PARIS, Sept 4 — If you’re heading back to school — or back to the office — it might be time to think about ways of sharpening your attention span and concentration to optimise your learning and performance. This means getting into good habits on a daily basis to maintain and boost your memory, so you can tackle the new school year with confidence.

The importance of sleep... and socialising

You’ve probably heard it all before — but there’s no point in revising until dawn in the hope of getting good exam grades, quite the contrary. The fatigue built up during this kind of last-minute revision session can be detrimental to your performance and have an impact on your concentration and memory — two things that are essential during exam time. Numerous scientific studies have found a link between sleep and improved ability to learn, memorise or use new knowledge, as revealed by research from the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. This study reports that, in 2019, researchers even established a relationship between sleep and exam results, revealing that the less sleep students got, the worse their grades were.

Meanwhile, professor of psychogerontology Hélène Amieva, who sits on the scientific board of France’s Observatoire B2V des Mémoires, explains that: "Sleep quality... has an impact on cognitive performance levels.” She continues: "Deep sleep has the extraordinary ability to evacuate toxic proteins accumulated in the brain during the day. As a result, a good night’s sleep enables proper attention and memory function during the day, and in the long term, protects our brains from the harmful accumulation of certain proteins.”

But that’s not all: social relationships can also play a role in stimulating memory. Establishing and maintaining social connections are both beneficial to a wide range of cognitive abilities. "We need to think of social ties as a source of intellectual stimulation in their own right,” says Hélène Amieva. The expert points out that this can take the form of volunteering, organising a dinner party with friends, or even simply maintaining close ties with friends and relations.

Make time for leisure activities

Health professionals all agree that exercise is good for the brain, and the same applies to memory. "Sport has been shown to have a number of positive effects on the brain. It improves cognitive capacity, and may even protect against certain brain pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases and depression,” the French Federation for Brain Research (FRC) said in 2019. The Observatoire B2V des Mémoires also praises the merits of other, potentially more intellectual activities, "as long as they are carried out without stress and are a source of relaxation and pleasure,” the organisation states in a press release.

Scientific research has shown that other simple leisure activities can be effective in stimulating cognitive abilities. Such is the case with music, whether through listening or playing an instrument. And for the very young, this is also the case with reading. Researchers in the UK and China observed that reading for pleasure from an early age has an influence on cognitive functions, as well as on brain areas linked to improved mental health, behaviour and attention.

Diet has a role to play

Eating fish has long been said to be good for memory, largely because of the phosphorus content of certain fish. But scientific studies contradict each other on the subject, with the most sceptical arguing that fish is far from being the only food rich in phosphorus — it’s also found in dairy products, eggs, certain meats and pulses, seeds and seafood. Over the past decade, various studies have nevertheless found that fish consumption can improve cognitive function and combat cognitive decline.

In 2014, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh suggested that eating baked or grilled fish once a week could be beneficial for the brain, and in preventing memory loss. So what’s on your plate could be an additional factor to take into account when heading back to school or work. — ETX Studio