How to Stop Forgetting Important Things: Understand the Neuroscience of Memory
Forgetting names or your keys isn’t generally a sign that anything is seriously wrong with your memory, according to neuroscience. But that doesn’t mean these common lapses in memory aren’t annoying and sometimes even detrimental to your life or work.
Short of magically turning back the clock a few years, is there anything to do to reduce the number of important things you forget?
If you’re learning a new subject or otherwise looking to cram an incredible amount of information into your brain, so-called memory athletes — people who compete to accomplish amazing feats like memorizing the order of a deck of cards in seconds — have plenty of tips and tricks to offer.
But for more everyday issues like forgetting your anniversary or an important work meeting, neuroscience has a simpler suggestion — just educate yourself a bit more about how memory actually works.
You actually have two kinds of memories.
In his new book, Why We Remember, University of California, Davis memory researcher Charan Ranganath aims to do just that. And in a recent Greater Good Science Center article, he offers a few useful peeks into the book’s contents.
