Why some students can memorize anything : Science has the answer
It's the day before the history exam. Inside Class 8B, the tension is thick. One corner of the room is buzzing , Neha flips her notebook at lightning speed, mumbling under her breath, repeating dates of battles and names of Mughal emperors. Next to her, Aarav stares at his book, overwhelmed. "How do you do this?" he asks, watching Neha recite a paragraph she's read just twice.advertisementWe all know a Neha that student who can mug up entire chapters effortlessly. But what makes some students such fast memorizers while others struggle to remember a few lines? Scientists say the answer lies deep inside the brain.THE SCIENCE OF MUGGING UP: WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE BRAIN
Rote learning is memorizing by repeating something over and over without truly understanding it. It taps into specific mental processes, and the truth is, some people's brains are naturally better wired for it than others. MEMORY CAPACITY AND THE HIPPOCAMPUS
Deep inside our brain is a small, seahorse-shaped structure called the hippocampus that stores memories. Studies show that when this part of the brain works efficiently, people are much better at holding onto information, especially when they learn through repetition.advertisementA study from the University of California, Davis found that greater activation of the hippocampus during learning tasks leads to stronger long-term memory consolidation. This means that some students, by virtue of neural efficiency, can encode and retrieve information faster.Adding to this, Dr. Anshul Gupta, Senior Consultant, Dept. of Neurosurgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, explains: "Rote learning is actually not a gift, it is an adaptation of a weak mind to survive. There is no specific centre in the brain called a 'mugging up' centre. While the hippocampus, amygdala, and Papez circuit are well-known centres for memory, learning, and understanding, a person who is not that intelligent or doesn't have robust learning centres often relies on the most basic part of this system to make short-term memories. Through sheer repetition, this basic function is stretched until the brain retains it just long enough to finish a task - and then forgets it thereafter." His view underscores a critical distinction: rote learning is a coping mechanism, not a higher cognitive process.GENES MAY BE PLAYING A ROLE TOOSome students are biologically better equipped to retain facts.A 2006 study in Nature Neuroscience found that a variant of the BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) gene enhances synaptic plasticity - the brain's ability to form and strengthen new connections. This is crucial for learning and memory.advertisementAnother gene, COMT, influences dopamine regulation in the prefrontal cortex and is linked to differences in working memory capacity - a key ingredient in successful rote memorization.LEARNING STYLES MATTERNot all students are designed for rote memory and that's okay.Research in the Journal of Educational Psychology shows that students absorb more information when it's delivered in alignment with their preferred learning style - be it visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinaesthetic. So a student who struggles to memorize text might thrive using mind maps or through storytelling.SLEEP, STRESS, AND NUTRITION: THE HIDDEN INFLUENCERSIt's not just about innate ability. Environmental and lifestyle factors also play a big role in memory formation and recall. A Harvard Medical School study highlights how sleep significantly enhances memory consolidation, especially after new learning. Conversely, chronic stress elevates cortisol levels, which can interfere with the hippocampus and impair memory.Nutrition matters too - Vitamin B12, Omega-3 fatty acids, and iron are essential for brain function. Deficiencies in these can reduce cognitive performance and memory retention.advertisementSO, CAN YOU TRAIN YOURSELF TO BE A 'MUGGER'?
