Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there?
It has been tested, and the room is to blame. Memory declined when people moved from one room to another. It happened in rooms on a screen and in real ones. Sending people back to the room where they had started did not bring the memory back. The report is titled "Walking through doorways causes forgetting".
So that lapse is no sign of a failing brain. The explanation offered is that memory files things by scene. Change the scene, and the last one gets put away.
Which raises a fair question about everything sold to sharpen memory. If forgetting has causes this ordinary, what do the remedies do?
This article takes seven of the best-known natural ones and puts each to its test: ginkgo, omega-3, turmeric, rosemary, exercise, mental stimulation and sleep. The score, before the detail: one fails, three have thin support, and three work. The three that work are not sold in bottles.
Why names vanish
Or struggled to remember someone's name moments after being introduced? That has a cause as well.
People were shown strangers' faces and given a surname and an occupation for each. The occupations stuck and the names did not, even when the word was the same. As the report put it: "It is much harder to recall that a person's surname is Baker than to recall that a person is a baker."
A baker comes with flour, ovens and early mornings. Baker comes with nothing.
Hermann Ebbinghaus knew it in 1885. To test memory with meaning kept out of the way, he made himself learn lists of invented syllables of the DAX and BOK kind, and charted how fast they slipped away. A stranger's name is one of his syllables.
In a later test, when names were given a meaning, the gap disappeared. So the fix is cheap. On hearing a name, hang something on it: Baker, with flour on his hands.
Then say it back. Across eight experiments, words spoken aloud were remembered better than words read silently, because the spoken ones stood out from the rest. It worked for made-up words too, and a name is a made-up word. "Good to meet you, Mr Baker" is doing a job.
1. Ginkgo: fails
Ginkgo comes from one of the oldest tree species on Earth. It is the last survivor of an order that first appeared over 290 million years ago. Single trees have lived more than 1,600 years, and some came through the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. The extract is sold on the claim that it improves blood flow to the brain.
Even the name is a lapse. In 1690 in Nagasaki, Engelbert Kaempfer, the first Westerner to examine the tree, is thought to have written the Japanese ginkyō down wrongly. The misspelling stuck.
It was given the test such a claim deserves. In it, 3,069 adults aged 72 to 96 took ginkgo extract or a dummy pill for about six years. Dementia developed in 277 of those on ginkgo and 246 of those on the dummy. Memory declined at the same rate in both groups.
Younger, healthy people fare no better. Across 13 tests with 1,132 participants, the effect on memory was "close to zero".
Ginkgo can also interfere with blood-thinning medicines. The tree is a survivor. Its extract has not survived testing.
2. Omega-3: eat the fish
Omega-3 fats are part of the structure of brain cells, and they come in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and sardines.
As food, the record is good. Across 21 follow-ups of 181,580 people, some lasting two decades, each extra serving of fish a week went with a 5% lower risk of dementia. That is a link, and people who eat fish differ from those who do not in more than fish.
As a pill, it thins out. In healthy older adults, three tests with 3,536 people found no difference in thinking scores after up to 40 months. One test did find something: 485 adults aged 55 and over whose memory had already slipped made fewer errors on a learning task after 24 weeks on DHA, one of the omega-3s in fish.
So the answer is fish on the plate, and a tin of is the easy version. A capsule is the weaker option, and its best showing is in people whose memory is already slipping.
3. Turmeric: unproven
Turmeric's active compound is curcumin, and the tests use specially made extracts of it. The spice in the jar has not been tested this way.
There are two worth knowing, and they disagree. In one, 40 adults aged 51 to 84 took an absorbable form of curcumin or a dummy for 18 months, and memory improved on the curcumin. In the other, 96 older adults took a different curcumin extract or a dummy for 12 months, and on nearly every measure there was no difference.
Forty people and ninety-six people cannot settle anything. Turmeric is a flavourful addition to your meals, and that is the reason to keep it. As a memory remedy it is unproven.
4. Rosemary: a little
There is a reason rosemary is associated with memory, and it is in Shakespeare. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance," says Ophelia in Hamlet. "Pray you, love, remember."
