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do you smell that? it smells like...cinnamon? and … evergreen trees. it reminds me of something. it reminds me of...this video hank made abouthow smells trigger memories! you’re walking through the hardware storeone day when all of a sudden you catch a whiff of something you haven’t smelled in years. somehow, the scent of glue immediately takesyou back to your kindergarten classroom, and you spend the next couple of minutes wonderingwhat happened to the kid who used to eat all
that paste. you just experienced what’s known as anodor-evoked autobiographical memory. to put it simply, a smell made you remembersomething from your past. and it happened because of the way smellsand memories are hardwired into your brain. lots of different cues, like sights or sounds-- or even just someone describing something -- can trigger memories. but memories linked to smells are often strongerand more vivid, and studies have shown that they also tend to be memories of your earlylife -- before you were ten years old. which is weird, because adults usually experiencewhat’s known as a reminiscence bump, where
they don’t remember much from before theiradolescence. but smells are really good at bringing thosememories back. these memories tend to be more perceptual,rather than conceptual -- so you remember a particular sensation, rather than a bunchof facts about something that happened. and researchers have come up with some theorieswhy memories triggered by smells are so odd. there’s a big difference between the wayyour body handles sight, sound, taste, and touch and the way it processes smells. those other senses are all routed throughthe thalamus , the part of your brain that sends them off to the appropriate processingsensors.
but smells bypass all that. once they’re detected by receptors in yournose, the signal heads straight to your olfactory bulb, the smell-analyzing region in your brain. and that area happens to be connected to theamygdala and the hippocampus, which are the parts of your brain that help handle memoryand emotion. so it’s possible that when you smelled thatglue in kindergarten, the signal got tangled up with memories of building blocks and applejuice. and when you smelled it again later, you rememberednot just the glue, but also some of the associated memories -- like that weird, paste-eatingkid.
in 2013, a group of european psychologiststested this whole phenomenon using functional magnetic resonance imaging. first, they presented the subjects with 20different strong, specific odors, like garlic, whiskey, and leather. then, for each person, they identified thetwo that elicited the oldest positive memories. then it was time to scan their brains. each subject was presented with their twoexperimental smells, plus two generic, control smells -- flowers and citrus. they were also shown verbal cues, which werejust the names of the smells projected onto
a screen. the researchers found that both types of triggerstended to activate the regions of the brain associated with memory. but while the verbal cues lit up parts ofthe brain responsible for processing smells, the smells themselves were more strongly connectedto emotional processing centers. some of the participants associated the smellswith memories from before they were ten, while others remembered things from when they werebetween ten and twenty. and, depending on which time frame the memoriesfell into, their brains tended to use different regions to recall them.
the earlier memories lit up the orbitofrontalcortex, which is connected to perception. the later ones, on the other hand, tendedto activate the left inferior frontal gyrus, which handles more conceptual memories. so, can you use your nose’s superpowersto help you remember things for your next big exam? well… probably not. smells tend to evoke early, perceptive memoriesof events, not random concepts. so the scent of glue might make you rememberplaying with construction paper in kindergarten, but your smell-memory won’t help you memorizemaxwell’s equations.
okay, so now we know why smells trigger memories, but that video also brings up so many other questions: i know how you can remember things, but how do you make memories? and why can i remember kindergarten, but ican’t remember being a baby? and if smells can’t help me study for atest, is there another way i can hack my memory? check out these three videos from hank, me,and olivia to answer these questions: how do you make memories? inspirational websites will tell you to spendtime with the people you love. travel websites will tell you to travel tobeautiful places. i’m just going to tell you to watch thisepisode of scishow over and over and over
again until it actually sticks in there. but if you ask a neuroscientist, they mighttell you about a man named henry molaison. in 1953, molaison had surgery to remove certainparts of his brain, and lost his ability to form most kinds of long-term memory -- changing our understanding of the human mind and memory forever. up until the 1950s, we really had no ideahow the human brain could convert an experience into a memory that could be retrieved andrelived. scientists had been trying to figure it out,but they didn’t have access to fancy technology like fmri scanners to let them look insideliving human brains. based on what they did find out, from animalstudies and the brains of people who had died,
they thought that memories might be storedthroughout the brain. that seemed to make sense, because patientswith injuries to different parts of their brains would sometimes develop amnesia. so they had no clue what they were about todo to henry molaison. when molaison was a kid, he hit his head whileriding his bike -- and after that, he started having seizures. a lot of seizures -- and severe ones. his doctors tried all kinds of different treatments,but in 1953, he was 26 years old and none of those treatments had woked.
