Better memory without a pill

There are brain games, there are pills, there’s hypnosis, but the secret to improving memory may actually be much simpler.

At Georgia Tech, grad student Lisa Weinberg wanted to study the effect of exercise, but not some long-term workout regimen, she wanted to study the effect of a single 20-minute session.

So she gave her test subjects a series of 90 photographs to study and then had them do 20 minutes of intense exercise.

“We used a special exercise chair that had people to a knee extension,” Weinberg explained.

Just one session. And then, two days later, she brought them back and gave them a memory test that mixed the old photographs with new ones.

“(We) just asked them if each photograph was old or new, whether they had seen it before.”

The subjects who’d done the knee extensions, “There was a about a 10 percent difference.”

Their recall two days later was 10 percent better because of the exercise.

And Lisa has a theory. “What we think is going on, is that cortisone, which is a stress hormone in humans and epinephrin effects certain brain areas that are involved in memory.”

Yes, in this case, stress is your friend. Stress is helping you to remember things happened right before you were stressed.

Now all we need to do figure out a way to make that into a pill, right Lisa?

“We’re certainly not involved in developing any sort of pills,” said Weinburg.

Dang! So until Lisa reconsiders – any time you see or hear something you want to remember: just do some intense knee flexes for 20 minutes.

Do some now do you don’t forget.