Encoding

Neurobits is a podcast that explores neuroscience topics. This episode focuses on memory, including short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory is like a temporary storage and can hold about seven items for up to 30 seconds. Long-term memory is divided into episodic memory, which relates to personal events, and semantic memory, which is more structured knowledge. Encoding information into long-term memory requires understanding, not just memorization. Different parts of the brain are associated with short-term and long-term memory. Working memory improves with age as the frontal lobe develops. A study showed that older individuals had better working memory than younger ones. Memory retention and recall are crucial for encoding information. Active recall, which involves testing oneself, strengthens neural connections and improves long-term retention. Quizlet, flashcards, and practice problems are useful tools for active recall. Humans struggle with vicarious learning, or learning Welcome to Neurobits, your bite-sized brain boost. My name is Cathy, and I'm a neuroscience major at Vanderbilt University. On this podcast, we're diving deep into the world of neuroscience, one quick lesson at a time. Are you ready to expand your mind with bi-weekly bits? Let's get started. This week, we're discussing all things memory, but mostly memory retention, storage, and maximizing your ability to store information long-term. I'm going to start out with what is memory. First of all, the psychological definition of memory is the connections that your brain makes and stores, the neural connections, to be more specific. When you make a new neural connection, you are encoding information. Keep that term in mind, because I'm going to say encode a lot. Think about it. You learn everything. You learn new ways to style your hair, or you learn new jokes, or you learn gossip, which you'll probably forget in an instant, but you learn it nonetheless. Generally, there's two classifications of memory. There's short-term memory and long-term memory. Your short-term memory can also be called your working memory. It's the categorization of informally memorizing something and regurgitating it. I mean, that's not what the professionals would say, but think about when you study for a test, and you just memorize it all the night before. You cram, and then you wake up in the morning, and you spit it all out onto the test, and then you literally never remember it again. Or if someone's giving you a list of, I don't know, a list of numbers, maybe a list of something for a code, and you say, okay, okay, I'll remember it, 4, 4, 6, 9, 3, 3, okay, okay, tell me, tell me what the code was. I have had that experience so many times, especially with SMS codes all the time. That is your short-term memory. You can normally store up to seven items for about up to 30 seconds, and there's ranges of short-term memory, but that's, normally, it's the SMS code example. And there are important uses for your short-term memory. For example, if you're meeting a new person that you're probably not going to talk to again, you want to remember their name for a little bit, and then you can forget it, which sounds harsh, but it's true. And then also, sometimes you need to remember where you put things down a second ago. So then why are you going to need to remember where you put it down 30 minutes later when you already picked it back up 29 minutes ago? And now, there are things that you definitely need long-term memory for. Think about if we didn't have long-term memory storage, how would doctors remember the diseases that they're prescribing or all the things they learned in medical school? And how would people remember their old family members or their super old high school friends? So you definitely need your long-term memory storage. There's two types of long-term memory. I'm going to call it LTM, by the way, long-term memory, LTM. There's episodic LTM, which is basically through personal events that are particularly emotional or memorable. And if you think about what makes something memorable, well, something can trigger high levels of emotions or hormones, and unfortunately, this could be trauma or something that was really exciting. So it could be something that brought a bunch of emotions out. And the other form of LTM is semantic LTM. And that's more of the structured knowledge that you have. It's not really through experience. It's just symbols that you know, processes or concepts that you can memorize in math, and words, the definition of words. So that is more of things that are just structurally in your brain, and you're not going to forget them. Now, encoding information long-term is a process. See, you have to conceptually understand things, even if you're not going to experience them if you're reading in a textbook. In order to encode this semantic long-term memory, you have to genuinely understand what's going on. And I like to think of, there's this quote from a main character in this Netflix show called Suits. And if you don't know what that is, it doesn't matter, but basically, it's this genius lawyer, and he passed the bar exam without going to law school, and he said, once I read something, I understand it. And once I understand it, I never forget it. And the key thing here is that he understands it. He doesn't just look at it, read it, and then remember it forever. It's the semantic LTM encoding that makes something genuinely memorable. The way that I like to incorporate this into my studies is that when I am using my, trying to encode something into my long-term memory instead of just my working memory, for example, if I'm reading my textbook, I like to take notes and paraphrase the textbook instead of just copying word for word so I can genuinely understand it, just like the guy from Suits, and prove to myself that I understand the concept of what's