Professor Catherine Loveday, Professor on the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience BSc Honours course, was interviewed on talkRADIO about learning and improving memory.
Professor Loveday said: “When you’re talking about learning, if the brain thinks something is boring and not relevant, then it just doesn’t hang on to it because why would you fill your mind with things that you don’t need? So, actually, that’s one of the tricks to trying to learn things is to make it seem relevant and important and interesting and enjoyable, because then we’re sort of prime to say ‘well that’s a good thing, I’m going to hang on to that. That led to something good last time.’”
About teaching yourself to make your memory better, she said: “You can certainly get better at being able to hold on to key bits of information and you can improve your memory in lots and lots of different ways. Some really basic stuff like making sure you get enough sleep sounds really trivial but actually is really important because sleep is when we consolidate a lot of our memories.”