Exercising your cognitive skills by playing brain games is a fun and effective way to boost your memory. Crosswords, word-recall games, Tetris, and even mobile apps dedicated to memory training are excellent ways to strengthen memory.

A study that included 42 adults with mild cognitive impairment found that playing games on a brain-training app for 8 hours over a 4-week period improved performance in memory tests Another study of 4, people showed that when they did 15 minutes of an online brain-training program at least 5 days a week, their short-term memory, working memory, concentration, and problem-solving improved significantly compared to a control group Plus, brain-training games have been shown to help reduce the risk of dementia in older adults Summary Games that challenge your brain may help you strengthen your memory and may even reduce the risk of dementia.

Consuming large amounts of refined carbohydrates like cakes, cereal, cookies, white rice, and white bread may be damaging to your memory.

These foods have a high glycemic index, meaning the body digests these carbohydrates quickly, leading to a spike in blood sugar levels Studies have shown that the Western diet, which is high in refined carbohydrates , is associated with dementia, cognitive decline, and reduced cognitive function One study involving healthy Korean children found that those who consumed more processed carbs like white rice, noodles, and fast food had reduced cognitive capacity, including poorer short-term and working memory Another study demonstrated that adults who consumed ready-to-eat breakfast cereal daily had poorer cognitive function than those who consumed cereal less frequently Summary Like added sugar, refined carbohydrates lead to a spike in blood sugar levels, which can damage your brain over time.

Diets high in refined carbs have been associated with dementia, cognitive decline, and reduced brain function. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to a host of health issues, including a reduction in cognitive function.

A study that followed older adults for 5 years found that those who had blood levels of vitamin D less than 20 nanograms ng per milliliter mL lost their memory and other cognitive abilities faster than those with normal vitamin D levels Low levels of vitamin D have also been linked to a greater risk of developing dementia Vitamin D deficiency is very common, especially in colder climates and in those with darker skin.

Speak with your doctor about getting a blood test to find out if you need a vitamin D supplement. Summary Vitamin D deficiency is very common, especially in colder climates, and has been associated with age-related cognitive decline and dementia.

If you think you might have low levels of vitamin D, ask your doctor for a blood test. For example, a study of people aged 19 to 93 showed that a single bout of 15 minutes of moderate exercise on a stationary bike led to improved cognitive performance, including memory, across all ages Many studies have shown exercise may increase the secretion of neuroprotective proteins and improve the growth and development of neurons, leading to improved brain health Regular exercise in midlife is also associated with a decreased risk of developing dementia later in life Summary Exercise brings incredible benefits for your whole body, including your brain.

Even moderate exercise for short periods has been shown to improve cognitive performance, including memory, across all age groups. Consuming a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods may help improve your memory. Antioxidants help lower inflammation in the body by reducing oxidative stress caused by free radicals.

You can consume antioxidants in foods like fruits, vegetables, and teas. A recent review of nine studies with more than 31, people found that those who ate more fruits and vegetables had lower risks of cognitive decline and dementia compared to those who consumed less of these nutritious foods Berries are particularly high in antioxidants like flavonoids and anthocyanins.

Eating them may be an excellent way to prevent memory loss. Summary Anti-inflammatory foods are great for your brain, especially berries and other foods that are high in antioxidants. Curcumin is a compound found in high concentrations in turmeric root. Studies have found that curcumin reduces oxidative damage and inflammation in the brain and also lowers the quantity of amyloid plaques.

These accumulate on neurons and cause cell and tissue death, leading to memory loss Though more human studies are needed on the effects of curcumin on memory, some studies suggest it may be effective at boosting memory and preventing cognitive decline 39 , Summary Curcumin is a potent antioxidant.

Animal studies have shown it reduces inflammation and amyloid plaques in the brain. However, more research in humans is needed. Cocoa is not only delicious but also nutritious, providing a powerful dose of antioxidants called flavonoids.

Research suggests flavonoids are particularly beneficial to the brain. They may help stimulate the growth of blood vessels and neurons and increase blood flow in parts of the brain involved with memory.

A study of 30 healthy people found that those who consumed dark chocolate containing mg of cocoa flavonoids demonstrated better memory compared to those who consumed white chocolate without cocoa flavonoids That will help ensure it contains larger amounts of antioxidants like flavonoids.

