Monday 13 May 2013

News & Science: How To Improve Your Memory (and How To Change It) ?




Happy Mother's Day + 1 people! It was a great week for me for that I have finally finished my PhD proposal and I finally could get some decent sleep. Apologise for I couldn't keep up with 3 blog posts last week. I actually had that in my memory to do so, just couldn't afford the time.

Time was difficult especially the last 4 days of writing and I really couldn't read up on non-academic stuff, but what kept me slightly updated with happenings around the world is Dnews -- Discovery News on YouTube, a channel I highly recommend subscribing to. That video above, is a good example for information. 

How to improve your memory has always been a question learners ask. Some say take up a memory course and learn from teachers, some say create a few mnemonics, people like me will say, write them down on a notepad or the memo inside your smartphones.

Now that you know from the video, you can chew gum, clench your fist, smelling rosemary.

But are our memories reliable?



So the answer is no, our memories change every time we access to them, kind of like an old hard drive or a faulty SD card on your phone that stores documents and photos, sometimes, they are lost or broken, and we can't do much about them unless you have backup of those data. Otherwise, your memories can even be changed by external influence. How? Watch the video below.


Which means, if you don't want your friends to change your memory, you'll need to do some memory logging, that is, storing our memories in digital format. Well actually, we are already doing that. We have Facebook account, chat groups on LINE and Whatsapp, etc. For me, I like photography, so photos are my backup of keeping those memories, and I keep backups of my photos of course. But some scientists want to take it one step further.


Now the potential danger here is that we are making the computers smarter to do things for us, but with advance artificial intelligence (AI), will the computers eventually listen to human? Remember Skynet from the movie Terminator?


Now that the Galaxy S4 can understand images, human speech, eye movement, gestures, touch, pain, humidity and temperature, except smell. I'm not saying that is bad, but if technology is not used in a good way, it could really do a lot of harm.


Anyway, have I forgotten to mention something? Hm... I can't recall it.



Vocabulary:
decent -- (adj) socially acceptable or good:
mnemonics -- (n) [C] something such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something:


Resources:

3 Ways To Improve Your Memory @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNOYlaKAdj8

Chewing gum moderates the vigilance decrement @ Wiley Online Library
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12025/abstract

Clench Your Fist to Get a Grip on Memory @ DNews
http://news.discovery.com/human/health/clench-fist-grip-memory-120425.htm

Clenching fists 'can improve memory' @ BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22270716

Sniffing Rosemary Improves Memory @ DNews
http://news.discovery.com/human/life/sniffing-rosemary-improves-memory-130409.htm

Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Memory @ Discovery Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-ways-to-improve-memory.htm

Human emotion and memory: interactions of the amygdala and hippocampal complex @ Elsevier
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/Brizendine/Phelps2004.pdf

Forgotten Knowledge: How Memory Works, and to Improve Yours (Infographic) @ DNews
http://news.discovery.com/human/life/forgotten-knowledge-how-your-memory-works-and-how-to-improve-it-infographic.htm

10 Facts About Memory @ About.com
http://psychology.about.com/od/memory/ss/ten-facts-about-memory_2.htm

Are Memories Reliable? @ DNews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxSHf_BeVUA&feature=share&list=UUzWQYUVCpZqtN93H8RR44Qw

False Memories @ Through the Wormhole
http://youtu.be/lmBnLwwQV1E

Auxiliary Memory @ Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
http://youtu.be/oeaFYYHShlo

Are We Close to A Skynet Takeover? @ YouTube
http://youtu.be/_goZwA11Kf4

Introducing Samsung GALAXY S4 @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LHv1FPd1Ec

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/decent?q=decent+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/mnemonic?q=mnemonics