I’ve started boxing. Just the rather less combative “boxercise” version — there are no gum shields or rings or capes or squirting of water and pep talks. So there’s no actual head impact, which, of course, is possibly not great for memory…

In my tame version the set up is simple. Arrive, do a ‘warm up’ whilst starring at all your wobbly bits wobble in a mirror as you jump up and down waving your arms. The warm up leaves you utterly shagged and not at all ready to do boxing, but then you smack on a pair of gloves or pads, pair up with someone and pray they a) can take a punch but b) also not punch you in the face. It’s great for focus, for venting and… for memory.

Just as a quick caveat — I do actually have a memory. I work hard and recall complicated things all the time. But it’s the confidence in my memory that I lack.

So here comes the boxing vs mind bit. You quickly have to learn a short sequence of about 5 moves, or 3 then 5 moves alternation. Jab, jab, cross, upper hook, jab, side. Cross, cross, jab, slip, cross, jab. Or something. It takes me a bit to get to grips with — but I know I will. And that’s what has changed. I’ve got a new found confidence in my memory, it’s not a game changer but I’ve really noticed a difference. It’s like learning a dance sequence at school or a list of French vocab, I knew I could and now I remember that I can. It’s pretty amazing just having a teeny bit more confidence in your own memory, knowing that you will eventually get to grips with this. It is in your head. You can recall it, use it, argue it. I even know my boyfriends number now… well. Almost.

There’s evidence that exercise in general is great for your memory, but I’ve really found just having confidence in remembering basic sequences has really helped me.

In summary: take up something active that requires even the tiniest bit of sequence and memory. Recite a poem, dance, box.

USE IT

Lots of questions in this one — not many answers. I’d love to know your thoughts, drop me a line here or on twitter (indiarakusen)

In March we got back from a three week trip around Colombia. An incredible country packed with stunning scenery, colours, people, skies (go there). I’ve finally, just this week, imported all the pictures and videos from both our phones and cameras.

1187. Thats an average of 49.5 images or videos every day (or 4.1 every hour) And I remember taking every single one. For now, I also remember the moments in between, they’re mostly glorious. But what about in 10 years time, or 30? What will I remember beyond these stills, what did I absorb beyond what I saw down the lens?

And another important but more practical question — what the hell am I supposed to do with all of these? I’ve whittled them down to 600 half decent ones, but still… (Hands up for a REALLY boring night at ours staring at the laptop?! Anyone?)

Got me thinking — I didn’t have this problem seven years ago when we went to the north of India and we made two decisions. The first that we wouldn’t take our phones to India at all, we just took a small digital camera. The second decision was that we could only take one photo a day. Seems a bit ridiculous now but it threw up an important question — which moment or what thing that day was the ONE thing we would keep in digital form forever? It actually wasn’t hard. Most of the time we forgot we even had the camera, but then it became playful.

Sometimes the picture was of us together, or one of us and some scenery — but more often it was a foot or a door, or a plant or wall.

You’d never pick these pictures out, they’re perhaps not remarkable or edited at all, and definitely no filters. But when I see each one they create pretty strong emotions — and memories. I don’t just remember the photo, the taking of the picture, I remember all the spaces and moments around it. I remember conversations we had on the walks, faces of the people. My brain builds a story, like a bubble, around the images. It works my memory and I FEEL the moments again.

I have the most incredible memories of India, it’s a place that visually burns itself onto your brain anyway. The picture of the wall above brings back the whole dusty walk through Delhi, the tourists at India Gate, a visit to a palace with crying peacocks. The curves in the arches, the dogs outside our hotel.

This time I have loads of these tiny details documented. The dragon fly on the giant lilies, the moment he said this, the time we cycled there. The pictures are precious to me but I wonder at what point the images will override the memories I have. Will I become sort of dependent on them over my own recollections? How much of our time is spent watching events happen through a screen instead of absorbing them just at that moment?

It’s not news to anyone to say that we’re obsessively documenting our lives. I got back from a trip from Italy recently and my work colleagues barely asked how it was because they felt like they’d been there from the Instagram posts, which is firstly a bit embarrassing and secondly it really drove home that it’s become habit — and I’m worried this habit is eating away at my memory.

All of this said, if you trawl way back through your Facebook pictures, or albums, you are always going to see people or events that you have totally forgotten about. Moments that will make you happy, maybe sad, but always reignite something forgotten in your mind, and that’s surely brilliant?

OK OBVIOUSLY I DON’T HAVE THE ANSWER. I’m not sure who does. Here’s a bit of extra reading if you fancy it.