Summary Cocoa is high in antioxidants that may help improve memory performance. There are many fun, simple and even delicious ways to improve your memory.

Exercising your mind and body, enjoying a quality piece of chocolate and reducing the amount of added sugar in your diet are all excellent techniques.

Try adding a few of these science-backed tips to your daily routine to boost your brain health and keep your memory in top condition. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.

VIEW ALL HISTORY. Research suggests that there are various ways to develop crucial skills related to human intelligence. Explore some of the activities that can boost…. Is it an actual physiological change in the body or more of a placebo effect?

Vitamin IV therapy infuses vitamins directly into the bloodstream. It can also offer the body some extra hydration. Dry needling is a type of alternative medicine that uses tiny needles to stimulate nerve endings to promote muscle relaxation and pain relief.

Homeopathy involves diluted substances to prompt your body's natural healing process. Wintergreen oil or oil of wintergreen has a lot in common with the active ingredient in aspirin. Crystals are a popular alternative medicine tool, but can they really help you heal? The law of attraction is meant to manifest your desires, but can it be an unhealthy way to ignore the negative?

Ozone therapy refers to the process of administering ozone gas into your body to treat a disease or wound. It can be used to treat medical conditions…. A Quiz for Teens Are You a Workaholic?

How Well Do You Sleep? Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Sexual Health. Birth control STIs HIV HSV Activity Relationships. Nutrition Evidence Based 14 Natural Ways to Improve Your Memory.

Medically reviewed by Deborah Weatherspoon, Ph. Eat less added sugar. Try a fish oil supplement. Make time for meditation. Maintain a moderate weight.

Get enough sleep. Practice mindfulness. Drink alcohol in moderation. Train your brain. That residue alone can emit chemicals that are toxic to the brain. In a recent study, people over the age of 55 who regularly participated in dinner parties or other social events had a lower risk of losing their memory.

But it wasn't because of what they ate, it was the effect of the repeated social connection. To lessen isolation and loneliness, you can also boost brain chemicals like serotonin and endorphins by performing small acts of kindness :.

Maintaining a strong memory is not all about brain games like Sudoku, Wordle and crossword puzzles. Learning skills and acquiring information are much more effective ways to make new connections in the brain.

The more connections you make, the more likely you are to retain and even enhance your memory. When you think about learning something new, approach it the way you would with fitness training.

You want to work out different muscles on different days. The same goes for the brain. Over the course of this week, try cross-training your brain by mixing mental activities learning a new language or reading a book and physical learning activities playing tennis or soccer. Marc Milstein , PhD, is a brain health expert and author of "The Age-Proof Brain: New Strategies to Improve Memory, Protect Immunity, and Fight Off Dementia.

Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Want to earn more and work less? Register for the free CNBC Make It: Your Money virtual event on Dec. ET to learn from money masters like Kevin O'Leary how you can increase your earning power.

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter. Skip Navigation. Related Stories. Health and Wellness Harvard nutritionist lives by these 6 rules to keep her brain sharp and happy.

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Where is the sugar hidden? Look for these in the ingredients list: Dextrose Fructose Galactose Glucose Lactose Maltose Sucrose And be wary of any product that includes syrup, such as agave nectar syrup or high-fructose corn syrup.

For most people, a healthy brain needs somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. My tips for memory-boosting, immune-enhancing sleep: Keep a consistent bedtime and wake-up schedule. Turn off devices one hour before bedtime. Do something relaxing before bedtime, like listening to soft music or doing mindful breathing exercises.

Go outside and get in natural sunlight as soon as you can after waking up. One way I keep things simple is to have most, if not all, of these items in my grocery cart: Fatty fish like salmon Avocados Nuts Blueberries Cruciferous veggies like arugula, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and collard greens When food shopping, I ask myself three questions to help determine whether something is good for my brain: 1.

To lessen isolation and loneliness, you can also boost brain chemicals like serotonin and endorphins by performing small acts of kindness : Wish others well or check in with somebody.

Some activities may boost brain function and connectivity, which may help protect the brain from age-related degeneration. Here are 22 brain exercises…. The diet can have a significant impact on the brain's function. A brain-healthy diet, rich in antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, can boost memory….

Short-term memory refers to small amounts of information that people can remember for a short period of time. Learn more. Memories come in many different forms. There is still a lot that researchers do not understand about how human memory works.

