I’m not as young as I used to be. That’s not a bad thing. I have a family that I love, a business that is thriving, plans for the future, and I feel like I do a pretty good job in my various life roles (wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, co-worker). I don’t want to be a younger version of me, but I sure would love to have my youthful memory back. The process of having two children has proven to me that “baby brain” is permanent. This is personal experience not scientific fact. But, there is some research to suggest that a woman’s brain restructures itself during pregnancy, seemingly with the goal of honing skill sets used to recognize a baby’s needs and to be more attuned to social signals. This research suggests that these changes are long lasting (2 or more years). I personally believe that my ability to remember things declined significantly with my first son and then again when pregnant with my second, which happened well past 2 years ago. Alas, this old brain is not as good at holding on to details as it used to be, at least not the details that don’t pertain to my children.
I completed my thesis and dissertation on memory functions and continue to be fascinated with the brain’s ability to take in, process, store, and later retrieve information. Maybe because I struggle in this area, I have always been envious of those who seem to be able to hold on to massive amount of information easily. I work with children and adolescents with a history of head injury and have spent lots of time teaching them the skills needed to streamline the process of remembering using mnemonics. One of my favorites is the Method of Loci. Unfortunately, I do not mentally visualize very well so this is not one that works overly well for me personally. However, it is one of the more common methods that can be used to mentally train yourself to remember long lists of seemingly unrelated or pointless data, which your brain naturally struggles to retain. Research using such methods can also retrain and restructure your brain. So, for those of you cursing pregnancy hormones and the fifth time you went back home for that thing you forgot, consider a little brain gym time.
I ran across a trailer for a Netflix documentary released in 2018 called “Memory Games.” I have seen stories about memory champions before, but this documentary is more in depth. If you are interested in such mental gymnastics, it may be worth a watch. For a simple illustration of a specific application of the Method of Loci called the Memory Palace, check out the below link. Food for thought!
Video Example of the Memory Palace Technique (Method of Loci)
Trailer for Memory Games on Netflix