MEMORY IMPROVEMENT - STRESS

Stress

Research has found that chronic and acute stress have adverse effects on memory processing systems. Therefore, it is important to find mechanisms in which one can reduce the amount of stress in their lives when seeking to improve memory.

·          Chronic stress has been shown to have negative impacts on the brain, especially in memory processing systems.The hippocampus is vulnerable to repeated stress due to adrenal steroid stress hormones. Elevated glucocorticoids, a class of adrenal steroid hormones, results in increased cortisol, a well known stress response hormone in the brain, and glucocorticoids are known to affect memory. Prolonged high cortisol levels, as seen in chronic stress, have been shown to result in reduced hippocampal volume as well as deficits in hippocampal-dependent memory, as seen in impaired declarative, episodic, spatial, and contextual memory performance.Chronic, long-term high cortisol levels affect the degree of hippocampal atrophy, resulting in as much as a 14% hippocampal volume reduction and impaired hippocampus-dependent memory when compared to elderly subjects with decreased or moderate cortisol levels. An example may be found in the London taxi drivers, as the anterior hippocampus was hypothesized to decrease in volume as a result of elevated cortisol levels from stress.

·          Acute stress: a more common form of stress, results in the release of adrenal steroids resulting in impaired short-term and working memory processes such as selective attention, memory consolidation, as well as long-term potentiation.The human brain has a limited short- term memory capacity to process information, which results in constant competition between stimuli to become processed. Cognitive contro processes such as selective attention reduce this competition by prioritizing where attentional resources are distributed. Attention is crucial in memory processing and enhances encoding and strength of memory traces. It is therefore important to selectively attend to relevant information and ignore irrelevant information in order to have the greatest success at remembering.

Animal and human studies provide evidence as they report that acute stress impairs the maintenance of short-term memory and working memory and aggravates neuropsychiatric disorders involved in short-term and working memory such as depression and schizophrenia. Animal studies with rats have also shown that exposure to acute stress reduces the survival of hippocampal neurons.One of the roles of the central nervous system (CNS) is to help adapt to stressful environments. It has been suggested that acute stress may have a protective function for individuals more vulnerable to their own stress hormones. Some individuals, for example, are not able to decrease or habituate their cortisol elevation, which plays a major role in hippocampal atrophy. This over-response of the central nervous system to stress therefore causes maladaptive chronic stress-like effects to memory processing systems.^[6]

MEMORY IMPROVEMENT - COGNITIVE TRINING

Cognitive training

Discovering that the brain can change as a result of experience has resulted in the development of cognitive training. Cognitive training improves cognitive functioning, which can increase working memory capacity and improve cognitive skills and functions in clinical populations with working memory deficiencies. Cognitive training may focus on attention, speed of processing, nerofeedback, dual- tasking and perceptual training.

Cognitive training has been shown to improve cognitive abilities for up to five years. In one experiment, the goal was to prove that cognitive training would increase the cognitive functions in older adults by using three types of training (memory, reasoning and speed of processing). It was found that improvements in cognitive ability not only was maintained over time but had a positive transfer effect on everyday functioning. Therefore, these results indicate that each type of cognitive training can produce immediate and lasting improvements in each kind of cognitive ability, thus suggesting that training can be beneficial to improving memory.

Cognitive training in areas other than memory has actually been seen to generalize and transfer to memory systems. For example, the Improvement in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training (IMPACT) study by the American Geriatrics Society in 2009 demonstrated that cognitive training designed to improve accuracy and speed of the auditory system presented improvements in memory and attention system functioning as well as auditory functioning.

Two cognitive training methods are:

·         Strategy training is used to help individuals remember increasing amounts of information of a particular type. It involves teaching effective approaches to encoding, maintenance, and/ or recall from working memory. The main goal of strategy training is to increase performance in tasks requiring retention of information. Studies strongly support the claim that the amount of information remembered can be increased by rehearsing out loud, telling a story with stimuli, or using imagery to make stimuli stand out. Strategy training has been used in children with Down syndrome and also in older adult populations.

·         Core training involves repetition of demanding working memory tasks. Some core training programs involve a combination of several tasks with widely varying stimulus types. The diversity of exercises increase the chance that one of, or some combination of the training tasks, will produce desired training-related gains. A goal of cognitive training is to impact the ease and success of cognitive performance in one’s daily life. Core training can reduce the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and improve the quality of life involving patients with multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and also, those who have suffered from stroke. 

The manner in which a training study is conducted could affect the outcomes or perspection of the outcomes. Expectancy/effort effects occur when the experimenter subconsciously influences the participants to perform a desired result. One form of expectancy bias relates to placebo effects, which is the belief that training should have a positive influence on cognition. A control group may help to eliminate this bias because this group would not expect to benefit from the training. Researchers sometimes generalize their results, which can be misleading and incorrect. An example is to generalize findings of a single task and interpret the observed improvements as a broadly defined cognitive ability. The study may result in inconsistency if there are a variety of comparison groups used in working memory training, which is impacted by: training and assessment timeline, assessment conditions, training setting and control group selection.

MEMORY IMPROVEMENT - DIET

Diet

Healthy fruits and vegetables

Research suggests that what food we eat can influence memory processing. Glucose, flavanoids, fat and calories all affect memory areas of the brain.

·          Flavonoids and photochemicals mainly found in plant-based foods known for their antioxidant activity and are found to improve memory.