but there was one more procedure that theythought might help: a surgery to remove the part of his brain where the doctors thoughtthey seizures were coming from. so, they did the surgery, removing two finger-sizedpieces of brain tissue from molaison’s left and right medial temporal lobes. the specific parts they took out? the hippocampus, amygdala, and part of theentorhinal cortex. you might recognize some of those names, becausewe now know that they’re really important parts of the brain. but at the time, doctors had no way of knowingjust how big a deal removing them was.
when molaison woke up, he could remember hisname and things that happened in his childhood, but he had what’s known as anterograde amnesia. basically, he couldn’t form new memoriesanymore. the doctors weren’t going to be able togive him his memory back. but for the rest of molaison’s life, theytried to learn as much from him as they could. the main thing they found out was that thehippocampus plays a big part in the formation and retention of certain kinds of memory. researchers also learned that there are multiplekinds of long-term memory, controlled by different long term memories are the memories we storefor long periods of time - basically, anything
your brain retains after about 30 seconds. and there are two kinds of long term memories:declarative, or explicit, and non-declarative, or implicit. declarative memories are memories that requireconscious processing, and the kind that molaison lost the ability to form. these include episodic memories -- like thememory of your eleventh birthday party -- as well as semantic memories, which are the factsand ideas. non-declarative memories, on the other hand,are memories of habit, like riding a bicycle or tying your shoes.
after molaison’s surgery, he couldn’tlearn new facts or remember new events. he’d meet a person and forget them as soonas they walked out the door. but his doctors discovered that the differentkinds of long-term memory must depend on different brain structures, because molaison could stillform non-declarative memories. for example, he could learn new motor skills,like tracing a drawing he was looking at in a mirror, and his reaction times improvedwith practice. for the rest of his life, molaison was studiedby dozens of doctors. to protect his identity, he was referred toas h.m. in publications. but after his death in 2008, his name waspublicly released for the first time, and
the rest of the world began to understandjust how much he’d taught us. even in death, molaison continues to helpus learn more about the brain. his brain was donated to science, so researcherscould examine his brain more closely and better understand the effects of his surgery. at his death, his brain was removed and flash-frozenbefore being cut into 2,401 microsections - super thin slices to be mounted on slidesfor experimentation. these sections were used to make a 3d recreationof his brain in 2014. from that, we’ve already discovered thatmolaison hadn’t actually lost his entire hippocampus removed - just most of it.
but because it was cut off from the rest ofthe memory systems by his injury, this small part of his hippocampus couldn’t help himregain his memory. so, molaison may not have been aware of justhow important he was to science. but his life and death are still teachingus all about memory and the human brain. remember that one time when you were a baby? no, of course you don’t. because, if you’re a teenager or older,chances are you can’t remember anything that happened before you were three. the process of forgetting these really earlymemories is called childhood amnesia.
it happens to pretty much everyone, and hasto do with the way our brains develop as we grow up. childhood amnesia starts to set in betweenthe ripe old ages of eight and nine. before then, most children can remember thingsthat happened when they were really young, like visiting family or winning a teddy bearfrom one of those impossible carnival games. but the passage of time by itself isn’tenough to explain childhood amnesia. after all, when you’re 30, you can remembercertain things that happened 20 years ago, when you were 10. but when you’re 20, you can’t rememberbeing an infant at all.