This article outlines the causes of short-term and long-term memory loss and the differences between typical age-related memory loss and dementia. My podcast changed me Can 'biological race' explain disparities in health?

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Medical News Today. Health Conditions Health Products Discover Tools Connect. How to improve your memory: 8 techniques to try. Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PsyD — By Jon Johnson — Updated on June 20, Train your brain Exercise Meditate Sleep Sugar Calories Caffeine Chocolate Risk factors Summary There are various ways a person can help to improve their memory.

Do brain training. Share on Pinterest Research suggests that meditation may cause long term changes in the brain that improve memory. Get enough sleep. Reduce sugar intake. Avoid high calorie diets.

Increase caffeine intake. Eat dark chocolate. Risk factors for memory impairment. Share on Pinterest Exercising regularly may help keep the mind sharp.

How we reviewed this article: Sources. Medical News Today has strict sourcing guidelines and draws only from peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical journals and associations. We avoid using tertiary references. We link primary sources — including studies, scientific references, and statistics — within each article and also list them in the resources section at the bottom of our articles.

You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy. Share this article. Latest news Ovarian tissue freezing may help delay, and even prevent menopause. RSV vaccine errors in babies, pregnant people: Should you be worried?

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Medically reviewed by Katherine Marengo LDN, R. What to know about short-term memory and short-term memory loss. Medically reviewed by Seunggu Han, MD. What are the different types of memory?

Think of your short-term memory as your brain's scratchpad. It's where your brain temporarily stores information about 15 to 30 seconds before either dismissing it or transferring it to your long-term memory.

In terms of accessing your long-term memories, your brain has four ways of doing this: recall, collection, recognition, and relearning. How your brain retrieves information depends on the availability of external clues or prompts or the lack thereof.

Now that you understand the basics of how memory works, you can use that information to improve your memory. Mnemonic devices are learning strategies used to boost your memory.

Whether or not you realize it, you probably use mnemonics in your daily life to help you retain and recall information. I'll start with some of the most common mnemonic devices before moving on to other memorization tactics.

You may already be familiar with acronyms and acrostics as a mnemonic device. This method requires you to create a new word or group of words by taking the first letter of each word and putting them together.

For example, to remember the names of the planets in our solar system, you might use this acrostic mnemonic: m y v ery e ducated m other j ust s erved u s n oodles. In this example, the first letter of each word corresponds with the first letter of each planet, respectively.

My partner knows all the words to House of Pain's Jump Around —yet he can't remember what I asked him to pick up from the grocery store an hour ago. Because it's easier to remember a catchy song than it is to remember a long string of meaningless words or letters, such as a grocery list yelled to you while you're halfway out the door.

The next time you need to remember something, try pairing that information with a tune you're already familiar with. And if you just so happen to need help memorizing the periodic table of elements, look no further than the periodic table song. Similar to music mnemonics, rhyming mnemonics take advantage of catchy beats and patterns created by ending each line with a rhyme to help you retain information.

Here's a rhyming mnemonic I still use to this day to help avoid spelling errors: "I before E except after C. Sadly, clever rhymes don't come naturally to me.

If you're in the same boat, here's a little trick: let AI-powered tools like ChatGPT do the heavy lifting for you. Have you ever repeated a phone number out loud by grouping numbers together? For example, "six, four, seven, triple five, eleven, twenty-one" instead of "".

This is chunking. It's another mnemonic device that involves grouping individual pieces of information—like long strings of numbers—into larger, more memorable groups. And chunking isn't just limited to aiding the memorization of numbers.

Another practical application of chunking would be grouping items on your grocery list by aisle. Or if you're learning a new language, grouping new vocabulary words together by category. The memory palace technique, also known as the Method of Loci, is another popular mnemonic device.

This technique involves mentally mapping out a physical space you're familiar with a memory palace and "placing" images representing the information you're memorizing in various spots or loci.

Loci is the plural form of locus , which means "place" or "location. Choose your memory palace. Select a space that you're incredibly familiar with e. Identify distinct loci throughout your palace.

Mentally walk through your palace, and pick different locations where you can "place" unique images more on that in step 3. For example, the door to your coat closet, the lamp in your living room, and the dog bed in your guest room. Assign images to specific locations.

Let's say you're trying to remember this grocery list: milk, chocolate chip cookies, and bananas. Place images of each of those items at your chosen locations. Or, to make it more memorable, create vivid images representing each item and place those at different locations.

