She Remembers: Women, Work and the Science of Memory

On this episode of Crina and Kirsten Get to Work, our gal pals focus on memory, how memory affects the workplace and how we can address or minimize memory issues.  Crina had several experiences where people she was in meetings with or spoke to had wildly different recollections of what was said.   Let’s shout out to the ladies’ memories - which are better than males - at least according to  The Wonder Of You: Why Women Have Better Memory Than Men.  This may be because memories “stick” better when we pay attention, focus on details and they are accompanied by feelings. It is kind of like telling ourselves a story and it makes our memories better.   Neuroscientist Lisa Genova has done a deep dive into memory and neurological disorders - in fact, she is scientist turned fiction writer telling stories about the experiences of people who experience neurological disorders.  Her most recent book, Remember: The science of memory and the art of forgetting is non-fiction.  She tells us that memory is essential to almost everything we do - walking, talking, interaction, watching a movie, eating. Without memory, we are  untethered to the life we live.     Our brains are designed to remember what is meaningful, emotional, surprising, new and what we repeat and practice. This applies to our four kinds of memory: muscle memory, semantic memory (facts and information),  episodic memory (what happened in your life) and working memory (doing things like writing, talking and problem solving).   We create memory when our brain takes in information, weaves it together and stores it to a neural circuit we can later access.  Every memory actually changes our beautiful brains.  And our memories are surprisingly accurate.  We can train our brains to be better at memory, but the passage of time does impact the reliability of our memories.     Stress, lack of sleep, poor diet and lack of sleep can impact our memories. In short, think self-care for a better memory.  In addition, writing things down, repeating what you have heard, telling yourself stories, making connections and calming down can all improve memory.     This is all to say memory is remarkable and also not always reliable - if we take care of ourselves and pay close attention our memories will better serve us.