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juliemowat's review against another edition
4.0
Lots of interesting information on how to remember things etc. Comforting. Will try to use some of the practical tools..
suclaire's review
3.0
DNF audiobook. Author narrated, and shouldn’t have. I might finish in book form, but not continuing with the audio. Voice actors are worth hiring!
akira0513's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
keista_skaitytoja's review against another edition
3.0
50/50 knyga. Yra tikrai neblogų ir įdomių patarimų, kaip lavinti atmintį, bet tuo pačiu ir keista girdėti, kad dauguma žmonių tiesiog prastą informacijos įsisavinimą ir užmaršumą numera Alzhaimerio ligai, ir pradeda bijoti, kad juos užpuola ji jau. Bet tuo pačiu, tie kurie pergyvena dėl to, perskaitę knygą galėtų gal šiek tiek labiau ir atsikvėpti, nes tikrai ne visas užmarštumas, reiškia, kad sergi. Tiesiog, žmogui yra labai normalu kažką užmiršti, nes per vieną dieną labai daug informacijos ir taip turi apdoroti mūsų smegenys.
borborygm's review against another edition
3.0
I was expecting a harder science book on memory - this is science-lite:
"When the amygdala senses a challenge or threatening situation, it instantly sends an alarm signal to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus then passes the baton via a neurotransmitter to the pituitary gland, which then releases a hormone into the bloodstream. The hormone then acts on the adrenal glands, which sit on the top of your kidneys, telling them to release stress hormones."
Genova writes about the fallibility of memory, likening it to the telephone game. She uses the space shuttle Challenger disaster as an example. An amusing bit to this is that she continually refers to the explosion of the shuttle. This is how it was reported and talked about. However, the Challenger did NOT explode. The rockets did NOT explode.
In the section on flashbulb memories (where were you on Sept 11, when JFK was murdered, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, etc) she mentions the night Julianne Moore won an Oscar for her role in Still Alice, written by Genova. Genova is illustrating a personal flashbulb moment. I found that a bit of hubris. Perhaps I'm just envious of her vast accomplishments academically and as a writer. Nevertheless how many of her readers will be able to identify with that example in the way they could identify with other more typical personal flashbulb memories (births, deaths, etc.)?
"When the amygdala senses a challenge or threatening situation, it instantly sends an alarm signal to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus then passes the baton via a neurotransmitter to the pituitary gland, which then releases a hormone into the bloodstream. The hormone then acts on the adrenal glands, which sit on the top of your kidneys, telling them to release stress hormones."
Genova writes about the fallibility of memory, likening it to the telephone game. She uses the space shuttle Challenger disaster as an example. An amusing bit to this is that she continually refers to the explosion of the shuttle. This is how it was reported and talked about. However, the Challenger did NOT explode. The rockets did NOT explode.
In the section on flashbulb memories (where were you on Sept 11, when JFK was murdered, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, etc) she mentions the night Julianne Moore won an Oscar for her role in Still Alice, written by Genova. Genova is illustrating a personal flashbulb moment. I found that a bit of hubris. Perhaps I'm just envious of her vast accomplishments academically and as a writer. Nevertheless how many of her readers will be able to identify with that example in the way they could identify with other more typical personal flashbulb memories (births, deaths, etc.)?
jenmat1197's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Lisa Genova is a neuroscientist turned author, and she uses this non-fiction book to delve into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. She describes the distrinction between dementia, alzheimers, and just a "lapse in memory". She discusses how memory is affected by diet and exercise, sleep and age. She then gives tips and tricks to help improve your memory and what really works and what is just a myth.
This was a fantastic book. I like Genova's fictional books and this one was no different. She is a Harvard trained neuroscientist and she uses clear and understandable language to talk through how memory works. The conclusion for me is that most lapses in memory are completely normal and there are things you do without even realizing it that makes you feel like you have a bad memory. Forgot where you parked your car? You probably never took a second to calculate where the car was in the first time, so when you don't form a memory, of course you cannot remember it. It was fascinating and enlightening, and I encourage you to read it. Especially if you are in the second half of your life.
jennyjjs's review against another edition
5.0
Some takeaways:
Working memory-information can only be held here for about 15-30 seconds
Declarative-Declaring that you know something (an octopus has 8 legs,etc)
Episodic-It's the history of you remembered by you. Information that is attached to a where and a when.It's personal and always about the past.