The more animated and outrageous, the better. For example, you could picture a waterfall of milk pouring over your closet door, your living room lamp teetering on top of a mountain of chocolate chip cookies, and a dog juggling bananas while standing on its bed. While this technique may sound absurd, it does work.

Just take it from five-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis , who uses the memory palace technique to help him quickly remember a full deck of cards, in sequence. Reciting information is a useful way to memorize something fast because it forces you to actively engage with the information as opposed to passively taking everything in , which, in turn, increases your ability to remember and recall it later on.

Here are some practical ways to add reciting to your memorization toolkit. While typing your notes might be faster and more convenient, especially if you have to take in a lot of information, there are advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way i.

In a study , researchers Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer examined the effects on learning and retention when students took notes by hand versus on a laptop. In terms of generative note-taking e. The researchers suggest two possible reasons.

First, there are fewer possible distractions, such as checking emails or social media, when writing notes. Second, generative note-taking encourages students to reframe the information into their own words, which aids in encoding.

Spaced repetition is a memorization technique that involves reviewing the same information at increasing intervals until that information is embedded into your long-term memory. If you've ever tried to learn a new language using apps like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, you've used spaced repetition.

Here's a simple way to apply this technique. Let's say you're learning another language and you need help remembering new vocabulary. Write the word in your native tongue on a flashcard. Or, to make it more fun, sketch an image of the word.

Then review the flashcards daily. As you become more consistent recalling your new vocabulary words, you can increase the time between reviews from daily to weekly to monthly. If you need to create a lot of flashcards, you can also use apps, like Quizlet , to do the heavy lifting for you.

Tapping into the power of imagery and storytelling can significantly boost your memory because it encourages you to establish stronger connections with the information you're trying to remember. Here are some practical ways to do this. The use of visual stimuli is a common method used to learn and recall information.

Here are some strategies you can use to enhance your visual memory. Turn the sound of names into images. If you have difficulty remembering people's names , try connecting their names with an image.

For example, if a stranger introduces himself as Mike, you might picture him holding a microphone. Animate the images. Similar to creating visuals for your memory palace, the more animated and vivid you can make your images, the better.

Doing this creates stronger connections in your brain between the word and the image. Continuing with the name train, let's take the name Melanie.

For this, you might visualize the person dressed in a gi, crushing a melon against their knee. I bet you won't forget that visual anytime soon. Let's say you're going to a dog training seminar. Your best friend has a dog, and they want you to share some of your key takeaways after. So you furiously scribble down notes, ask questions, and scribble some more.

This goes to the heart of the Protégé Effect , which suggests that people put in more effort to learn information when they know they're going to teach it to someone else.

Then when you share your key takeaways, you're likely to explain the concepts you learned in your own words. You'll probably even demonstrate a few of these lessons while explaining the concepts, which will make it more meaningful.

And these acts—paraphrasing and adding meaning to information—all help with encoding. Turns out, taking care of your body also takes care of your brain. You've heard these tips before, but here's how your physical well-being can improve your memory.

Memory games, learning new skills, crosswords, and even video games may help. Although the brain gets plenty of exercise every day, certain activities may help boost brain function and connectivity. This in turn may help protect the brain from age-related degeneration.

The brain is always active, even during sleep. However, certain activities can engage the brain in new ways, potentially leading to improvements in memory, cognitive function, or creativity.

Meditation generally involves focusing attention in a calm, controlled way. Meditating may have multiple benefits for both the brain and the body. Visualization involves forming a mental image to represent information. The mental image may be in the form of pictures or animated scenes.

A review notes that visualization helps people organize information and make appropriate decisions. People can practice visualization in their day-to-day lives. For example, before going shopping, people can visualize how they will get to and from the grocery store, and imagine what they will buy when they get there.

The key is to imagine the scenes vividly and in as much detail as possible. Playing card games or board games can be a fun way to socialize or pass the time.

These activities may also be beneficial for the brain. A study found a link between playing games and a decreased risk of cognitive impairment in older adults. They are a simple and fun way to engage the brain and activate areas related to pattern recognition and recall.

Crossword puzzles are a popular activity that may stimulate the brain. An older study from notes that crossword puzzles may delay the onset of memory decline in people with preclinical dementia. Completing a jigsaw puzzle can be a good way to pass the time and may also benefit the brain. A study found that puzzles activate many cognitive functions, including:.

