How does one work on mental fitness?

Logic is the art of recoding – finding an ordinarily sequence for disparate elements.

The following exercise/activities will awaken the inherently logical being inside you.

Don’t use a list when shopping. Instead, invent a system to take the place of the list. Use memory aids, such as formatting a complete word or one that can be completed by adding a certain vowel or constant from the first letters of the words for the things you need to buy. Or, you can classify foods into raw and cooked. Or, use any other system that works for you.

All games involve logical activities. Card games such as pinochle and bridge or board games of strategy such as chess or checkers are good choices. So are crossword puzzles, anagrams and other word games. Avoid playing the same games all the time. Chess players might switch to solitaire, while bridge players might play whist or hearts.

Playing the same game all the time leads to routine, which is the opposite of activation. The same cerebral circuits and neuronal regions are constantly used and everything else remains unused. Fine new to you and find new playing-partners for old and new games and activates.

What Makes Good cue for remembering events?

One of the most interesting areas of research in the study of event memory is a small set of diary studies. In one such study, a Dutch psychologist, Willem Wagener, recorded his day’s events everyday for six years, noting down:

      Who was involved?

      What yes event was?

      Where it occurred?

      When it occurred?

Wagener was hoping to discover which of these different bits of information the best retrieval cues were. At the conclusion of his study he reported that ‘what’ was the least effective (have you ever tried to remember an event on the basis of its approximate date?).

There is nothing particularly special about these types of information, however. Later, wirehair reanalyzed his data and found that most of the difference in the memo ability of these cues was due to their relative distinctiveness. Thus, the nature of the event is usually the most distinctive aspect of the event and the people involved and the location are usually more distinctive bits of information than the date or time of occurrence.

Types of memories

Experts have classified memory into two major kinds:

      Knowledge Memory

      Personal Memory

Knowledge memory contains information about the world while personal memory consists of information about you.

Within knowledge memory, separate domains may exist for numbers, for music, for language and for stories. These are all types of information, which appear to be dealt with in different ways.

Personal memory also comprises different kinds of domain like autobiographical memory, social memory (remembering names and faces of people), skill memory and planning memory.

      Autobiographical memory contains information about you and about personal experiences.

      Emotions, the “facts” that describe you and make you unique, the facts of your life and the experiences you have had, are all contained in separate domains and processed differently.

      Your memory for emotions can help you modify your moods.

      Specific events you have experienced are only memorable to the extent that they include details special to that specific occasion.

Most events in our lives are routine and are merged in memory into one generic memory containing the common element of the experience.

The most common memory problems faced by people occur in four key areas

1. 1.       Knowledge Memory
2. 2.       Identity or Personal Memory
3. 3.       Event Memory
4. 4.       Planning Memory

Within each of these zones of memory, there are specific details in which people have problems. Let us have a look at the type of things one forgets.

Knowledge Memory:

•       Remembering information you have studied.
•       Remembering words.
•       Remembering data.
•       Remembering visuals.

Identity Memory

•       Trying to put a name to a face.
•       Trying to put a face to a name.
•       Trying to remember who someone is.
•       Wanting to remember someone’s personal details.

Event Memory

•       Remembering whether you’ve done something.
•       Remembering where you’ve put something.
•       Remembering when/where something happened.
•       Remembering important dates.

Planning Memory

•       Remembering to do something at a particular time
•       Knowledge there’s something you need to remember but you can’t think what it is.

How brain fitness works

Just as physical exercise maintains body tone, strength and endurance, mental exercising has positive conditioning effects for people of all ages. We will cover the essentials that constitute “mental workout” – daily exercises for the brain.

The goal of brain fitness is to revive certain mental abilities before they slow down. In le poncin’s own words, “our team does not claim to work miracles. We simply develop the previously unknown fertility of land that had been lying fallow”. The exercises are simple and fun to do. And, by repeating the exercises over several weeks time, real progress can be seen in a relatively short time.

Although these exercises have been especially created for the people of advancing age, anyone can do them in order to keep the mental faculties functioning properly. 

How to get the most out of your practice

While practice is the key, there are some actions we can take to ensure we get the most value out of our practice:

      Learn from specific examples rather than abstract rules.

      Provide feedback while the action is active in memory (i.e. immediately). Try again while the feedback is active in memory.