Semantic-is about information and is timeless. It also houses your personal data, name date of birth
*Memory involves both consolidating info into your brain and retrieving info from it. To better learn, not only do you want to repeatedly expose your brain to the data you want to acquire, but you also want to repeatedly retrieve this new data from your brain (quizzing yourself)
*The Spacing Effect-Distributed practice beats out cramming. Rehearsing the info to be remembered spaced out over time gives your hippocampus more time to fully consolidate what you're learning. Spacing dramatically strengthens the circuitry of the memory.
*Meaning matters when it comes to creating and recalling any kind of memory. Your brain isn't interested in knowing what's boring or unimportant. But it's phenomenal at remembering what is meaningful, emotional and what surprised us. Remembering also requires that we give the thing to be remembered our attention-we can't remember what we ignore.
*Regular use of repetition, spaced learning, self-testing, meaning and visual and spatial imagery will strengthen your semantic memory.
*With every retelling, you are reactivating the memory, reinforcing the neural pathways that encode the details of what you experienced, making the memory stronger.
*Emotion and surprise activate a part of your brain called the amygdala which sends powerful signals to your hippocampus that basically say 'what's going on is super important, you're gonna want ot remember it, consolidate it'
*Flashbulb memory-when you experience something highly unexpected and exceptionally emotional. They contain a lot of vivid detail for episodic informational.
*Autobiographical memory- your most meaningful episodic memories strung together that create your life story. We tend to save the memories that feed our identity and outlook. ie: if you believe you're smart, you're more likely to remember the details of the times you did something intelligent and you're more likely to forget the times you made dumb mistakes.
*(Why we retain few memories from when we are young) -The development of language in our brains corresponds with our ability to consolidate, store and retrieve episodic memories
*Recency effect-we can remember things from the past couple of years since we don't have to brush away many cobwebs
To remember: Get out of Routine. Keep a journal. Rehash it. Feel your experiences.
What you remember can be wrong: Slices of memory will contain only the details the were seduced by our biases and captured our interest. Memories left a lone for too long, will decay with the passage of time. The physical neural connections can literally retract and disappear, erasing part or all of your memory of what happened. Our opinions an emotional state today color what we remember from what happened last year. So in revisiting episodic memories, we often reshape them. Every time we recall an episodic memory, we overwrite it and this new updated edition is the version we'll retrieve the next time we visit that memory.
* Writing something down allows you to rehearse and strengthen the memory for the details you choose to write about, but it can also prevent you from later remembering and details you didn't include.
Prospective memory is your memory for what you need to do later. This is your brains to-do list, and intention for your future you. Prospective memories rely on external cues to trigger their recall.
*Make to-do lists and then regularly check them. Surgeons and pilots don't rely on their fickle prospective memories-thankfully they use checklists too.
*Be specific about your plan: place cues in impossible to miss locations (implementation intention)
*If you want to forget a memory that was already consolidated and made its way into long term storage: avoid exposure to the cues and context that trigger its retrieval. Don't think about the memory or talk about it. Don't rehearse it.
*We forget because we didn't pay attention, bc we didn't have the right cues or context or bc it was too routine or inconsequential, bc we never practice, or didn't get enough sleep or were too stressed...
As we age: Older adults possess a larger repository of semantic memories than younger adults.
We experience a noticeable decline in working memory. Your ability to sustain attention also decreases. You become less able to attend to more than one things at a time-so if two things are going on at once you are less likely to remember either one of them.
*Retrieval begins to don rose-colored glasses as we grow older and we show an increasing tendency to recall the good and forget the bad.
**To help memories as we age, exercise, Mediterranean or DASH diet, meditate and sleep for at least 8 hrs /night
**Also, pay attention-(#1 thing we can do), decrease distractors, rehearse, self-testing, create meaning, use visual and spatial imagery, and keep a diary.