In the modern test, 144 adults did a set of memory and attention tasks in cubicles scented with rosemary oil, lavender oil or nothing. They were not told what was being tested. Rosemary improved the quality of their memory and slowed its speed. Lavender made working memory, the holding of things in mind, worse.
In a second, smaller test from the same team, 20 volunteers worked in a rosemary-scented cubicle and had blood taken afterwards. The more of one rosemary compound they had absorbed, the better they had done.
That is a small body of work. It is also a bottle of , which is the form both tests used, or a plant on a windowsill: low cost, low stakes, and Ophelia may have had a point.
5. Exercise: works
Physical activity is good for the brain over decades, and Dementia Risk: What It's Linked To, and What You Can Change, linked below, has what a year of brisk walking did to the brain's memory centre.
It also works on a single memory. People learned where a set of pictures belonged. Some then exercised straight away, some exercised four hours later, and some did not exercise. Two days on, the group that had waited four hours remembered most. Exercise straight after learning made no difference.
So if something matters, learn it, and move later the same day.
6. Mental stimulation: learn a technique
Just like your muscles, your brain needs regular exercise. The question is which kind.
Brain-training games are the kind that gets sold. In one test, 11,430 people trained several times a week for six weeks on tasks built to improve memory, reasoning and attention. They got better at every task they practised. On tasks they had not practised, there was no gain.
A technique is another matter. When novices spent six weeks learning the kind of method that memory athletes use, the wiring of their brains shifted towards the athletes' pattern, and the improvement in their memory was still there four months later.
The Greeks had a goddess for memory, Mnemosyne, and made her the mother of the nine Muses. Every art, in their telling, was memory's child.
The best known of these methods is theirs, and over two thousand years old. The story goes that the Greek poet Simonides identified the dead in a collapsed banquet hall by recalling where each guest had been sitting. The method built on it: picture a route you know well, place each thing you need to remember at a point along it, and walk the route in your mind to collect them.
Its most famous modern user was Solomon Shereshevsky, a Soviet journalist whose memory was tested for thirty years. He walked Gorky Street in Moscow in his mind and left what he needed along it. His nephew recalled that he "could be forgetful", and that he trained for hours a day.
The modern account is , by a journalist who took the method up and became the 2006 USA Memory Champion.
Learning: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth, linked below, has three more that hold up: testing yourself, spacing it out, and a few quiet minutes straight after you learn something.
7. Sleep: works twice
Sleep is when your brain consolidates memories. It turns out to matter on both sides of the learning.
Before you learn, it decides how much goes in. After a single night without sleep, people were less able to form new memories, and the part of the brain that lays them down was less active while they tried.
After you learn, it decides how much stays. Volunteers learned with a scent in the room. The same scent was then released while they slept. Released during deep sleep, it improved what they retained. Released at other stages of sleep, or while they were awake, it did nothing.
And sleep works in small sizes. People recalled more of a list of 30 words after a nap than after staying awake, and the gain was still there when the nap lasted about six minutes. Longer naps did better.
That gives the rosemary on the windowsill one more possible job, though that exact use is untested.
Bonus: water
Dehydration can impair cognitive function, and attention suffers most: pooled across 33 tests with 413 people, that was the clearest loss. Memory needs attention first, so it counts.
The "eight glasses a day" in every list of this kind has nothing behind it. 7 Fun and Tasty Ways to Stay Hydrated Without the Boredom has how to tell when you have had enough.
Four more for the list
Four things outside the seven have been put to tests of their own, and three of them have better records than ginkgo.
Creatine. Known from the gym, it is also part of how brain cells get their energy. Across six tests with 281 people, short-term memory and reasoning tended to improve, and results for everything else were mixed. One detail stands out: vegetarians gained more than meat-eaters. The name comes from the Greek word for meat, kreas, and meat is where it comes from on the plate. Low-carb, keto and carnivore eating already supply it.
A daily multivitamin. In one test, 3,562 older adults took one or a dummy pill. After a year, memory on a word-recall test was better on the multivitamin, by about what 3.1 years of ageing takes away. On the other tests it made no difference. Memory is the whole of the claim: The Quiet Signals of Mineral Deficiency has what 27 years of daily multivitamins did not buy.
