How to Improve Your Memory & Cognitive Function at Any Age | Dr. Alan Castel

Dr. Alan Castel, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and one of the world's foremost experts on human memory and cognitive aging. We discuss what science actually tells us about how to improve our learning ability and memory at any age. We also discuss how memory works, why all planning and imagination about the future is based on the past, false memories, and how to leverage curiosity, emotion, and self-testing retrieval practice to stamp in memories for the long term. We discuss what "superagers"—people who actually improve their cognitive capacity with age—do differently than everyone else. This episode is for anyone interested in the science of memory and tools to maintain and improve your memory across the lifespan.

Articles

• The Apple of the mind's eye: Everyday attention, metamemory, and reconstructive memory for the Apple logo (The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology)
• Long-term memory for a common object (Cognitive Psychology)
• Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning (Psychology and the Real World)
• Point-and-shoot memories: The influence of taking photos on memory for a museum tour (Psychological Science)
• The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
• Linguistic ability in early life and cognitive function and Alzheimer's disease in late life: Findings from the Nun Study (Journal of the American Medical Association)
• Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)
• The will to persevere induced by electrical stimulation of the human cingulate gyrus (Neuron)
• Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity (American Psychologist)
• Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)
• The effects of aging on selectivity and control in short-term recall (Memory & Cognition)
• States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit (Neuron)
• Thirst for knowledge: The effects of curiosity and interest on memory in younger and older adults (Psychology and Aging)

Other Resources

• Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging (Oxford University Press)
• Blue Zones

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• Morgan Housel: Understand & Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness

People Mentioned

• Morgan Housel: author of The Psychology of Money and The Art of Spending Money; former Huberman Lab guest
• Robert Bjork & Elizabeth Bjork: professors of psychology, UCLA (desirable difficulties)
• Ronald Cotton & Jennifer Thompson: subjects of a landmark eyewitness misidentification case
• Joe Parvizi: professor of neurology, Stanford University
• Laura Carstensen: professor of psychology, Stanford University; founding director, Stanford Center on Longevity
• John Wooden: Hall of Fame basketball coach, UCLA
• Steve Jobs: co-founder, Apple