Here‘s an article with a round up of views on this from a couple of years ago.

“We know memories are reconstructive. It’s certainly possible that we are reconstructing our memories to make them more in line with photos that we are taking, or with photos that others take and show to us,”

It makes two points — that we no longer take photos to document our lives but rather to communicate them. Also it points to some research suggesting that logging your life using passive cameras can be very helpful to people with severe memory impairments.

I don’t know where I stand on this. But maybe I’ll know in 40 years or so.

I have a memory from when I was about 5 or 6. I woke in my bed in our cottage in Yorkshire and could here screams echoing around the woods that surrounded our house. Really chilling screams, bouncing from hill to hill.

It was the end of a hot summer evening, the sun had not quite fully disappeared but it was night. In my pink nightie I went downstairs to find my dad. The front door was open, he wasn’t anywhere to be found so I headed out and up the drive. I remember feeling scared, but I followed the circling and soaring sound of the rasping scream. It was, for sure, an animal scream — I knew the sound of an animal screaming from the pigs and the horses in the fields near us. I turned out of the drive to the left and could see in the half light my dad and the neighbour at the bottom of the track crouching by the fence. Dad was surprised when I appeared but was preoccupied — they had a red leather suitcase open and in the fence wedged in the chicken wire was a fox. It was stuck and screaming. The neighbour had thick work gloves on and both of them were wrestling to liberate the fox. It’s eyes were yellow and desperate, it’s head swirling and wagging like a flag. From it’s throat a huge squeaking screaming and it’s little claws scrabbling around the wire. Eventually they loosened it and slid it quickly into the suitcase, snapping it shut, where it scrabbled in it’s red case. The farmer was going to take it away and let it loose a few miles off.

I remember everything about that night to so well. How I felt, the cool summer on my skin, the eyes of the fox. The only problem? No one else does. Certainly not dad. It could have been a dream, I could have made it up. But it feels so so real.

It is — probably — a false memory.

Last night on our drive home from Somerset we heard on Radio 4 ‘Past Imperfect’ — a documentary about false memory. It’s something that professor Kate Jefferey touched on in a previous entry here. The idea that memory is not in fact our brains playing us back a home video. Every time you fire up a memory it alters slightly. But that’s altered memory, not necessarily false memory.

This programme explores how our memory can be totally manipulated, either by others or by ourselves and how this can be helpful or in some cases alarming. Could dietary manipulation — the foods we think we like and love — help with obesity or diabetes? How are witnesses or suspects manipulated in criminal cases and investigations? Obviously, and darkly, this is pretty lush territory for advertising or for big brother regimes.

The programme suggests we shouldn’t be too concerned about this on a personal level — but maybe we should just be more humble in our attitude towards our memory. Perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so sure about our memory- no matter how strong your conviction. No matter how vivid the screaming fox.

I think it’s always arresting but interesting to remember that actually all of our memories are inventions in some way- and perhaps we could find it liberating to think that trying to hold fast to memories isn’t as important, useful or as truthful as we think?

Last time I linked to an article by Kate Jeffery, Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience at UCL. In it she explained how memory isn’t the video replay we might hope it is (SORRY GUYS). Now Kate has kindly written this piece just for the Memory Blog — to help us all understand a little bit more. Phew. Over to you Kate, after this confusing, terrifying but beautiful picture of a network of neurons:

‘Memory is something we all think we understand, but what is a memory, really? And how do our brains make and store memories?

The “what” and “how” of memory is arguably the biggest question in psychology, and has been ever since the “father of psychology”, William James, said this over a hundred years ago:

“Memory being… altogether conditioned on [the ability to excite] brain-paths, its excellence in a given individual will depend partly on the number and partly on the persistence of these paths.”

James’ intuition was that memories somehow carve out paths, almost like channels, in the brain, and that the number and durability (and, we might also say, “depths”) of these paths accounts for how good our memories are. A century on, we think that is exactly what happens.

What is a “path” in the brain? The brain is made up of neurons, joined together by connectors known as synapses. Neurons send messages, known as action potentials (or more colloquially “nerve impulses”) to each other, and these messages need to make their way along each neuron and then jump across the synapse to the next neuron. A path can be thus be thought of as the route a message takes when it travels down a chain of neurons, crossing each synapse in turn as it moves from one neuron to the next.

When a new memory is formed, synapses change — they get stronger or weaker and thus create new routes for neural messages. The number, strength and persistence of these synapses thus controls how good the memory is. When a memory is old, and/or repeatedly re-visited, these synaptic connections become stronger and more durable, accounting for why our memories of early years are often more vivid than those of last week.