The main dietary groups of flavonoids are:

 flavonols , found in onions, leeks and broccoli

 flavones found in parsley and celery

isoflavones found in soybean and soya products

flavanones found in citrus fruit and tomatoes

flavanols which are abundant in green tea, red wine and cocoa

 anthocyanidins whose sources include red wine and berry fruits.

Human and animal research using flavonoids such as grapes, tea, cocoa, blueberries, as well as ginkgo bilobo extracts, have all shown beneficial effects on mental performance. Flavonoids interact with brain - derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a neurotrphin important to long-term potentiation (LTP), to improve human memory by enhancing neuronal function, stimulating neuronal regeneration (neurogenesis) and protecting existing neurons against oxidative and metabolic stress.They also interact with a signalling pathway increasing neurotrophin  proteins, synaptic strength between neurons and synaptic plasticity. Human brain-imaging studies demonstrate that when consuming flavanol-rich cocoa, there is an increase in cortical blood flow, important to the hippocampus for facilitation of neurogenesis. Flavonoids are suggested to be used as a dietary intervention to improve memory as they are able to enhance neuronal function, stimulate neuronal regeneration and protect existing neurons.{Rwehumbiza, Respicius (2010)}

·         Glucose. Research has suggested that glucose, a major source of energy used by the central nervous system and transported from blood to brain for cognitive functions, may enhance memory processing by altering neural metabolism and neurotransmitter synthesis in the brain.Glucose influences the synthesis of hippocampal acetylcholine (ACh), an essential neurotransmitter in the brain.{Rwehumbiza, Respicius (2010)}

As a person ages, their body's ability to utilize glucose decreases. Studies on glucose and memory have indicated that moderate increases in glucose levels may enhance memory formation in both animals and humans and may play a major role in memory deficits found in aging, healthy young subjects, and people with Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome A dose-response relationship for glucose effects on memory was found to represent an inverted-U, in which moderate doses enhance memory while higher doses impair it. Eating meals more frequently during the day can aid in maintaining moderate blood glucose levels, which provides the brain with a consistent source of high energy.{Rwehumbiza, Respicius (2010)}

·          Fats: Animal studies have shown that diets rich in saturated fats, hydrogenated fats and or cholesterol can impair cognitive performance, memory and hippocampal morphology. These rats produced more errors in working memory maze tasks and indicated a loss of dendritic integrity in the hippocampus as seen from reduced hippocampal staining and inflammation. Human studies on Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be used to suggest that saturated fats, cholesterol, high calorie diets that are vitamin and antioxidant deficient promote the onset of the Alzheimer's disease whereas diets high in mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids as well as omega-3 fatty acids however may decrease the risk of AD. Individuals with high cholesterol diets have also been seen to increase risk of AD, while those taking cholesterol-lowering drugs may have a decreased risk.

·         Calories: High calorie diets have been found to increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease; Caloric restriction can improve memory by providing a protective function which reduces the amount of neuronal dysfunction and degeneration. Moving away from a high calorie diet can improve memory by producing brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) that enhances memory through synaptic growth and protection.

Data from studies suggests that diets low in saturated fat, cholesterol and calories may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD), may aid in protecting and improving memory.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

The first two years of a child's life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self"; most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. This is a crucial part of the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people. Early care must emphasize links to family, home culture, and home language by uniquely caring for each child, which is known as the key worker system. Parents can be seen as a child's first teacher and therefore an integral part of the early learning process.

Infant education is the education of children before they would normally enter primary school. The term "infant" is typically applied to children between the ages of 1 month and 12 months.

Early childhood education focuses on children's learning through play, based on the research and philosophy of Jean Piaget.  This belief is centered on the "power of play". Play meets the physical, intellectual, language, emotional and social needs (PILES) of children. Tassoni suggests that"some play  opportunities will develop specific individual areas of development, but many will develop several areas.”  Depending on the child's interests will influence the development of skills in different areas of play. It is important practitioners promote children’s development through play by using various types of play on a daily basis.

It has been thought that children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through play-based activities such as dramatic play, art, and social games. The theory of play stems from children's natural curiosity and imagination, allowing topic lessons to occur, Key issues of play are having a healthy and safe environment, having plenty of space, correct supervision, quality of care/environment, the attitudes of the practitioner and their cultural awareness as well as a good knowledge of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS

ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS

Acquired characteristics are those we develop as a result of our experience, as compared with those with which we are born.  The term "acquired characteristics" is used in connection with the age-old controversy of heredity vs. environment.

The language we speak, for example, is an acquired characteristics. Our ability to speak is inherited.  All people, no matter where they are born, no matter what their experiences may be have the capacity to learn to speak a particular language-that is, unless they are born with some physical defect.  The language they do speak, however, is the result of their experience in a particular country.

Although musical talent may be in large measure inherited, the ability to play a particular instrument is another acquired characteristic.  A person, for example, who inherited to tonal sensitivity, or no ability to discriminate among various tones, would have enormous difficulty in learning to play a musical instrument well.  Yet, on the other hand, a person born with great musical talent might never learn either to compose or play music if his life did not provide him with the experience necessary to add acquired characteristics to his hereditary potential.

At the present time, although there are still many  people who believe that much of our personality is hereditary, the best evidence to date suggests that all of our personality is acquired rather than inherited, We believe this despite the fact that there is frequently a marked personality resemblance between children and their parents. The reason for this similarity, we feel, is largely the result of learning, or the acquisition of characteristics through the imitation of our parents.