      Practice a skill with subtle variations (such as varying the force of your pitch, or the distance you are throwing) rather than trying to repeat your action exactly.

      Space your practice (math, textbooks, for example, trend to put similar exercises together, but in fact they would be better spaced out).

      Allow for interference with similar skills: if a new skill contains steps that are antagonistic to steps contained in an already mastered skill, the new skill will be much harder to learn (e.g., when I changed keyboards, the buttons for page up, page down, insert etc., had been put in different order – the conflict between the old habit and the new pattern made learning the new pattern harder than it would have been if I had never had a keyboard before). The existing skill may also be badly affected.

      If a skill can be broken down in to independent sub-skills, break it down into its components are dependent, learn the skill as a whole (e.g. computer programming can be broken into independent sub-skills, but learning to play the piano is best learned as a whole). 

Role Of Imagery In Mnemonics

•       Images are effective to the extent that they link information.
•       Images are not inherently superior to words and bizarre images are not necessary recalled better than common images.
•       Imagery is chiefly effective when used with an organizing structure.
•       Most mnemonic strategies are based on imagery.
•       There is no doubt that imagery can be an effective tool, but there is nothing particular special about imagery. The advantage of imagery is that it provides an easy way of connecting information that is not otherwise readily connected. However, providing verbal links can be equally effective.
•       The critical element is that words or images provide a context, which links the information. Thus, imagery is only effective when it is an interactive image – one that ties together one bit of information with another.
•       Visual imagery on its own is of limited value without an organizing structure, such as the method of loci or the peg word method.
•  It’s usually empathasized that bizarre images are remembered much better, but there is no evidence for this. In many studies indeed, ordinary images are remembered slightly well. One of the problems is that people usually fine it harder to create bizarre images. Unless you have a natural talent for thinking up bizarre images, its probably now worth bothering about.

Why Remembering To Do Things IS SO Difficult

Remembering intentions is in fact much more difficult than remembering events that have happened and the primary reason is the lack or retrieval cues. This is why, of all memory tasks, remembering to do things relies most heavily on external memory aids. Reminder notes, calendars dairies, watch-alarms, oven-timers, leaving objects in conspicuous places – all these external aids act as cues to memory.

In practical compensation for the lack of effective retrieval cues, planning memories are more easily triggered by minor cues. E even a small and seemingly insignificant thing can act as a remarkable cue. A friend of mine was reminded that her son’s friend would be spending Saturday night with then when she saw an advertisement for a movie about John F.Kennedy ( the child’s father had the same initials: JFK).  
I remembered that I had to give my green dress for dry cleaning when I saw a similar green colour in the display window of a store.

Remembering Intentions

Experts have categorized the remembering of intentions under ‘planning memory’. Planning memory is nothing but an exercise, which helps you recall your intentions i.e. what you need to do.

Planning memory contains your plans and goals (such as, “I must pick up the dry-cleaning today”, “I intend to finish this project within three months”). 
Forgetting an appointment or a promise is one of the memory problems people get most upset about.

Remembering intentions is more difficult than remembering past events. It’s the lack of cues to remembering that makes remembering intentions so difficult. That is why using physical objects to cue our remembering is so common. To remember intentions without relying on physical reminders, it’s best to concentrate on working out an event or time that will trigger your remembering.

Set your mind to remember the link between the trigger and the intention, not the intention alone.

Remembering Telephone Numbers

These can be remembered simply by associating numbers from Eg)., the Number/Rhyme system, or the journey system and by further association these with the face or name of the  person whose number is being remembered.

For Example, to remember that John’s phone number is 6587452, I can imagine myself travelling to his flat: with my destination firmly in mind, I envisage the following stops on my journey:

1.        Front Door: The door has hundreds of sticks (6) lying in front of it.
2.        Rose Bush: A small sapling (tree, 3) is growing its way through the middle of   the bush.
3.        Car: to build a hive (5) under the wheel of my car. I have to move it very carefully to avoid damaging it.
4.        End of Road: A tree (3) has fallen on the road. I have to drive around it.
5.        Past Garage: Someone has nailed a sign on the door (4) strange!
6.       Under Railway Bridge: The bees are building another hive (5) between the girders here.
7.    Past The Municipal Park: All the trees in the park have shoes (2) hanging from their branches.