In old age, synapses become fewer in number, and weaker, so that nerve impulses are less reliably transmitted along a path. For most of us, this means being less confident in the reliability and clarity of our memories as we age. In Alzheimer’s disease, which causes a catastrophic loss of memory, the neurons themselves also become damaged and ailing so that the paths for memory become fewer and weaker; new memories do not form, and old memories become fainter, until sometimes only childhood ones remain.

William James’ insight concerning memory came about before we even knew about synapses, and was a remarkable piece of prescience. These days, neuroscientists are trying to figure out how to manipulate these processes, so that we might one day be able to repair damaged memory-paths. In the meantime, taking care of the ones you already have is a worthwhile investment of time!

This article — ‘Memory is a Labile Fabrication’ — by Kate Jeffery ( Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Dept. of Experimental Psychology, University College London) explores how memory is not the videotape playing back in our minds that we might believe, or even trust, it to be. Instead Kate argues that memory is ‘labile’.

Labile: (OED) Liable or prone to lapse / Prone to undergo displacement in position or change in nature, form, chemical composition, etc.; unstable.

She writes that ‘Very recently, it has been shown that memories aren’t just fragile when they have been re-activated, they can actually be altered.’ and that the liable nature of memories may allow for something called ‘Super Memories’…. sounds intriguing right? Read more here.

Kate will be very kindly contributing her expertise and guidance in memory in a couple of articles coming up. Watch this space. You can follow her @katejjeffery

Manon Bruinsma sees nursing homes as places full of people with the potential to become, create and react. It’s inspiring and reassuring.

She is the European Director of Music and Memory, the organisation bringing music to the eldery and infirm to improve their quality of life. She volunteered with Music and Memory for two years before beginning her official role in September 2015.

I spoke to Manon a couple of months ago and I’ve transcribed parts of our conversation below.

Manon Bruinsma:

“The idea of music helping people is not new at all.

I was a bit of a late flowerer when it comes to work. I was crazy about music and crazy about people so I decided to study music therapy in the Netherlands. It was like coming home. I got a job with young people in psychiatry for 8 years, then worked with war veterans and then I got a job at a nursing home.

The moment I entered the nursing home I felt it was a very special place.

People with dementia have a different way of communicating, it’s very direct. They would say things like ‘why don’t you remove that blotch on your face?’ or ‘You’re tired right? Why?’ and they don’t give up! Sometimes their language is inappropriate, but they sort of have a freedom to communicate.

I noticed music had an incredible effect on people sitting all day, passive. I would play my guitar and they would come to life. It was amazing.

But I was unhappy because the cost of me only treated two or three people, I felt powerless in helping people. Then a friend sent me the Henry video and it was like a flash of lightning. I had to do this. I contacted Dan (Dan Cohen, Executive Director of Music and Memory) and he coached me with my projects with iPods and headphones.

Dan is a great guy. He really wants to help spread the projects to places. He set out to do it because he was wondering where he’d end up when he was old and if they would offer him his favourite music there, he’s a big music lover. It turned out that no nursing home in the US was offering that.

The effect was incredible.

I never thought it would work like live music but people started talking more coherently, making more eye contact. There was even a woman who started reading a newspaper to me and she hadn’t read anything for years.

There was a woman who always needed a pill at 3pm because she got really agitated at 3.30pm. But the nurse would put the music on at 2.45 and she didn’t need the medicine anymore. She would sing really loudly in the hallway, so it would cause a different problem! But it was better and cheaper.

Family visiting say that it’s more relaxing and they have better contact, they see that people are more lively. If people are being cared for at home it saves them a lot of time as there’s not as much conflict. It’s a relaxed way to deal with each other and helps with washing and clothing them. Families are also big drivers of these programmes, because people want music available in the nursing home where their family member is.

I’m not allowed to say it always works this way until we have the research, it’s my experience and they’re just cases. But we see it works and it’s not just the people in the documentary.

Before I felt powerless, but this makes me feel I can make a difference. What I like about Music and Memory is that it’s a very practical method - that just works.”

Coming up soon I’ll be pulling together a list of lists of things that apparently improve your memory. And then trying to see if there’s any truth in them.

Lists like this one

From crosswords to fish oils, and from sleeping upside down to wearing red socks. Or whatever. What do you think improves your memory? Let me know — i’ll add it to the list!

‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ by Emma Healey. It’s about an elderly woman called Maud who has dementia, and she’s looking for her friend Elizabeth.

