Ignoring useless information aids memory: study

[bomohwkl]

Extract from nature

Nature 438, 500-503 (24 November 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04171

Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory
Edward K. Vogel1, Andrew W. McCollough1 and Maro G. Machizawa1

Top of pageThe capacity of visual short-term memory is highly limited, maintaining only three to four objects simultaneously1, 2. This extreme limitation necessitates efficient mechanisms to select only the most relevant objects from the immediate environment to be represented in memory and to restrict irrelevant items from consuming capacity3, 4, 5. Here we report a neurophysiological measure of this memory selection mechanism in humans that gauges an individual's efficiency at excluding irrelevant items from being stored in memory. By examining the moment-by-moment contents of visual memory6, we observe that selection efficiency varies substantially across individuals and is strongly predicted by the particular memory capacity of each person. Specifically, high capacity individuals are much more efficient at representing only the relevant items than are low capacity individuals, who inefficiently encode and maintain information about the irrelevant items present in the display. These results provide evidence that under many circumstances low capacity individuals may actually store more information in memory than high capacity individuals. Indeed, this ancillary allocation of memory capacity to irrelevant objects may be a primary source of putative differences in overall storage capacity.

I have been using this method for long!

[InfoSource]

I'm sure if a study was done on individuals who meditate vs. non meditaters you'd see that individuals who meditate retain higher memory capacity

Meditation is a great way to relieve oneself of the clutter of information which is useless and is better off disregarded in place of things like inspirational stories, music, and creative ideas that will keep you motivated to live with a spiritual purpose in a largely materialistic centred world
.

[Bastian]

Hmmm, that could explain why I have a memory like swiss cheese. It does at least 'fit the picture' since I also have a very poor capacity to filter out noise, and this is true in many different ways, eg: If someone is talking I get distracted much more easily than other people by any other noise (TV, radio, traffic, etc); I just can't concentrate if someone else is listening to the TV or radio; etc..

All the above weaknesses are worsened when my immune disorder is more active, which in turn is influenced by my diet (of course other more sturdy individuals wont be influenced so heavily by diet as I am!).

I suspect that the reason why these 'filters' are less effective when my immune disorder is active is just because my poor physical health is impairing the healthy function of the area of the brain in question.

PS: I must admit I am a little uncomfortable talking about these weaknesses of mine, however I feel it would be a disservice if I wasn't candid about these observations.

[Bastian]

I have actually been thinking of writing some little games for testing and improving my memory. This has me thinking that I should try to add some extra 'data' that the user will have to quickly filter out.

[Robanan]

I have actually been thinking of writing some little games for testing and improving my memory. This has me thinking that I should try to add some extra 'data' that the user will have to quickly filter out.

I supprt your idea Bastian. You are being most creative.