Remembering Numbers

Day by day our lives are becoming more and more complicated. No matter what, one has to remember at least a few bank account numbers, telephone numbers etc.,

How does one remember numbers?

Using mnemonic systems, remembering numbers becomes extremely simple.

There are a number of ways of approaches, depending on the types of numbers being remembered:

1. Short numbers

These can be stored in a number of ways:

The easiest is to use simple Number/Rhyme method associated in a story.

A simple peg system can be used, associating numbers from the Number/Rhyme method, organized with the Alphabet system.

2.Long Numbers

This can be remembered using the Journey System. At a simple level, numbers can be stored at each stop on the journey using e.g., the Number/Shape system.

Using all the simple techniques in concert, there is no reason why you should not be able to store a 100-digit number with relatively little effort. Using the more powerful systems, holding it to 1000-digits might not be too much of a challenge.

Five principles to improve Memory

There are five basic principles you can apply in forming your mental pictures, which will help you make your associations strong and long lasting. These are quite similar to the ones suggested in the mnemonic system.

1. Out of Proportion: In all your images, try to distort size and shape. In the first exercise, you were told to picture a “Huge” sausage or a “gigantic” tie. Conversely, you can make things microscopically small.

2. Substitution: In the first exercise, we suggested that you visualize of a football, or pens growing on a tree instead of leaves. Substituting an out of place item in an image increases the probability of recall.

3. Exaggeration: Try to picture vast quantities in your images. For example, we used the word ‘billions’ (of bananas).

4. Movement: Any movement or action is always easy to remember. For example, we suggested that you saw yourself cutting a sausage and gallons of ink squirting out and hitting you in the face.

5. Humour: The funnier, more absurd and zany you can make your images, the more memorable they will be.

Applying and combination of these five principles when formatting your images will help make your mental associations truly outstanding and memorable. At first you may find that you need to consciously apply one or more of the five principles in order to make your pictures sufficiently ludicrous. After a little practice however, you should fine that applying the principals becomes an automatic and natural process.

How to improve memory

Attempts to improve memory are now new. For centuries, man has been trying out ways and means to improve his memory because he has realize the importance of having a good memory, was devised by the Greeks a long time ago.

While there are many methods that keep appearing from time to time, there are some, which have proved there efficacy. They remain popular because of the ease and practically of implementing them. Of these, mnemonic, link system and pegging are the most popular.

One thing that needs to be mentioned here is that there are no quick fix methods available for improving memory. These methods have to be practiced with sincerity and regularity in order to apply then effectively. Just as with any self-improvement process, memory improvements needs consistent efforts and take a little time to make an impact. So, don’t expect overnight results or you will be disappointed!

Mental Fitness

Are you one of those who believe that mental efficiency declines with age?

As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. There is no age limit for exercising the brain nor do the exercises have any side effects. In fact, the more mental exercising one does, the better are the chances of keeping an active memory tills a ripe old age.

The Good news:

The decline in specific mental abilities, beloved to be associated with ageing such as memory loss, sluggish thinking and blocks in problem solving , are not inevitable, if the brain is frequently excited by new challenges. In a matter study by the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH in Philadelphia, men tested at age 81 where compared with performance on the same tests they had taken at ages 75 and 70. Researchers reported that the “pattern of decline” of cognitive capabilities generally associated with advanced ageing” was “neither extensive nor consistent”. Other major studies on ageing over the past 52 years (Seaborg and colleagues in Sweden,  Duke University, and the National Institute on Ageing). Support the findings that “mental (and physical) declined with ageing is not inevitable”. Yet we have all seen elderly people who unmistakably experience mental decline, as they grow older. What can be done to preserve (and enhance) mental fitness, as we grow older?

Use It or Lose It?

Not surprisingly, the same advice that we follow to achieve physical fitness applies to mental fitness – “ use it or lose it”. Just as daily weight repetitions in the gym or jogging strengthen certain muscle groups mental exercises will strengthen and enhance cognitive functions over them.

 Monique Le Poncin, founder of the French National Institute for research on the prevention of cerebral ageing, has written a fascinating book called “brain fitness. By identifying the various mental abilities in the human repertoire – perception, long and short term memory and visuo – spatial memory structuralization, logic and verbal abilities – le poncin has “prescribed” an exercise regimen designated to strengthen those areas that tend to become week over the life span. She advocates a technique of cerebral activation, which she calls “brain fitness”. 