To an extent, yes. While not everyone can memorize at lightning speed, cognitive strategies can help improve memory:Spaced repetition (reviewing material at increasing intervals)Mnemonics and visualization techniquesChunking information into manageable piecesWriting notes by hand, which enhances recall more than typingWith practice, these tools can make memory tasks significantly easier.DIFFERENT BRAINS, DIFFERENT LANESIn India's academic landscape, where exams often prioritise recall, rote learners may have an advantage. But not being good at mugging up doesn't mean you're a poor learner - it may simply mean your brain learns differently. Some students are logical thinkers. Others thrive with visuals or interaction. These learning differences are not only valid but scientifically supported, shaped by genes, brain structures, and environments.As education evolves toward critical thinking and experiential learning, rote memory may no longer be the benchmark of academic excellence. But until then, understanding your brain may be your best study hack.Must Watch
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'This is one mechanism by which potential photodamage is prevented in living organisms exposed to sunlight,' Keefer says. These genetic molecules 'absorb UV light all the time and we're not having a lot of photodamage because they can just get rid of the energy almost instantaneously, and that greatly reduces the risk of your DNA breaking.' Accelerating into the fastest lane To generate attosecond laser pulses, scientists first ping a gas of atoms with an infrared laser. The laser beam gives a kick to every atom it passes, shaking the electrons back and forth in lockstep with its infrared light waves. This forces the electrons to emit new light waves. But they do so with overtones, the way a guitar string vibrates at not only a fundamental frequency but also a range of higher-frequency harmonic vibrations, or acoustic overtones. In the case of infrared laser light, the overtones are at much higher frequencies in the attosecond range, which correspond to ultraviolet or even X-ray wavelengths. That's a huge bonus for attosecond scientists. When packed into supershort pulses, light of these wavelengths can carry sufficient energy to cause electrons to migrate within a molecule's framework. That influences how the molecule will react. Or the laser pulses can coerce electrons to leave the scene entirely, which is one of the ways atoms and molecules become ionized. Gillaspy says that when he thinks of attosecond pulses of light, and yet-shorter pulses in the future (which would be measured in zeptoseconds), his science dreams diverge from spying on the private lives of electrons and toward what becomes possible by packing more energy into ever shorter pulses. Do this, Gillaspy says, and the power confined in the pulse can amplify, albeit ever so briefly, to astronomical levels. It's akin to the way a magnifying glass can concentrate a dull, palm-sized patch of sunlight into a pinpoint of brilliant sunlight that can ignite a piece of paper. Concentrate enough laser power into a short-enough pulse, Gillaspy says, and you might gain access to the quantum vacuum, by which he means the lowest possible energy state that space can have. The quantum vacuum has only been indirectly measured and it sports a generous share of weirdness. Presumably, for example, the 'nothingness' of that vacuum actually seethes with 'virtual' matter-antimatter particle pairs that poof into and out of existence by the bazillions, in slices of time even faster than attoseconds. 'If you could get the laser intensity strong enough you might rip apart the virtual particles from each other in the quantum vacuum and make them real' — which is to say, observable, says Gillaspy. In other words, it could become possible to separate, detect and measure the members of those transient pairs of virtual particles before they annihilate each other and disappear back into the vacuum. 'This is where we could be ripe for fundamental discoveries,' Gillaspy says — although for now, he notes, the capability to produce the required laser intensities remains far off. Jun Ye, a physicist at JILA, a joint research center of the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is deploying attosecond physics in pursuit of another believe-it-or-not goal. He intends to tap HHG to detect that mysterious cosmic stuff known as dark matter. Despite never having directly detected dark matter in everyday life or in a laboratory, scientists presume its existence to make sense of the distribution and motions of matter on galactic scales. Without the presence of dark matter — in far more abundance than ordinary matter — and its cosmic-scale gravitational influences, the universe would literally look and behave differently. If the theory is true, a tantalizing consequence is that dark matter — whatever it is — should be abundantly present all around us here on Earth and so should be, in principle, detectable in a lab. Ye is hoping to exploit HHG physics to develop a type of energy-measuring technique, called nuclear spectroscopy, that is especially suited to discern subtle energy shifts in the nuclei of atoms. In this context, it's the multitude of wavelengths of light that HHG naturally produces that make this spectroscopic technique so revealing. This, Ye says, could enable him to monitor minute variations in regular-matter atoms that might be caused by previously unknown interactions with dark matter. At the heart of his plan is a new type of clock, a nuclear clock, that he and colleagues at JILA and elsewhere have been developing. The ticks of these clocks are based on nuclear oscillations (in the bundle of neutrons and protons in thorium-229 nuclei) rather than the electronic oscillations atomic clocks have been based on. 'If the dark matter out there interacts with regular matter, then potentially it will interact with neutrons and protons in atomic nuclei differently than with electrons,' Ye says. And if that is so, comparisons of spectroscopy data from the two types of clocks stand a chance of finally unveiling a dark matter influence on normal matter that has been in operation all along. 'This is how a lot of things start,' says Gillaspy. 'Breakthroughs can start with physicists and chemists just getting fascinated by some new thing, like attosecond phenomena, and then . . . you never know. You don't even imagine what kind of capabilities are going to arise from that.'