Bacopa. A herb with a long history in Indian traditional medicine. Across nine tests lasting twelve weeks or more, with 518 people, it made attention faster. The pooled result did not show better memory, so file it under attention.
Lion's mane. The mushroom sold for memory rests on one small test. Thirty adults aged 50 to 80 whose thinking was already mildly impaired took it or a dummy for 16 weeks. Scores rose on the mushroom, and fell again within four weeks of stopping. One test, thirty people, all of them impaired to begin with.
None is a miracle. The first three have been tested harder than turmeric. The fourth has not.
What your phone remembers for you
Two habits work against memory, and both live in your pocket.
The camera. People on a museum tour were told to photograph some objects and only look at others. They remembered fewer of the objects they had photographed, and fewer details about them. One thing removed the effect: zooming in on a single part of the object, which made them look properly.
The search engine. When people expected to be able to look a fact up later, they remembered the fact less well and where to find it better.
Neither is a reason to give up the phone. For the things you want to keep, look first and photograph second.
When forgetting is a warning sign
Occasional forgetfulness is normal: doorways, names and lost keys, at any age. The first article linked below has the changes that are worth having checked. It also has the everyday medicines that work against memory when taken for years, the older drowsy antihistamines among them.
One cause is worth knowing because it can be tested for: a lasting shortage of vitamin B12 can show up as poor memory. Why Am I Always Tired: When Chronic Exhaustion Has a Cause That Sleep Can't Fix has who runs short.
One memory, start to finish
Here is the whole article applied to a single thing you want to keep.
Give it a meaning and a place. Hang something on it, and set it down at a point on a route you know.
Say it aloud. That makes it stand out from everything you only thought.
Take a few quiet minutes. Before you pick up anything else.
Move later the same day. Four hours on was the gap that worked.
Sleep on it. A full night if you can. A nap counts.
Back through the door
The key to success is consistency, and the three remedies that passed all reward it: move, learn with a method, sleep.
You forgot why you came into the room because of the doorway. No capsule was ever going to fix that.
Tonight, pick one thing you want to keep, picture it somewhere along your route to the front door, and sleep on it.
Worried about memory in the long run? Dementia Risk: What It's Linked To, and What You Can Change — what dementia is linked to, starting with your hearing, and when to get memory checked.
Want what you learn to stay learned? Learning: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth — spacing, self-testing and eight more habits that make learning stick.
Know someone with a bottle of ginkgo on the kitchen shelf? Send them this, and point them to remedy 1.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If you take regular medicines, check any new supplement against them before you start.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
Sources
Radvansky GA, Krawietz SA, Tamplin AK (2011). Walking through Doorways Causes Forgetting: Further Explorations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64(8):1632–1645. doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2011.571267
McWeeny KH, Young AW, Hay DC, Ellis AW (1987). Putting names to faces. British Journal of Psychology 78(2):143–149. doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1987.tb02235.x
Wikipedia. Hermann Ebbinghaus. en.wikipedia.org
Cohen G (1990). Why is it difficult to put names to faces? British Journal of Psychology 81(3):287–297. doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1990.tb02362.x
MacLeod CM, Gopie N, Hourihan KL, Neary KR, Ozubko JD (2010). The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36(3):671–685. doi.org/10.1037/a0018785
Wikipedia. Ginkgo biloba. en.wikipedia.org
DeKosky ST, Williamson JD, Fitzpatrick AL, et al. (2008). Ginkgo biloba for Prevention of Dementia: A Randomized Controlled Trial. JAMA 300(19):2253–2262. doi.org/10.1001/jama.2008.683
Snitz BE, O'Meara ES, Carlson MC, et al. (2009). Ginkgo biloba for Preventing Cognitive Decline in Older Adults: A Randomized Trial. JAMA 302(24):2663–2670. doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.1913
Laws KR, Sweetnam H, Kondel TK (2012). Is Ginkgo biloba a cognitive enhancer in healthy individuals? A meta-analysis. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental 27(6):527–533. doi.org/10.1002/hup.2259
Zhang Y, Chen J, Qiu J, et al. (2016). Intakes of fish and polyunsaturated fatty acids and mild-to-severe cognitive impairment risks: a dose-response meta-analysis of 21 cohort studies. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 103(2):330–340. doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.115.124081