plus, we don’t forget everything from whenwe were little. some things, like the language or motor skillsthat we pick up, stick with us. but we do tend to forget episodic memories-- memories of specific events and details. so scientists think that childhood amnesiamust have something to do with the way our brains change between infancy and adulthood. it turns out, some parts of our brains don’tfinish developing until long after we’re born. one of them is the hippocampus, which helpsus form and store episodic memories. even as adults, our brains are always producingnew cells, called neurons, in the hippocampus. but when you were a young, growing child,the brain produces a lot of new neurons a
lot faster. so, to see how brain-cell growth affectedmemory, a research team from toronto took adult mice and experimentally made their hippocampusesproduce more new neurons. and it turned out that the mice became moreforgetful. they seemed to lose memories, just like humansdo with childhood amnesia. but when researchers slowed down the growthof new brain cells in young mice, those mice seemed to forget less from their mousey childhoods. so the question is: why would making new braincells be bad for your memory? well, it’s not, in the long term, whichis why we can keep making new episodic memories
as adults. but it seems like trying to fit all thosenew neurons into your hippocampus when you’re young could cause a problem. the new neurons shuffle around with the oldones to form new memory connections, and this could make it harder for the brain to findwhere earlier memories were kept. it might even erase them completely. still, not all of our memories are kept inthe hippocampus, so this doesn’t explain everything about childhood amnesia. there are other parts of the brain involvedin memory, including the amygdala and the
prefrontal cortex. so scientists are studying these to see ifthey also make different amounts of new neurons when we’re children, compared to when we’readults. we don’t fully understand childhood amnesiayet, but we do know it happens to everyone. so if you can’t remember your first birthdayparty, don’t worry. neither can anyone else! y’know those phrases that just seem to beingrained in your memory from middle school? like: please excuse my dear aunt sally roy g. biv
or, thirty days hath september, april, june,and november. sound familiar? these are different kinds of mnemonics -- shortcutsthat we can use to help us remember stuff, like the order of operations, or the colorsof a rainbow. turns out, there are lots of strategies toremember information when you need it most. take the mnemonic, my very educated motherjust served us nachos. the first letter of each word stands for aplanet in our solar system, from mercury to neptune. now, when you first think about it, mnemonicslike this don’t seem like a very helpful memory trick, because you have to remembertwice as much -- like, a weird sentence plus
all of the names of the planets. but that’s actually why they work. a simple way to think about memory is thatwe store information -- kinda like sticking a file in a filing cabinet, or those shelvesof orbs in inside out -- until we recall, or remember, it later. and researchers studying how people learn-- like educational psychologists -- suggest that recalling information can be easier whenit’s connected to other information you already know. so you can imagine this model of memory likea web of files, where the ones with more connections
are less likely to be lost, and easier torecall. one influential theory, which was publishedin the british journal of educational psychology in 1976, put learning in terms of differentlevels of processing. basically, they suggest learning can fallon a spectrum of surface-level processing -- which is more like rapid-fire memorization-- to deeper processing -- or, linking new information to an information network, whichleads to better recall. and with mnemonics, you’re making more ofthese connections. sometimes it’s between random bits of information-- like setting the periodic table to the tune of a song you know.
but there are a lot of memory hacks that psychologistshave proposed over the years, and tested in research experiments. not all of them will work for everyone inevery learning situation -- there are just way too many variables in real life -- butthey can be helpful. if you’re learning new words, you can tryusing the keyword method -- a term that was coined in the mid-1970s by researchers fromstanford university, and studied frequently in the next couple decades. this mnemonic can help people learn wordsin new languages, by connecting how a new word sounds to a keyword in english, for example.
then, the english keyword is linked to a strongvisual image that helps you recall what the new word means. so like in spanish, say you’re trying tolearn the word “perro,†which means dog. you might pick the keyword pear, and imaginea dog holding a pear in its mouth to connect the two. the keyword method could also help with morecomplicated vocab in english -- like, when you think of the word “melancholy,†youcan picture a sad melon to remember the meaning. but what if you’re more of a spatial, visuallearner? then, you can use a technique known as themethod of loci [low-sigh], which was first
described by ancient greek and roman texts,and studied by psychologists from the 1960s until now. this strategy allows you to create a kindof “mind palace,†where you mentally walk through rooms in a building or some otherfamiliar spaces -- the loci. along the way, you can visualize things likesymbols that represent key points in a speech you’re gonna give, or meeting the u.s. presidentsin order. so when it comes to school, trying to memorize one fact at a time might not be the best study strategy. instead, it might help to connect that newinformation to other things you learned, or even make some kind of story out of it.
and finally there’s chunking, a theory firstproposed by a harvard psychologist in 1956 that’s still studied today. it’s basically when you learn a whole bunchof information and organize it into chunks that make sense: like, instead of trying to memorize a sequenceof 8 separate numbers, say 1-7-8-2-2-0-1-4, you can break it into two chunks that soundlike years, 1782 and 2014. so it feels like you have fewer individualthings to remember, and it’s easier to store and recall more information. and with more and more exposure to the informationyou’re trying to learn, like when you’re
studying, the larger the chunks of connectedinformation can become. there’s no replacement for paying attentionin class, taking good notes, and spending time studying when it comes to learning. but if you’re having a little trouble rememberingstuff, you might be able to use some mnemonics. because, sometimes, we need all the help we can get! mnemonics! i knew there was a way to help remember things! but that reminds me...can you really “trainâ€your brain with those games? here’s one more video about that very topic.