The memory process

What constitutes the memory process? Just like every other function, memory is a series of things happening one after the other.


There are three fundamental questions related to the memory process.
How are memorizes formatted?
Through the process of “Encoding”.
How are memories retained?
Through the process of “storage”.
How are memories recalled?
Through the process of “retrieval”


The process of remembering can actually be divided into four easy steps:

• Attention and selection.
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval

Attention and selection:
It has already been established that attention plays a very important role in memory. In fact, the frost process of memory is attention. There is much more information in your environment that you can process at any one time. All our sources and all this needs to be processed. At any given time, our brain is exposed to hundreds of messages that need its attention. But it can’t process al these messages at the same time.
Encoding:
Once something is attended to, it must be encoded to be remembered. Basically, encoding refers to translating incoming information into a mental representation that can be stored in memory.
You can encode the same information in a number of different ways. For example: you can encode information according to its sound, what it looks like or what it means.
Storage:
Storage is the process of holding information in your memory. A distinction is often made between short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory is just that, brief and transient. Think about looking up a new phone number in the phone book and making a call. You may remember it long enough to make the call, but do not recall it later. This is your short-term memory, which can hold a small amount of information for a short period of time. Once you stop attending to the number, perhaps after you make the call and move on to the another task, you are likely to forget it. In order to remember the number of a longer period of time (and after attending to other things), you would need to store it in your long-term memory.
Retrieval:
In terms of memory improvement, it can help to understand how the retrieval process relates to encoding and storage. Conceder the relationship between retrieval and encoding.  If you have encoded something visually, but are trying to retrieve it acoustically, you will have difficulty remembering it. Like encoding, information can be retrieved through visualizing it, thinking about the meaning or imagining the sound etc.,
                       Tip --> Attention --> Encoding --> Storage --> Retrieval.


These are the steps of memory discussed thus far. First, you select the information to which you will attend. You then encode the information for storage (where it can be practiced and processed more deeply). Later, when needed, information is retrieved by using a search strategy that parallels how the information was encoded and stored.

How Can One Increase The Observation Power?

To be able to observe better, you need to be attentive and focused. If you are not attentive, you can’t be observed and if you are not observant you can’t get to have a good memory. There are various ways to strengthen the observation. You can begin playing the memory games that are footing in the markets these days. The games like “jigsaw puzzles” and “spot the differences” are also very effective in increasing the power of observation.

Give yourself some simple observation takes every day. For instance, if you are going for a party, observe the dresses worn by five people. When you return home, try to recapitulate the details. Increase the number to ten, after a few days. Similarly, while driving, when you halt at the traffic signal you can try to observe the vehicles around you. Note the kind of vehicle the make and the color. Try and recall these when you reach office. While shopping the detergents try to observe how many detergent brands are available in that super market, what is the difference in the package, price, etc., these exercise will horn up your observation in a few weeks.

The process of remembering

At this stage, you may well ask – “Alright, I have realized the importance of remembering. I have also learnt the need to uncluttered the mind. But how can I remember things?”

The first step towards improving your recall system is to observe. The stronger the observation better memory.  Most of us do not attach enough importance to the power if observation. As a result we often overlook details while observing. A simple test of your observation would be to try and recall specifics after you have watched the movie. For instance, try to remember the dress worn by the heroin while singing a specific song or the locale that went in the background.

You will find that you will not able to recall these details initially, but as you hone up your power of observation, you will be able to remember the minutest of the details. The reason for this change is very simple. You have been able to improve your power of remembering because you have made your observation keener.

Our forefathers had a much better memory than we do. Since there were no written scriptures, much of the text was passed from generation to generation through oral communication. For this, the learned few had to memories the entire lot of scriptures thought the rote method. It was much later that writing methods were discovered and the ancient wisdom and scriptures were put in writing.

No doubt that the observation power of the people in the ancient times was also keen since they had to remember everything without being able to put it in writing.

Why do we forget?

Can you recall your passport number?

I bet you can’t. Simply, because it is not used every day. You will have to make a big effort to seek it out from the bottom of the stack of information that is stored in your brain. To be remembered easily, information needs to be organized and meaningful, and needs to come to us at a slow pace so as to process it.