Sydenham E, Dangour AD, Lim WS (2012). Omega 3 fatty acid for the prevention of cognitive decline and dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (6):CD005379. doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD005379.pub3
Yurko-Mauro K, McCarthy D, Rom D, et al. (2010). Beneficial effects of docosahexaenoic acid on cognition in age-related cognitive decline. Alzheimer's & Dementia 6(6):456–464. doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2010.01.013
Small GW, Siddarth P, Li Z, et al. (2018). Memory and Brain Amyloid and Tau Effects of a Bioavailable Form of Curcumin in Non-Demented Adults: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled 18-Month Trial. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 26(3):266–277. doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2017.10.010
Rainey-Smith SR, Brown BM, Sohrabi HR, et al. (2016). Curcumin and cognition: a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind study of community-dwelling older adults. British Journal of Nutrition 115(12):2106–2113. doi.org/10.1017/S0007114516001203
Wikipedia. Rosemary. en.wikipedia.org
Moss M, Cook J, Wesnes K, Duckett P (2003). Aromas of rosemary and lavender essential oils differentially affect cognition and mood in healthy adults. International Journal of Neuroscience 113(1):15–38. doi.org/10.1080/00207450390161903
Moss M, Oliver L (2012). Plasma 1,8-cineole correlates with cognitive performance following exposure to rosemary essential oil aroma. Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology 2(3):103–113. doi.org/10.1177/2045125312436573
van Dongen EV, Kersten IHP, Wagner IC, Morris RGM, Fernández G (2016). Physical Exercise Performed Four Hours after Learning Improves Memory Retention and Increases Hippocampal Pattern Similarity during Retrieval. Current Biology 26(13):1722–1727. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.071
Owen AM, Hampshire A, Grahn JA, et al. (2010). Putting brain training to the test. Nature 465(7299):775–778. doi.org/10.1038/nature09042
Dresler M, Shirer WR, Konrad BN, et al. (2017). Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory. Neuron 93(5):1227–1235.e6. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.003
Wikipedia. Mnemosyne. en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia. Method of loci. en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia. Solomon Shereshevsky. en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia. Joshua Foer. en.wikipedia.org
Yoo SS, Hu PT, Gujar N, Jolesz FA, Walker MP (2007). A deficit in the ability to form new human memories without sleep. Nature Neuroscience 10(3):385–392. doi.org/10.1038/nn1851
Rasch B, Büchel C, Gais S, Born J (2007). Odor Cues During Slow-Wave Sleep Prompt Declarative Memory Consolidation. Science 315(5817):1426–1429. doi.org/10.1126/science.1138581
Lahl O, Wispel C, Willigens B, Pietrowsky R (2008). An ultra short episode of sleep is sufficient to promote declarative memory performance. Journal of Sleep Research 17(1):3–10. doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00622.x
Wittbrodt MT, Millard-Stafford M (2018). Dehydration Impairs Cognitive Performance: A Meta-analysis. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 50(11):2360–2368. doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000001682
Avgerinos KI, Spyrou N, Bougioukas KI, Kapogiannis D (2018). Effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function of healthy individuals: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Experimental Gerontology 108:166–173. doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2018.04.013
Wikipedia. Creatine. en.wikipedia.org
Yeung LK, Alschuler DM, Wall M, et al. (2023). Multivitamin Supplementation Improves Memory in Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 118(1):273–282. doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.05.011
Kongkeaw C, Dilokthornsakul P, Thanarangsarit P, Limpeanchob N, Scholfield CN (2014). Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials on cognitive effects of Bacopa monnieri extract. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 151(1):528–535. doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2013.11.008
Mori K, Inatomi S, Ouchi K, Azumi Y, Tuchida T (2009). Improving effects of the mushroom Yamabushitake (Hericium erinaceus) on mild cognitive impairment: a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. Phytotherapy Research 23(3):367–372. doi.org/10.1002/ptr.2634
Henkel LA (2014). Point-and-Shoot Memories: The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour. Psychological Science 25(2):396–402. doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504438
Sparrow B, Liu J, Wegner DM (2011). Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Science 333(6043):776–778. doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745
Wikipedia. Vitamin B12 deficiency. en.wikipedia.org