going on. Your long-term and your short-term memories are also associated with different parts of the brain. EEGs and fMRI studies have proven that working and short-term memory are mostly associated with frontal lobe activity. And the cool thing about your working memory is that it's found to get better with age. And if you think about it, that makes sense, because your frontal lobe isn't fully developed until about 25. And I've heard this all over TikTok, you hear it everywhere, but it is true. Your frontal lobe takes a long time to develop. There was a study led by Dr. Nelson Coward, he's a professor at UMass of Missouri. He had three different age groups, they were, I believe, 6-9, 11-13, and 18-21. And he showed them charts of where differently colored shapes belonged. And after quickly studying the charts, the 18-21 year old age group was actually better able to place the shapes in the correct spots than the 11-13 year old group. And then there was an even bigger drop-off between the 11-13 year old group and the 6-9 year old group, where the 6-9 year old group had a worse working memory and was less able to retain and recall the places of the shapes. So this is an example of your working memory and how your frontal lobe is obviously more developed at ages 18-21 than, for example, 6-9. Now one thing about science is that there are only three laws, there's Newton's three laws of gravity, which is not relevant to neuroscience right now. But the thing that I just said isn't going to always be completely true. There are no laws of science that are stating that an 18-21 year old is always going to have a better working memory or a more effectively working memory than your younger group. So it's a theory. It's a hypothesis that has been proven to be correct, that's what a theory is. The location of where your long-term memory is stored isn't quite as significant because there's not one exact place where it's all stored, it's kind of all around your semantic memory and your episodic memory, it's a little bit more complicated for that. Further than short-term and long-term memory, in order to encode any information, you need to undergo a process called memory retention and memory recall. So in school, the traditional process is you study a unit, then you get a test, then you study, and you get a test, and you study, and you get a test over and over. That's how each unit works. Let's say you have eight or ten units in the whole school year. But Dr. Karpicki and Roediger, I don't know if I said those right, but they found that long-term retention was attained better when a different learning pattern was followed. So instead of study, test, study, test, they did a different pattern. So retention of information was actually at its best when students were tested three times as much as they studied information. This is due to a process called active recall, where you strengthen neural connections each time you're forced to retrieve the information you just studied. And I'm sure you've all heard the word active recall before. If you haven't, then that's totally fine. But that is what active recall is. You are forced to strengthen those neural connections every single time you are quizzed on something. And I know that being tested three times more probably isn't what you were looking to hear, but don't worry, the education system isn't going to change overnight. But what you can do with this information is quiz yourself while studying. To follow the study, test, test, test pattern, at first, read and understand the concept and material. You can do the textbook trick that I told you, where you're just reading and paraphrasing the notes. So that is you trying to make conceptual understanding of what you are reading. Then do practice problems and make sure you review your incorrect answers. I would say do practice problems for about two to three times as long as you read, because that is where the learning really, really happens and those neural connections are strengthened. There are so many tools to practice active recall. You could use Quizlet, you could use flashcards, handwriting flashcards is even better. You could do practice problems and tests, there's for your AP test, there's Princeton review books, there's college board reviews, and just general reviews online you can find on whatever topic you're in, whether you're in college or high school or even middle school. I hope that I have some younger audiences listening to this podcast. Now one type of learning humans are notoriously known for being bad at is vicarious learning. Vicarious learning is learning from other people's experience. This could be a multitude of experiences, for example, mistakes or someone's successes or their actions in general. Yeah, humans are not good at vicarious learning, nor are most animals. If you think of deers, this is actually really morbid, but I'm sure deers have seen their friends go out into the road and unfortunately bad things happen to those deers and the deers that were watching still will go and try to cross the road. Most feces are very bad at vicarious learning. With humans, vicarious learning fails in all kinds of ways. For example, we see people get lung cancer. Some of us, unfortunately, know people that have died of lung cancer, yet around 30 million U.S. adults are currently smoking cigarettes alone, and that's not including vaping or smoking marijuana. It's just something to think about the next time you see your friend mess up or succeed or learn a lesson, really try to put yourself in their shoes and visualize the consequences of their actions so you can become a better vicarious learner. That wraps up our very first NeuroBit. Thank you so much for joining this discussion on all things memory. And to practice a little active recall, let's see if you can remember what are the two types of long-term memory. I'll see you in the next bit.