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Memory Retention Research Paper

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Research: Memory retention is essential to all human beings. It is a fundamental function of our brain: whether it be memorizing people’s names, memorizing math formulas, or memorizing the location of the car keys. We all recognize the importance of memorization and we all seek ways to improve our memory retention skills. Many different parts of the brain control a person’s memory, but the most important part is the frontal lobe. It controls working and short term memory. Due to the processes of stimulus of the sensory memory which transmits to the frontal lobe, people can, on average, recall 7 items after looking at them for 15 seconds. Neuroscience journal In the frontal lobe, encoding, storage, and retrieval occur in an effort to not lose …show more content…

In a German university, the effect of mid-day napping was tested on 41 volunteers who took a word/word-pair recall memory test. They tested the variable of an hour long nap against the variable of an hour long movie clip. Researchers found that for some of the subjects, memory retention skills were five times better after taking a mid-day nap than those who watched the movie. But, their memory retention skills were just as good before the nap as after the nap. Researchers also found that only certain people’s memories benefit from a nap, and others stay unaffected. More research is necessary on this topic to find any sort of conclusion about the effect of the physical activity of napping has on memory retention skills. Those at the German university have a theory on why napping could improve a person’s memory. They believe that naps improve hippocampus function, the region in the brain where short term memory consolidation occurs. When awake, a person’s hippocampus will have an active neural firing pattern--one that activates during learning and during recall. When a person takes a mid-day nap, the hippocampus “tags” and consolidates the information it took in. As an effect of that process, the hippocampus is able to replay those “tags” upon wanting to recall information. The hippocampus’s ability to reorganize itself during sleep could possibly contribute to a person’s improvement in memory retention …show more content…

The beneficial activity of walking also causes an improvement of creativity according to Dr. Oppezzo of Stanford University. Dr. Oppezzo created a matched pair experimental design using undergraduate student volunteers as subjects that tests the variable of walking versus sitting and inside walking versus outside walking. he conducted 3 experiments in which she compared tests of GAU (creative divergent thinking) and CRA (convergent thinking) using the variables of walking on a treadmill, sitting, walking then sitting, sitting then walking, sitting twice, and outdoors walking. For her last test she compared tests of creative analogy generation with the variables of sitting inside, walking on a treadmill inside, walking outside, and rolling on a wheelchair outside. In all of her findings, she saw an increase in creativity following or during the physical activity of walking. The increase in creativity she found was also independent of location of the test, meaning that being outdoors did not help or hinder memory retention skills when compared to results from indoors. This suggests that some physical aspect of walking stimulates the brain’s memory system. But, more research needs to be conducted to understand the biological cause of this effect, which Dr. Oppezzo calls “acute.” She is unable to provide any scientifically based answers to the results of her experiment because it is still unclear

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