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Do not remember names and faces: this is how closures affect our memory

Various studies have found that the ability to remember names, faces, and stories we heard from different people was significantly impaired during closures.

How soon will we be able to restore the state of memory to its former state?

And how might all this affect us in the future?

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• Clasp

• Insulation

• Social distance

• Corona

• covid-19

• Memory

Walla!

health

Friday, 13 August 2021, 07:05 Updated: 07:17

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In the video: Sharon Elrai Price says closure is not mandatory (Photo: Knesset Channel)

The possibility of another closure (fourth in number) due to the rise in corona morbidity hovers over our heads, and while there is much talk about the negative effects it has brought with it on the economy and the sense of loneliness, recently published data points to significant harm in another area: human memory, especially social memory.

Our social abilities are based on memory function: recognizing faces, remembering people's names, implicit memory and memory of previous interactions.

These elements directly affect our ability to build relationships with the people around us and a normal and healthy social life.

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"Our brain, which is used to storing huge amounts of information, works so that it constantly creates new connections and strengthens existing ones. In situations of closure and isolation, no social interactions are created such as meetings, conferences and social gatherings, so in terms of social memory Fewer new connections, which directly affects memory function, "explains Itai Aniel, an expert in developing strategies for improving memory.

You can also meet through the window.

Elderly woman in isolation (Photo: ShutterStock)

A study at the University of Virginia centers data from a number of studies examining animals with human-like brains and showed that even temporary isolation during adulthood impairs social memory, as well as familiar facial recognition, and working memory (the type of memory that allows us to remember a recipe while we cook) .

Isolated humans tend to forget just as much: research expeditions that previously went on mission months in Antarctica and were tested upon their return showed significant damage to the hippocampus - the central structure in the brain responsible for memory functions and new memories, after 14 months of social isolation. "Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life," Aniel adds.

Another study found that marmoset monkeys that had been in isolation had difficulty at first after returning to social interaction, but adapted quickly and even spent more time with their new friends.

"This can be attributed to the abilities of the flexible brain and how it knows how to adapt to new and changing situations, along with the ability to connect through memory the new situation created to a previous situation it has faced in the past," adds Aniel.

There are also solutions

So how to maintain social memory during isolation or closure?

Aniel has some useful tips:

1. Create interesting social experiences

Our brain absorbs and remembers excellently interesting social experiences from the past.

We all have a lot of evidence of this from social events that happened decades ago and that we remember well because they were experiential and interesting for us.

If so, it is important that we initiate and create such new events that allow us to create social encounters within existing constraints, whether online encounters or limited frontal encounters and thus continue to train the mind to remember names of people, faces and interesting topics related to them.

Interesting sessions help us train the mind, even if they are online.

Zoom meeting (Photo: ShutterStock)

It is important to note that whenever we make new and strengthening existing social connections, we simultaneously create new connections between nerve cells in the brain, called synapses, and strengthen existing connections in it. Also, the more interesting the social experience is for us, the more time we will be able to remember it, so it is important that we initiate and create interesting experiences.

2. Focusing the brain and setting goals

Set clear goals for the brain according to what is important for you to remember from each social gathering and accordingly practice it and set goals for improvement. For example: remember all the names of the people in the social gathering, where each of them lives and what each of them is engaged in. The decision you make to remember these details, even if they are not really important to you, but only to train the memory, will help your brain cooperate and allow it to focus on the details, listen to them during the social encounter and be better able to absorb them better. It is recommended to perform intermediate exercises during the session and if necessary repeat the details again to make sure that they are absorbed in memory and in addition at the end of the session briefly summarize the important details according to the goals we defined as a type of memory test and additional practice.

3. Social memory training

There are many ways to train memory in social interactions that of course can be adapted to existing limitations, are through joint learning of new topics, thinking and memory games, participation in lectures, realization of hobbies, etc.

In these ways one can both effectively train social memory and also enjoy at the same time.

Thinking and memory games as well as hobbies will help you effectively train social memory.

Crossword (Photo: ShutterStock)

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4. Have Interesting Conversations The

amount of information we pick up and retrieve from memory during conversations is significantly greater than we normally estimate.

In general, interesting conversations are a great way to train the mind to improve memory in general, and social memory in particular.

In conversations we also learn about the person we are talking to while strengthening the relationship with him, and also about ourselves when we choose and recall from memory the information relevant to the conversation, the right words and everything the words describe such as pictures, events, names, places, times, sounds, smells etc. '.

In addition, during the conversations we practice and strengthen the memory through a process of re-consolidation (re-crystallization) that it goes through incessantly.

In this process, every time we retrieve information from memory we simultaneously also retrieve it once more and thus strengthen its grip on memory.

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