash cards for common memory tasks such as learning multiplication tables, or you can create your own for learning facts, systems, and processes. This helps us remember by linking words to meanings through associations based on how a word sounds and creating imagery for specific words.

This sort of visualization was found to be more effective when one listened to someone reading a text than when they read the text themselves. Jingles or short songs are great tools for memory. Head and shoulders, knees and toes. Eyes, ears, mouth and nose. Traditionally known as the Method of Loci, we associate each word from a list or grouping with a location.

Imagine a place with which you are familiar, such as, the rooms in your house. These become the objects of information you need to memorize. Another example is to use the route to your work or school, with landmarks along the way becoming the information you need to memorize.

For example, in this case, you could remember that is an area code for Arizona and the person you met is from Arizona. This would help you better remember the prefix. If the information is retained, it goes into long-term memory.

Mnemonic devices are memory aids that help us organize information for encoding Figure M. They are especially useful when we want to recall larger bits of information such as steps, stages, phases, and parts of a system Bellezza, Walker needs to learn the order of the planets in the solar system, but is having a hard time remembering the correct order.

Kelly tells Walker to simply remember the name Mr. VEM J. SUN, and they will be able to easily recall the correct order of the planets: M ercury, V enus, E arth, M ars, J upiter, S aturn, U ranus, and N eptune.

The other day I met this guy named Carl. Now, I might forget that name, but he was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Where do fish live? The ocean. What else lives in the ocean? Hello, Co-arl. It seems the more vivid or unusual the mnemonic, the easier it is to remember.

Volunteer at a local school or with a community group. Social interaction helps ward off depression and stress. Both of those can contribute to memory loss.

Look for opportunities to get together with loved ones, friends and other people, especially if you live alone. You're more likely to forget things if your home is cluttered or your notes are in disarray. Keep track of tasks, appointments and other events in a notebook, calendar or electronic planner.

You might even repeat each entry out loud as you write it down to help keep it in your memory. Keep to-do lists up to date. Check off items you've finished. Keep your wallet, keys, glasses and other essential items in a set place in your home so they are easy to find.

Limit distractions. Don't do too many things at once. If you focus on the information that you're trying to remember, you're more likely to recall it later. It also might help to connect what you're trying to remember to a favorite song or a familiar saying or idea.

Not getting enough sleep has been linked to memory loss. So has restless sleep and sleep that gets disturbed often. Make getting enough healthy sleep a priority.

Adults should sleep 7 to 9 hours a night on a regular basis. If snoring disrupts sleep, make an appointment to see your health care provider. Snoring could be a sign of a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea. A healthy diet is good for your brain.

Eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Choose low-fat protein sources, such as fish, beans and skinless poultry. What you drink also counts.

Too much alcohol can lead to confusion and memory loss. Follow your health care provider's advice for dealing with medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, hearing loss and obesity.

The better you take care of yourself, the better your memory is likely to be. Regularly review the medicines you take with your health care provider.

Some medicines can affect memory. If you're worried about memory loss, make an appointment with your health care provider. If memory loss affects your ability to do your daily activities, if you notice your memory getting worse, or if a family member or friend is concerned about your memory loss, it's particularly important to get help.

At your appointment, your provider likely will do a physical exam and check your memory and problem-solving skills. Sometimes other tests may be needed too. Treatment depends on what's causing memory loss. There is a problem with information submitted for this request. Sign up for free and stay up to date on research advancements, health tips, current health topics, and expertise on managing health.

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Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission. It's another mnemonic device that involves grouping individual pieces of information—like long strings of numbers—into larger, more memorable groups.

And chunking isn't just limited to aiding the memorization of numbers. Another practical application of chunking would be grouping items on your grocery list by aisle. Or if you're learning a new language, grouping new vocabulary words together by category.

The memory palace technique, also known as the Method of Loci, is another popular mnemonic device. This technique involves mentally mapping out a physical space you're familiar with a memory palace and "placing" images representing the information you're memorizing in various spots or loci.

Loci is the plural form of locus , which means "place" or "location. Choose your memory palace. Select a space that you're incredibly familiar with e. Identify distinct loci throughout your palace. Mentally walk through your palace, and pick different locations where you can "place" unique images more on that in step 3.

For example, the door to your coat closet, the lamp in your living room, and the dog bed in your guest room. Assign images to specific locations.

Let's say you're trying to remember this grocery list: milk, chocolate chip cookies, and bananas. Place images of each of those items at your chosen locations. Or, to make it more memorable, create vivid images representing each item and place those at different locations.

The more animated and outrageous, the better. For example, you could picture a waterfall of milk pouring over your closet door, your living room lamp teetering on top of a mountain of chocolate chip cookies, and a dog juggling bananas while standing on its bed.

While this technique may sound absurd, it does work. Just take it from five-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis , who uses the memory palace technique to help him quickly remember a full deck of cards, in sequence. Reciting information is a useful way to memorize something fast because it forces you to actively engage with the information as opposed to passively taking everything in , which, in turn, increases your ability to remember and recall it later on.

Here are some practical ways to add reciting to your memorization toolkit. While typing your notes might be faster and more convenient, especially if you have to take in a lot of information, there are advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way i. In a study , researchers Pam A.

Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer examined the effects on learning and retention when students took notes by hand versus on a laptop. In terms of generative note-taking e. The researchers suggest two possible reasons. First, there are fewer possible distractions, such as checking emails or social media, when writing notes.

Second, generative note-taking encourages students to reframe the information into their own words, which aids in encoding. Spaced repetition is a memorization technique that involves reviewing the same information at increasing intervals until that information is embedded into your long-term memory.

If you've ever tried to learn a new language using apps like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, you've used spaced repetition. Here's a simple way to apply this technique. Let's say you're learning another language and you need help remembering new vocabulary.

Write the word in your native tongue on a flashcard. Or, to make it more fun, sketch an image of the word. Then review the flashcards daily. As you become more consistent recalling your new vocabulary words, you can increase the time between reviews from daily to weekly to monthly.

If you need to create a lot of flashcards, you can also use apps, like Quizlet , to do the heavy lifting for you. Tapping into the power of imagery and storytelling can significantly boost your memory because it encourages you to establish stronger connections with the information you're trying to remember.

Here are some practical ways to do this. The use of visual stimuli is a common method used to learn and recall information. Here are some strategies you can use to enhance your visual memory.

Turn the sound of names into images. If you have difficulty remembering people's names , try connecting their names with an image. For example, if a stranger introduces himself as Mike, you might picture him holding a microphone. Animate the images. Similar to creating visuals for your memory palace, the more animated and vivid you can make your images, the better.

Doing this creates stronger connections in your brain between the word and the image. Continuing with the name train, let's take the name Melanie. For this, you might visualize the person dressed in a gi, crushing a melon against their knee.

I bet you won't forget that visual anytime soon. Let's say you're going to a dog training seminar. Your best friend has a dog, and they want you to share some of your key takeaways after. So you furiously scribble down notes, ask questions, and scribble some more.

This goes to the heart of the Protégé Effect , which suggests that people put in more effort to learn information when they know they're going to teach it to someone else.