Cynthia Erickson talked to us about how our brain stores images and how our brain changes as we age. Cynthia grew up in Lincoln and as long as she can remember, she has been fascinated by human and animal behavior. Cynthia loved going over to her grandfather’s home and thjeir on the wall was a plaque with the Rotary 4-Way Test and Rotary’s Objects. She has always used those values in making some of her decisions. When she was young girl, she hated science, but convinced one of her teachers to allow her to study the structure and bones of a horse. Cynthia loved horses and still does. What she didn’t realize when her father took her to a museum and she started looking the bone structure of the horse, she was really studying science.
Cynthia started out with some True/False questions for us. 1) We only use 10% of our brain? 2) People have learning style and can only learn if you are taught in your learning? 3) When you get old, your neurons never grow back? The answer is false for all of these. She also showed us several different photos, repeating a few of them after showing us another photo to see if we could remember what we saw. Think about this “What we see” is “What we know.”
If for a moment you see no picture and then see a picture did something change in your brain. Cynthia and another professor did a study with rats to see if they could remember where their escape route could be found. Some of the older rats had a difficult time remembering where that escape route could be, where the younger rats found it easily. Sometimes we see the same picture over and over and can easily recognize that photo.
Monkeys and their Memories
A study was done with monkeys and what you watch for is their eye movement and the fact you can teach them memory games. A monkey’s eyes are drawn to a novel picture and they will remember that picture even if another one is shown beside it. The reason is that it looks familiar to them. The younger monkey will look at the familiar where the older monkey that will look at the novel picture. The middle-age don’t see as well, where the younger see quicker.
How does the brain store Memories
There are neurons that send electrical signals. A question what is your hypothesis about neuron pops? Cynthia showed us several photos with “popping” sounds. As they were being repeated over and over, the less we observed them. Memory is related to neuron activity and neuron numbers. The fewer inhibitory neurons found in an older monkey. Filters is one way we can be selective when it comes to our memory.
Take for instance your day may be something like:
Wake up, Rotary meeting, pay your bills, turn the car off before closing the garage door. But you have interruptions such as making coffee, feed cat, watch TV, a dog barks, the phone rings, someone sneezes. You learn to filter out all those unimportant things, but as we age we sometimes are not able to filter out all those unimportant things because our memory firing rate in neurons and number of inhibitory neurons are not working.
Memory, Aging and Your Gut
Loss of inhibitory neurons leads to memory changes:
What can you do about it?
Gut bacteria can change your brain
You need to watch your diet, exercise, keep track of the drugs you take, what type of environment you might be working in, do away with fear because what happens in the gut can make a difference in your brain. Probiotics can make a difference in the gut, but more studies need to be done to see how it affects the brain.
In humans a test was done using tablets with two of the same pictures and with a delay of pictures. Older adults struggled to recognize these pictures. Probiotics can increase inhibition in the brain. A question is will probiotics improve memory?
Memory of pictures is a very good way of using the brain, and especially pictures with great meaning. Active learning is better than passive learning, it might hurt a little. Memory and brain changes are selective and some types of memory changes are okay. Have a healthy gut which helps the brain to stay healthy.
Cynthia left us with this thought: “Girls can learn science.”