exercising your muscles helps keep your bodystrong and healthy, which is why lots of people think your brain works in the same way. there are so-called “brain training†gamesout there that say they’ll improve your memory, attention, and reasoning skills -- andeventually make your brain faster and healthier. some even claim to help prevent the onsetof dementia problem is, they don’t really work. brain training, or cognitive training, claimsto rely on neuroplasticity -- the idea that the connections between neurons in your brainare plastic and changeable, and can adapt to new things.
for years, scientists thought only the developingbrain was flexible that way, but they eventually figured out that even though many connectionsdo become fixed during childhood, the adult brain is still surprisingly flexible. studies on dementia and the aging brain showthat losing that plasticity leads to cognitive decline, so brain training programs claimto stop -- or even reverse -- the loss by flexing your brain like a muscle. and we’ve known for a long time that practicinga specific task makes you get better at it - like how the different levels of mario kartmight get easier the more times you play them. the question was whether playing these gamescan make you better at doing other, real-life
things, like remembering names and appointments. in 2008, a group of scientists from the usand switzerland published a paper in the journal pnas, that seemed to show that it could work. in the study, a group of young adults weretested on their ability to solve new problems. 35 of them were assigned to a control group,and had no contact with the scientists, while another 35 had to track a square flashingon a screen while listening to a series of sounds. they were tested on whether each square andsound matched the ones that came before. after several weeks, the researchers testedall of the subjects on their problem solving again - and those in the treatment group seemedto show a huge increase in their iq.
lots of people were excited about that paper, which has been cited more than 800 times since then. then some scientists started pointing outthat it was seriously flawed. for one thing, there may have been what’sknown as a placebo effect, where the treatment group knew they were supposed to improve atthe tasks after training -- so they did. and when other researchers tried to replicatethe results, they weren’t able to. studies since then have shown that brain trainingcan have an effect on your brain, but it’s a lot more specific. one paper published in nature in 2010 hadover 11,000 people practice tasks meant to improve their reasoning, memory, and attention,but after six weeks, they’d only gotten
better at the games themselves. their new skills didn’t translate to othertasks -- not even similar ones. for example, even if someone practiced a cardmatching game, it didn’t translate to improvements in their score on the paired-associates learningtest - a similar kind of matching test that’s used to assess memory impairment. and when scientists have compared other studieson brain training, they’ve also generally found that it doesn’t have a significantimpact on cognition. the consensus is so strong that in 2014, 70neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists signed a statement saying that there’s “nocompelling scientific evidence that … [brain
training games] reduce or reverse cognitivedeclineâ€. so does that mean brain training doesn’twork at all? well, not exactly. the issue is more how these brain trainingprograms are advertised. they’re wrong if they say that brain trainingimproves brain health overall, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful in some specificcases. in one rehab program that included skillstraining, practicing things like remembering names and counting change helped patients with alzheimer’s disease get better at those things. but “practice paying your bills!†isn’tsuch an exciting-sounding video game, which
might be why brain training companies aren’tmaking those games. and it’s not like brain training is a terriblething. unlike some other kinds of pseudoscience,it won’t actively harm you. but these games aren’t cheap - the braintraining industry brings in over one billion dollars a year, which is a lot of money forpeople to be paying for ineffective treatments. so, what can you do to protect your brain? for starters, we’re still trying to understandthe effects of aging on the brain, and what causes dementia. we know that dementia and memory loss arerelated to damaged neurons in the brain, but
scientists aren’t totally sure how the neuronsget damaged in the first place. so we don’t know any surefire ways to preventor treat memory loss. still, research has shown that there are somethings that can help -- without an expensive subscription to a brain training program. more education translates to a decreased riskof dementia, and maintaining a healthy diet and getting lots of exercise can also helpkeep the aging brain healthy. scientists might eventually develop an easy,fun way to protect your brain and make you smarter -- but these brain training gamesaren’t going to do it. thanks for watching this memory compilation.
if you’ve ever liked a scishow video orleft us a thought-provoking comment, you’ve definitely added to our great scishow memoriesthis year. thank you! if you have an idea for a compilation of videosyou’d like to see, let us know in the comments below, and if you just want to continue gettingsmarter with us, go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.
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