Associating II

How many of us know about Bill Gates? Almost every one of us, for sure. But did you know that Bill Gates used to amaze his friends by remembering hundreds of codes from the original programming language he developed.

At times, there has been news of such living wonders.

Whether it is of a restaurateur who continues to draw huge crowds every eve because he could remember the  names of each of his customer of it is of a salesperson who made the highest earning in the company just because she could remember her client’s personal information. I bet none of them had supernatural powers!

They studied their mind and mastered the way to memorize things and this appeared supernatural to us!

How can we remember so many names and other details of so many people?

Think of two people say Abraham Cole and Ibrahim Kohl. The two names seem quite similar. But think of this, the former is usually a Christian name and the latter is usually a Muslim name. You may find it pretty hard to remember the names if you are entangled between the similarities between them, but if you can find some more differences like I did, the names will be as different as Robert and Lucy.

Always try to relate together the things that we need to remember if they are different from one another and note the differences if they appear similar to each other.

Like in the above case, to note down the differences, you may see other details. One of them may be fair and the other may be dark in complexion. One might have a long nose or dark hair or blue eyes and the other might not. Also if you want to remember the name of the person you have just met, try to use his/her name as many times as possible while you are at a conversation with the person but in the mean time you need to make sure that the person is not irritated and does not know what you are trying to do! A piece of information is given below:

               

                A:  Hi, I am Ibrahim Kohl.

               

    B: Ibrahim Kohl you say! Hi I am Steven Parker. Nice to meet you Ibrahim!

               

                A: Nice to meet you too!

                B: So, Mr. Ibrahim Kohl, where did you say you work?

                A: Oh! I work at the press, the fourth street down the road, near the park.

   B:And, where did you say you are from, Ibrahim?Let me guess, a name such as Ibrahim Kohl                            takes me straight to the Middle- East to some village in Kazakhstan or Pakistan, may be?

    A: Sorry, I am from Venezuela!

In the above conversation, person B uses the name of person A several times in his conversation and this in turn will help him to remember the name for longer period of time!!!

Intresting Facts About Your Brain!

Your brain uses 20% of your body's energy, but it makes up only 2% of your body's weight. Here are other interesting facts about our brain:

Your skin weighs twice as much as your brain!

Your brain consists of 60% white matter and 40% grey matter

Your brain consists of about 100 billion neurons (about 166 times the number of people on the planet!)

Neurons multiply at a rate 250,000 neurons per minute during early pregnancy

The human brain is approximately 75% water

Your brain stopped growing at age 18

Unconsciousness will occur after 8-10 seconds after loss of blood supply to the brain

Your brain is divided into two sides. The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body; and, the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body.

A newborn baby's brain grows almost 3 times in course of first year

Each person has about the same number of brain cells at birth as in adulthood, but those cells grow, reaching maximum size at about age six.

The sense of touch is the first sense to develop in a fetus

Your brain knows when you tickle yourself, which is why you don’t bend over laughing.

It’s not true that humans only use 10% of their brains; each part of the brain has a purpose.

Yawning keeps you awake allowing large amounts of air to pass into our lungs; oxygen then enters our blood. Thus, making us more alert.

Memory Methods: Associating I

If you think of the word ‘school-bag’, what things come into your mind?

Books? Pens and Pencils? Instruments box? Calculators? You will remember to check your school schedule and the times of your classes. You will even remember to complete your practical reports if there are any.

See! A word as simple as ‘school bag’ helps you remember loads of stuff! When you recall the memory of a small school bag, the memories associated with it are easily recalled.

It has been found that remembering things by connecting or associating the, with things that we can easily remember can keep our memory fresh for years. The method of relating or associating can drastically increase our level of memorizing things. If this method is that useful, then still why is memory so poor?

The answer is simple! Most of us do not  use the technique and those of us who use this technique fail to remember the associated memories and at the end we fail to recall the information we actually need.

Think about this, you recently got appointed in a business firm and you have a presentation to make. You are capable and really talented. You give a lot of time for this. You even skip your lunches and cutoff your family time, holidays and even your sleep. You try it real hard to make an impression….but what if you fail to remember actual date and time or even to make your presentation and reached the venue a bit late? What’s next?

Aw! It is horrible just to imagine. After all, first impression is the last impression. So better prevent it from happening. You can avoid the problem with memorization like the one above.

The first step is, think about something that you want to remember (often referred as item) and think of something that helps you recall the item (often referred as key).

Now relate the item and the key in such a way that if you think of the item, you can think of the key and if you think of the key, the item comes to your mind the next moment. Visual and acoustic association can be helpful.

An Apple A Day Keeps Memory Loss Away!!!

There is an old saying, 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away'. And now this same little thing that fell on Newton will you keep your memory loss away! But how is it possible?

How can an apple help us prevent the memory loss?

Before going into the subject, let’s see what an apple is made of? And what things are contained in this little fruit?

One medium apple with skin contains 0.47 grams of protein, 95 calories, and 4.4 grams of dietary fiber.