About 30 pages in I put the book back down. I instantly found it uncomfortable. There was no enjoyment in it for me and I was about to go on a holiday with friends, somewhere warm with beer and sea. I already think about memory a lot — I didn’t want it checking into the hotel with me. Head, meet sand. Thanks.

I’ve picked it back up, and I love it. I’m only half way through so this isn’t a review.

People very close to me often joke about dementia — saying ‘promise to shoot me before it happens’ or ‘don’t let me end up like that’. Don’t let me change. But does this actually do a disservice to those going through it? People coping with it themselves everyday? I have no idea what it’s actually like to have dementia. Nor does the author, but she has tried to explore it.

For the main character, Maud, some of the hours of her existence are beautiful, fun, full of intrigue and interest. On some pages I even find a feeling of embarrassment at just being afraid which leads me to perhaps a bit more acceptance. Now my favourite thing about it is that I can actually relate to Maud in some parts. It makes me think of times when I’ve woken up confused as to where I am for a second, or been a little merry and forgotten moments from a night. Or when your mind goes utterly blank, suddenly. I feel familiar with elements of it.

Healey took 5 years to write this and it’s her debut novel. It’s also based on her own grandparents. Here’s a bit more about her with snippets of an interview in the The Huffington Post.

Watch this. Watch it, remember it and use it’s lessons.

We feel strongly as individuals the power that music has to take us somewhere or unlock something, but I have never seen anything so evidential of it’s impact as shown in the documentary ‘Alive Inside’.

The film follows social worker Dan Cohen (founder of Music and Memory)as he goes into nursing homes armed with ipods and playlists, and plays music to people with dementia. It triggers memories and life , makes them alert and emotional. He travels across america trying to persuade medical professionals that this will make a huge difference to their patients and their budgets.

The film was crowd funded off the back of the success of this clip of Henry — you may have seen it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM

In the clip he says that music “gives me the feeling of love”. From an old man sitting still, small and sleepy — suddenly his eyes almost pop with the stimulation and excitement. He can trip soul and blues off the tip of his tongue, can scatt. Can tap his feet and shake his wrists. Can sing sing sing. And he is just one of the many patients being helped in the film, and now everyday by the organisation Music and Memory.

As one neurologist puts it…

“Music is inseparable from emotion”…

There are so many tracks that have the power to instantly take me back to faces, cars, parties, places, moments. To make me feel now like I did in the middle of the moment that memory was created. Music gives people the power to regain their identity for a while. There is an inherent musicality in human beings, from the moment our heart starts beating in the womb, to matching our mother’s voice in the way we cry as a baby. This film was distressing to watch in places but it made me feel comforted that love, rhythm and familiarity can be felt in places where we might assume no ripples of life remain.

The director Michael Rossato-Bennett explains how the part of the mind where musical memory is formed is not affected as much by Alzheimers and dementia — in fact it is one of the last parts of the brain touched by the diseases, which is why music is a back door to memory and an exceptionally powerful stimulus.

It’s a powerful film — not just in terms of the beautiful way it explores memory and what our memories mean to us — but also in looking at the concerns of old age, touching on our anxieties of being alone or watching our loved ones go through pain.

You can find details on how to watch it here: http://www.aliveinside.us/#land

And there are screenings in London through November. Fancy heading to one? Let me know @IndiaRakusen

In the next blog I’ll be talking to the European coordinator for ‘Music and Memory’ about her work and experiences. Watch this space…

(and remember, if there’s anything you want to talk about or share, let me know. This is a place to talk)

I share many memories with artist and poet Robbie Penford Baker. Childhood memories of Bombay mix, dressing up, squabbles and forests. Adult memories of sad things and coming togethers and reunions. I’ve known him all his bright life. He agreed to design three great images for the blog- these brains full of movement and moments. I asked him to write a little something about what memory means to him.

Memory to me is something that can be controlled and control you. It is in a constant state of editing, filtering, saving and deleting. In the order there is a chaos and across that chaos is a bridge which feeds flashes of clarity and false memories.

To what extent can one truly know if a memory is pure or a memory of a story you have been told or an image you have seen? We purge trauma and highlight positive memories but our brain is not so black and white, by closing one door we simply open up another which will encroach in a different manifestation whether it be visual, auditory or physical.

Memory is a strong force which takes many forms, it defines us, tricks us, makes us laugh and love and lose. We can use it to our advantage but it can never be entirely controlled as we never can experience it in its entirety, so I find what it gifts we must embrace. So the images that regularly flash in front of me, the faces I see, the memories I have created, those which I have lost or suppressed, they must be until they choose not to be.