How to boost your memory

EXAM cram and burning the midnight oil before going to bed might seem like a good tactic — but there’s a better way to boost your memory.

Sleep almost doubles the chances of remembering previously forgotten information, scientists have now found.

They believe sleep makes memories more accessible and sharpens our power of recall.

Volunteers taking part in the study were asked to remember made-up words either before a night’s sleep or after 12 hours of wakefulness.

The “sleepers” were much better at recalling the words than the participants who remained awake.

Psychologist Dr Nicolas Dumay, from the University of Exeter, said: “Sleep almost doubles our chances of remembering previously unrecalled material.

“The post-sleep boost in memory accessibility may indicate that some memories are sharpened overnight.

“This supports the notion that, while asleep, we actively rehearse information flagged as important.

Can’t recall it? ... there are ways to boost your memory. Picture: Thinkstock Source: ThinkStock

“More research is needed into the functional significance of this rehearsal and whether, for instance, it allows memories to be accessible in a wider range of contexts, hence making them more useful.” Dr Dumay believes the memory boost comes from the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a key role in recall.

During sleep, recently encoded memory episodes are “unzipped” and replayed to the region of the brain originally involved in their capture.

The findings are reported in the journal Cortex, and come as other experts found unhealthy lifestyle habits such as drinking and smoking reduced grey matter in areas linked to memory, damaging cells that process information.

Researchers from the University of southern California scanned the brains of 1,600 people and identified their bad habits. They then invited the volunteers back seven years to later to try to pinpoint those who were showing early signs of dementia.

The results, published in the journal Radiology, showed that alcohol was linked with smaller total brain volume.

People who drank and smoked were more likely to have a smaller hippocampus, which is linked to Alzheimer’s disease.