The study concluded that doing jigsaw puzzles regularly and throughout life may protect against the effects of brain aging. Number puzzles, such as sudoku, can be a fun way to challenge the brain. They may also improve cognitive function in some people. A study of adults aged between 50 and 93 years found that those who practiced number puzzles more frequently tended to have better cognitive function.

A meta-analysis notes that chess and other cognitive leisure activities may lead to improvements in:. A review notes that some types of video games — such as action, puzzle, and strategy games — may lead to improvements in the following:.

Enjoying company of friends may be a mentally engaging leisure activity and may help preserve cognitive function.

A study found that people with more frequent social contact were less likely to experience cognitive decline and dementia. A study of older adults found that learning a new and cognitively demanding skill, such as quilting or photography, enhanced memory function.

A simple way to increase vocabulary is to read a book or watch a TV program and note down any words that are unfamiliar. A person can then use a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word and think up ways to use the word in a sentence. A review notes that bilingualism increases and strengthens connectivity between different areas of the brain.

A study published in Brain Sciences found that listening to music a person enjoys engages and connects different parts of the brain.

The researchers propose that this may lead to improvements in cognitive function and overall well-being. According to a study , playing an instrument may benefit cognitive development in a young brain and help protect against cognitive impairment in an aging brain.

Such hobbies may include:. Regular physical exercise is beneficial for both the brain and the body. Authors of a review note that exercise improves the following aspects of brain health:.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC , exercise has beneficial effects on the following aspects of cognitive health:. Dance is a form of exercise that may also engage areas of the brain involved in rhythm and balance.

Certain sports are both physically and mentally demanding. Some require a range of cognitive skills, such as:.

A review notes that elite athletes who participate in high demand sports tend to have improved attention and faster information processing speeds.

Tai chi is a form of physical exercise that involves gentle body movements, rhythmic breathing, and meditation. A study compared brain function and connectivity among tai chi practitioners and those who did not practice it.

The researchers found that the tai chi practitioners had enhanced connectivity between different regions of their brain. They proposed that this may improve cognition and decrease the rate of memory loss.

While not necessarily an active exercise, sleep is crucial for both the brain and the body. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke , most adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night, although many people get less sleep than they need.

A review notes that sleep has been proven to:. As such, making sure to get enough sleep each night is an important step toward maintaining a healthy brain.

Brain exercises can be as simple as actively engaging the brain in everyday tasks. Others are targeted workouts for the brain, specifically designed to enhance memory, cognition, or creativity.

Exercising the brain may help improve brain function and boost connectivity between the different areas. This may help protect the brain from age-related degeneration. Retrieval refers to how you access your memories. Think of your short-term memory as your brain's scratchpad.

It's where your brain temporarily stores information about 15 to 30 seconds before either dismissing it or transferring it to your long-term memory. In terms of accessing your long-term memories, your brain has four ways of doing this: recall, collection, recognition, and relearning.

How your brain retrieves information depends on the availability of external clues or prompts or the lack thereof. Now that you understand the basics of how memory works, you can use that information to improve your memory. Mnemonic devices are learning strategies used to boost your memory.

Whether or not you realize it, you probably use mnemonics in your daily life to help you retain and recall information. I'll start with some of the most common mnemonic devices before moving on to other memorization tactics. You may already be familiar with acronyms and acrostics as a mnemonic device.

This method requires you to create a new word or group of words by taking the first letter of each word and putting them together. For example, to remember the names of the planets in our solar system, you might use this acrostic mnemonic: m y v ery e ducated m other j ust s erved u s n oodles.

In this example, the first letter of each word corresponds with the first letter of each planet, respectively. My partner knows all the words to House of Pain's Jump Around —yet he can't remember what I asked him to pick up from the grocery store an hour ago.

Because it's easier to remember a catchy song than it is to remember a long string of meaningless words or letters, such as a grocery list yelled to you while you're halfway out the door.

The next time you need to remember something, try pairing that information with a tune you're already familiar with. And if you just so happen to need help memorizing the periodic table of elements, look no further than the periodic table song. Similar to music mnemonics, rhyming mnemonics take advantage of catchy beats and patterns created by ending each line with a rhyme to help you retain information.