The composition of minerals and vitamins contained in this fruit, according to www.healthalternatives2000.com are given below:

• Potassium:       195mg
• Calcium:           11 mg
• Phosphorus:     20 mg
• Magnesium:       9 mg
• Manganese:       0.064 mg
• Iron:                  0.22 mg
• Sodium:             2 mg
• Copper:             0.049 mg
• Zinc:                  0.07 mg
• Vitamin A:       98 IU
• Vitamin B1:       0.031 mg
• Vitamin B2:       0.047 mg
• Vitamin B6:       0.075 mg
• Niacin:              0.166 mg
• Folate:              5 mcg
• Pantothenic Acid: 0.111 mg
• Vitamin C:        8.4 mg
• Vitamin E:        0.33 mg
• Vitamin K:       4 mcg

Also contains a trace amount of other minerals and some other vitamins in small amounts.

You may not find the minute details that informative. Now, due to the day to day work, we get stressed and we are getting older every day. Due to the stress and aging, cells get accumulated in the central nervous system of our body( the brain and the spinal cord) as a result of various chemical damage. These chemical damages occur by the chemicals produced naturally within our body in course of different anatomical processes. One of these sorts of damages is the oxidative damage. Oxidative damage can cause our brain to lose memory.

But, when we talk apples regularly, the different constituents of the apple form various sorts of anti-oxidants and these anti-oxidants help us maintain our memory in a good status by preventing the oxidative damages.

A research conducted by Dr. Thomas Shea and his team at the University of Massachusetts concluded that “….eating and drinking apple and apple juice, in conjunction with a balanced diet, can protect the brain from the effects of oxidative stress.”

Having a good memory power is not a matter of good fortune anymore! You can make your memory power as good as any other guy on earth and here is a good way, EAT APPLES!!!

Next article will contain a proven method to memorize lots of things in a quick and efficient way. Don't forget to check it!

Long Term Memory

Long Tem Memory simply refers to the relatively permanent storage of information so that it can be used again and again at later time. Details in the long term memory can last from days to decades.

Long term memory is distinct from short term in two ways, duration and capacity. Biologically, short term memory is a temporary potentaion of neural connections that can become long term memory through the process of rehearsal and meaningful association.

Memory researchers have even shown that over learning, in which we keep rehearsing material that we already know pretty well, leads to improved memory, especially over longer periods of time. But it is important for us to know that simply repeating something for so many times do not mean that we develop long-lasting memory for the event of the object. After all, sometimes we have extremely poor memory for objects that are highly familiar. So we need to identify the definite pattern of rehearsal that transforms our memory from short term memory to the long term memory.

(Researches shoe that the long term memory is dependent upon the construction of the neuroproteins unlike the short term memory. This occurs within the cellular body, and concerns particularly transmitters and receptors.)

Short term Memory

www.medicinenet.com defines short term memory as ‘a system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. Short term memory is also termed as recent or intermediate memory.

Short term memory or the recent memory can hold information for no longer than about 20 seconds. After that, it disappears unless we actively prevent that from happening by rehearsing it. The limited duration of the short term memory suggests that its contents spontaneously decay over time.

According to the black box model of memory, short term memory is a component of the information processing system (IPS) in which new information must remain for a minimum of 20 seconds or the information will be lost. The short term memory acts as a link between the sensory memory and the long term memory.

It is suggested that human short term memory has a forward memory span of approximately (7±2) items, but the memory span varies widely with populations tested and with materials used. Memory span also varies among individuals.

It is very difficult to demonstrate the exact capacity of the short term memory due to the fact that it will be recalled. There is currently no way of defining the basic unit of information to be stored in the short term memory store.

Sensory Memory

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, describes sensory memory and ‘the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has been ceased.’ Sensory memory is the first level of memory. It contains information received immediately from one’s senses into the human brain. The information in the sensory memory is unprocessed and brief. Sensory information such as lights, smells and odors leaves a trace on the nervous system for a split second then vanish. For visual stimuli, the photographic memory persists for about 500 milliseconds.

Sensory memory allows us to take a ‘snapshot’ of our surrounding and to store the information around us for a short interval. If we want to use the information from the sensory memory then we must take a quick measure to transport them to the other region of our memory where the information stays for relatively longer period of time. The initial step is paying more attention. Attention allows us to focus on the parts of the stimulus and thereby to recognize some of its features.

Although, sensory memory can occur for any of the senses, most sensory memory research seems to focus visual memory (iconic memory) and auditory sensory memory (echoic memory). Research into olfactory, tactile and taste memories are less common.

Many researches show that iconic and echoic memories allow us to experience the world as a continuous stream.

We leave you to wonder what would it be like if we make our other senses equally usable in our day to day life!!

Answer

            If you observe the phone numbers of each of the given places, you can certainly find all these numbers follow a definite criterion and we bet you have worked it out! If not then let’s make it out together! Let’s take the first set of numbers. All the numbers have same first seven digits identical (612 8232) and the ones that vary are the last four digits only. Similarly if we take the case of Ireland, the first five digits are identical (353 01) and the ones that vary are the last seven digits. Same is the case if we see the other numbers (Algeria, UAE, Peru, and Bolivia). Not only this, if you go nay where in the world, the general trend is this. The maximum number of digits that vary is 7 (in general). Now think why???

Why is it that even though the phone number is too big, only the last few digits are different to identify a particular telephone set (or cellular mobile phone)?

Did the bulb glow in your mind?

No?

The reason is simple! Many research conducted on the normal capacity of human brain to hold things have prescribed that the maximum number of things that a normal human brain can hold is seven plus/minus two. And we bet, you would definitely not like to stand in front of a telephone booth and guess the telephone number and also get shouted at if it is a wrong number!!