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Have you ever sat for an exam and forgot a crucial equation which all subsequent questions made use of? Or, you were entertaining a crowd at a dinner party by telling a joke but failed to recall the punch line. It happens to the best of us.

A recent study by Dr Chris Bird at the University of Sussex highlights a simple way how to cement memories for those of us without access to the NZT memory pill. All it takes is a few moments and some creativity.

In his study Dr Bird showed short clips from You Tube to a number of students. Some were allowed to rehearse the clip they had just viewed for 40 seconds. This exercise included describing the clip to themselves. Others were just shown the next video.

The group of students who described the contents of the video aloud were able to massively improve the recall of details in the video clips one week after experiment. This was confirmed by brain scans on these subjects.

Their memory skills were enhanced by the effort and detail required when describing the clips. Students who pegged details of clips to other memories made the details immediately more memorable.

Dr Bird claimed: “The findings have implications for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing an accident or crime. Memory for the event will be significantly improved if the witness rehearses the sequence of events as soon as possible afterwards.”

Source: www.jneurosci.org/content/35/43/14426.full.pdf+html

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151111-improve-your-memory-in-40-seconds

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