Here's a rhyming mnemonic I still use to this day to help avoid spelling errors: "I before E except after C. Sadly, clever rhymes don't come naturally to me. If you're in the same boat, here's a little trick: let AI-powered tools like ChatGPT do the heavy lifting for you. Have you ever repeated a phone number out loud by grouping numbers together?

For example, "six, four, seven, triple five, eleven, twenty-one" instead of "". This is chunking. It's another mnemonic device that involves grouping individual pieces of information—like long strings of numbers—into larger, more memorable groups.

And chunking isn't just limited to aiding the memorization of numbers. Another practical application of chunking would be grouping items on your grocery list by aisle. Or if you're learning a new language, grouping new vocabulary words together by category.

The memory palace technique, also known as the Method of Loci, is another popular mnemonic device. This technique involves mentally mapping out a physical space you're familiar with a memory palace and "placing" images representing the information you're memorizing in various spots or loci.

Loci is the plural form of locus , which means "place" or "location. Choose your memory palace. Select a space that you're incredibly familiar with e.

Identify distinct loci throughout your palace. Mentally walk through your palace, and pick different locations where you can "place" unique images more on that in step 3. For example, the door to your coat closet, the lamp in your living room, and the dog bed in your guest room.

Assign images to specific locations. Let's say you're trying to remember this grocery list: milk, chocolate chip cookies, and bananas.

Place images of each of those items at your chosen locations. Or, to make it more memorable, create vivid images representing each item and place those at different locations.

The more animated and outrageous, the better. For example, you could picture a waterfall of milk pouring over your closet door, your living room lamp teetering on top of a mountain of chocolate chip cookies, and a dog juggling bananas while standing on its bed.

While this technique may sound absurd, it does work. Just take it from five-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis , who uses the memory palace technique to help him quickly remember a full deck of cards, in sequence.

Reciting information is a useful way to memorize something fast because it forces you to actively engage with the information as opposed to passively taking everything in , which, in turn, increases your ability to remember and recall it later on.

Here are some practical ways to add reciting to your memorization toolkit. While typing your notes might be faster and more convenient, especially if you have to take in a lot of information, there are advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way i. In a study , researchers Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M.

Oppenheimer examined the effects on learning and retention when students took notes by hand versus on a laptop. In terms of generative note-taking e.

The researchers suggest two possible reasons. First, there are fewer possible distractions, such as checking emails or social media, when writing notes. Second, generative note-taking encourages students to reframe the information into their own words, which aids in encoding.

Spaced repetition is a memorization technique that involves reviewing the same information at increasing intervals until that information is embedded into your long-term memory. If you've ever tried to learn a new language using apps like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone, you've used spaced repetition.

Here's a simple way to apply this technique. Let's say you're learning another language and you need help remembering new vocabulary. Write the word in your native tongue on a flashcard.

Or, to make it more fun, sketch an image of the word. Then review the flashcards daily. As you become more consistent recalling your new vocabulary words, you can increase the time between reviews from daily to weekly to monthly.

If you need to create a lot of flashcards, you can also use apps, like Quizlet , to do the heavy lifting for you. Tapping into the power of imagery and storytelling can significantly boost your memory because it encourages you to establish stronger connections with the information you're trying to remember.

Here are some practical ways to do this. The use of visual stimuli is a common method used to learn and recall information. Here are some strategies you can use to enhance your visual memory. Turn the sound of names into images. If you have difficulty remembering people's names , try connecting their names with an image.

For example, if a stranger introduces himself as Mike, you might picture him holding a microphone. Animate the images. Similar to creating visuals for your memory palace, the more animated and vivid you can make your images, the better.

Doing this creates stronger connections in your brain between the word and the image. Continuing with the name train, let's take the name Melanie. For this, you might visualize the person dressed in a gi, crushing a melon against their knee. I bet you won't forget that visual anytime soon.

Let's say you're going to a dog training seminar. Your best friend has a dog, and they want you to share some of your key takeaways after.

So you furiously scribble down notes, ask questions, and scribble some more. This goes to the heart of the Protégé Effect , which suggests that people put in more effort to learn information when they know they're going to teach it to someone else.

Then when you share your key takeaways, you're likely to explain the concepts you learned in your own words. You'll probably even demonstrate a few of these lessons while explaining the concepts, which will make it more meaningful.

And these acts—paraphrasing and adding meaning to information—all help with encoding. Turns out, taking care of your body also takes care of your brain.