Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting

by Lisa Genova

ginkgo biloba does not reduce your risk of dementia.

As a rule of thumb, anything that is good for your heart is good for your brain—and f...

If you do nothing else to lower your risk of Alzheimer’s, exercise. Aerobic exercise has been associated with a significantly reduced risk of dementia in many human studies, and it decreases amyloid levels in animal models of the disease.

Exercise improves sleep (it decreases the time it takes to fall asleep, increases the quality of sleep, and decreases the number of times you wake up in the night).

Even a daily brisk walk has been correlated with a 40 percent decrease...

People who have more years of formal education, who have greater literacy, and who engage regularly in socially and mentally stimulating activities have more cognitive reserve. They have an abundance and a redundancy of neural connections.

Building up a cognitive reserve doesn’t mean doing crossword puzzles.

By not engaging in blame or a battle with your memory when it forgets, as it inevitably will, you’ll feel calmer and less stressed.

Our brains aren’t designed to retain what is routine or predictable, and most of our lives are spent doing routine, predictable things.

a more reasonable expectation of memory is for it to forget everything except what is meaningful.

You are more likely to remember a detail about yourself or something that you did than you are to retain a detail about someone else or something someone else did. Which is easier to remember—the last time you cleaned the kitchen or the last time your spouse or roommate did?