The secret of most of annoying instances of forgetting is that you do not take the trouble to connect new information with some fact you already know. Isolated facts drop out of the memory quickly, but if you file new knowledge in relation to something already established in your mind, you will retain it and be able to refer to it whenever you need it. It is simply a matter of making special use of your power of association, which is the beginning of all learning processes.

In mental terms, the more you associate a fact with other stored information in toyr mind, the better your memory can retain it. Each of its associates becomes a hook on which the new information hangs. Association is making mental hook from which you may fish facts out of your mind, as you require them. The mental filing system will provide the mental hooks upon which to hang, or file, anything you want to remember. Certain selected words, called KEY WORDS, are the mental hooks in your filing system, Each one of these represents a vivid image.

Let us see what reasons the scientists have attributes to the habit of forgetting. The scientific theory is that people forget more at times passes. This makes sense, I can recall the dress I wore in the morning quit easily, but I take time in remembering the dress I wore yeaterday morning. And if you ask me what I was wearing last Sunday morning, I will have a little problem recalling the dress.

According to the scientist, we forget things because of certain processes. These processes are:

• ü  Interference
• ü  Retrieval failure
• ü  Motivated Forgetting
• ü  Constructive Process

I think we should understand what these terms are all about so that we don’t get confuced about them when someone tries to use them to impress. Since we will be spending quite some times and energy wanting and trying to improve memory, we might as well as do a thorough job.

Remember the Positive and Forget the Negative

The mind has an amazing capacity. In fact, there are no limits to its power. The power of mind can be extended to a limitless extent. It is said that Locus Scorpio could remember the names of all the people who lived in Rome during his time. There are teachers who knows the names of all the children in the class and even those not in their class. Imagine remembering the names of a few hundred children studying in various classes. If a teacher can remember hundreds of names can’t you remember an equivalent number!

Remembering the relevant bits of information is necessary but it is neither advisable nor possible to retain each and every pieces of information that our brain receives during our lifetime.

So what does one do?

We simply remove the ones that are not relevant and retain the ones that are useful.

We know that we cannot possibly neither remember nor want to remember everything. To make our memories serve us intelligently, we have to be able to choose the things we want to remember and concentrate on developing selective type of memory. It’s worth remembering tow fundamental rules.

ü  Everyone has greater power of memory than he images.

ü  Although intensive training products great improvement in memory, training and does not develop the general faculty of memory bust simply increases the particular kind of memory job that is practices.

So, to develop your memory in order to increase your personal efficency you must first choose the kind of remembering on which you want to concentrate. IF you learn to memories poetry effectively, our friends may conceder you more cultured and you may get extra enjoyment out of life, but it will not help you remember the grocery list.

To help you decide what kind of memory you want to cultivate, you must decide the kind of things that you need to remember and concentrate on them.

Why should we try to recall unpleasant little episodes, which prey on our minds? Why should we torture ourselves with the tragic incidents that happened in our lives? Why not clear the junk to accommodate more useful information?

The mind is like a endless shelf. We are constantly heaping information on it, just like we stack clothes in the cupboard. What happens when we need a specific dress that we want to wear for the special party in the evening? We spend a whole lot of time, searching for the specific dress amidst the chaotic clutter. Similarly, the mind, which is heaped with a whole lot of irrelevant and useless information, takes time to dreg up the necessary information. Sometimes it even fails to retrieve the useful stuff.

Theory of Use and Disuse

An average human being looses an average of 1, 00,000 brain cells every day due to disuse. Unlike the other cells of our body, the brain cells do not multiply. Any cells that are damaged or not used simply degenerated. By the age of 35 a human being losses over 1,000 nerve cells a day.
The lesser a person uses his brain, the worse his memory becomes. People get mentally  out of shape when they stop challenging their minds. This happens when they opt for habitual solutions rather than purposeful thoughts, or if they confine there thinking to a small range of interests. Remember that mental fitness – your ability to concentrate, to reason, to visualize, to imagine, to make decisions, to solve problems and to think creativity depends greatly on how well and how often you exercise your mind. You need to exercise all of your mental muscles in order to keep yourself mentally fit. Just like several body muscles work together to create physical movement, several mental muscles work together to create clear purposeful thinking.