Working memory-information can only be held here for about 15-30 seconds
Declarative-Declaring that you know something (an octopus has 8 legs,etc)
Episodic-It's the history of you remembered by you. Information that is attached to a where and a when.It's personal and always about the past.
Semantic-is about information and is timeless. It also houses your personal data, name date of birth
*Memory involves both consolidating info into your brain and retrieving info from it. To better learn, not only do you want to repeatedly expose your brain to the data you want to acquire, but you also want to repeatedly retrieve this new data from your brain (quizzing yourself)
*The Spacing Effect-Distributed practice beats out cramming. Rehearsing the info to be remembered spaced out over time gives your hippocampus more time to fully consolidate what you're learning. Spacing dramatically strengthens the circuitry of the memory.
*Meaning matters when it comes to creating and recalling any kind of memory. Your brain isn't interested in knowing what's boring or unimportant. But it's phenomenal at remembering what is meaningful, emotional and what surprised us. Remembering also requires that we give the thing to be remembered our attention-we can't remember what we ignore.
*Regular use of repetition, spaced learning, self-testing, meaning and visual and spatial imagery will strengthen your semantic memory.
*With every retelling, you are reactivating the memory, reinforcing the neural pathways that encode the details of what you experienced, making the memory stronger.
*Emotion and surprise activate a part of your brain called the amygdala which sends powerful signals to your hippocampus that basically say 'what's going on is super important, you're gonna want ot remember it, consolidate it'
*Flashbulb memory-when you experience something highly unexpected and exceptionally emotional. They contain a lot of vivid detail for episodic informational.
*Autobiographical memory- your most meaningful episodic memories strung together that create your life story. We tend to save the memories that feed our identity and outlook. ie: if you believe you're smart, you're more likely to remember the details of the times you did something intelligent and you're more likely to forget the times you made dumb mistakes.
*(Why we retain few memories from when we are young) -The development of language in our brains corresponds with our ability to consolidate, store and retrieve episodic memories
*Recency effect-we can remember things from the past couple of years since we don't have to brush away many cobwebs
To remember: Get out of Routine. Keep a journal. Rehash it. Feel your experiences.
What you remember can be wrong: Slices of memory will contain only the details the were seduced by our biases and captured our interest. Memories left a lone for too long, will decay with the passage of time. The physical neural connections can literally retract and disappear, erasing part or all of your memory of what happened. Our opinions an emotional state today color what we remember from what happened last year. So in revisiting episodic memories, we often reshape them. Every time we recall an episodic memory, we overwrite it and this new updated edition is the version we'll retrieve the next time we visit that memory.
* Writing something down allows you to rehearse and strengthen the memory for the details you choose to write about, but it can also prevent you from later remembering and details you didn't include.
Prospective memory is your memory for what you need to do later. This is your brains to-do list, and intention for your future you. Prospective memories rely on external cues to trigger their recall.
*Make to-do lists and then regularly check them. Surgeons and pilots don't rely on their fickle prospective memories-thankfully they use checklists too.
*Be specific about your plan: place cues in impossible to miss locations (implementation intention)
*If you want to forget a memory that was already consolidated and made its way into long term storage: avoid exposure to the cues and context that trigger its retrieval. Don't think about the memory or talk about it. Don't rehearse it.
*We forget because we didn't pay attention, bc we didn't have the right cues or context or bc it was too routine or inconsequential, bc we never practice, or didn't get enough sleep or were too stressed...
As we age: Older adults possess a larger repository of semantic memories than younger adults.
We experience a noticeable decline in working memory. Your ability to sustain attention also decreases. You become less able to attend to more than one things at a time-so if two things are going on at once you are less likely to remember either one of them.
*Retrieval begins to don rose-colored glasses as we grow older and we show an increasing tendency to recall the good and forget the bad.
**To help memories as we age, exercise, Mediterranean or DASH diet, meditate and sleep for at least 8 hrs /night
**Also, pay attention-(#1 thing we can do), decrease distractors, rehearse, self-testing, create meaning, use visual and spatial imagery, and keep a diary.
clay1914's review against another edition
3.0
It all makes sense now! Let’s see if I can retain any of what I just read.