My Indonesian Friends

My Indonesian Friends

Just came back from a small farewell dinner with my Indonesian friend, Aji and Lydia. Through our conversations, we were taken back to our HNMUN days, how we missed it, and realized it has been over a year since. Most surprising is that the things we remember the most were the challenges that we faced throughout our journey. Like the suspense when I was left behind on the first flight, our troubles when we got separated and lost after visiting Liberty Island, how me and one of my friend, Hanif got stuck with the subway ticket. Me and Hanif (again) lost our money at New York. I lost it at the ATM , he lost it at the hotel room. How we me and Aji gambled through Washington looking for the hospital he was born in. Me gambling through Boston looking for the place I used to grow up in. How we walked a long way through Chinatown looking for a bus to Washington. There was much we went through; even this blog wouldn’t be enough to fit everything in.

One of the most memorable moments is when we got lost in New York and ran late for a dinner with the Indonesian Ambassador at the consulate. We were from Liberty Island and lined up for the ferry. There were about 15 of us, and we got separated when there’s only 5 space left inside the ferry and the rest of us were left behind. So we had to wait for another ferry which we waited for another 45 minutes! We went easy at first, but then realized we were already late for the dinner! Our Faculty advisors had already arrived at the Consulate and were furious that we are late.

We were already late, and once we got onto the mainland, no taxi were to be found! We walked and walked to find one, but to no avail. So we decided to take the subway. This is when me and Hanif got stuck. Remember the cool American subway in New York you see in movies. Those are not real New York Subways. Those are Hollywood subways. The New York subway we went through was ancient. It’s so old that me and Hanif got stuck at the gate. Our ticket was sucked in, but we cannot pass through. So we went to buy a new ticket, but the machine was busted! It’s bank note slot was busted, so we had to use coins, which we didn’t have, so we had to beg people to for a change of coins with our bank notes. So we passed, got onto the subway, on our way to the consulate. We ran all the way to 58th street from the subway, where the Consulate was supposed to be, but when we arrived there, no Indonesian consulate can be seen. We asked around, and nobody knew anything about an Indonesian consulate. We were puzzled and checked the message our Faculty Advisors sent to one of my friends again. It reads 68th street. 68th? we were on the 58th, that’s 10 blocks away! We were so in a rush, that we misread it! We were lucky that there were many taxi on the 58th, so we took it straight to the consulate.

When we arrived, we can see our faculty advisor’s face all red. We’re an hour late! He’s furious. But we were in the consulate, and there were VIPs, people from other Universities, and all, so we decided to play cool. But it was very awkward because everybody else was wearing blazers, batik and tuxedoes, and we were in our jackets and jeans! We were supposed to change first but because we were running late, we decided to just go straight to the event. But the best thing I remembered is that we all played it cool, and introduced ourselves to the embassy people. They were delighted we finally made it.

At the end of the dinner, there was a band playing. They play classic Frank Sinatra kinda songs. Then, they asked if any of us wanted to sing. Me and Aji has the same passion for classic songs, and one of our favorite is Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me to The Moon’. We were tensed before, running all over New York, and we knew later we’d have a scolding session by our Faculty Advisor. So, why not gamble singing a song in front of everybody?

And so we did, we asked them to play ‘Fly Me to The Moon’, and we both sang together. To our surprise, the head of Indonesian consulate stood up, took his wife’s hand, and started dancing! Then, the other’s followed. Before I know it, everybody was up and dancing. It was one of the joyous night of my life! Not just that I’m not used to sing in public, but now I’m singing in an Indonesian Consulate with a whole lot of people. On our way back to our hostel, I sang Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’ all the way. Fitting isn’t it? Singing ‘New York, New York’ in New York, passing through the city lights, the glittery Times Square which never sleeps. The city that never sleeps as they say. It was beautiful indeed. Then, when we arrived, as we expected, we had a ‘scolding session’ with our faculty advisors. But we settled it okay, and were like best friends again the next day. I will always remember that night in New York

Friendships are built through the hardships we went together. Once a friendship is born, it knows no boundaries. I don’t care whatever tensions that happened or will happen between the Malaysian and Indonesian governments, I love my Indonesian friends. We went through a lot together. When I am with them, never once I felt as an outsider. Even as the only Malaysian in the team. Being together for a year, practicing every Saturday, at cozy café’s that I love, and finally getting to the US, and safely back again. It was the best moments I had here in Indonesia.

I couldn’t believe I will be leaving very soon. 3 years has gone by, and I will be leaving my Indonesian friends for good. Who knows when we’ll meet again. Whenever that will be, I’m sure all of them will be successful people in the future. Perhaps we’ll meet again in the US, me attending an international conference, and they were there too. Only, that time we’ll be real the delegates, representing our country for real. Who knows?

Our Brains Are Made of Plastic?

Perhaps the greatest discovery of the last decade is that our brains are plastic. Neurologists call it ‘the phenomenon of brain plasticity’. Yes, our brains are made of plastic! Okay, of course not, but brain plasticity is the ability of our brains to change in response to learning and acquiring new skills and experience. So our brains are not actually a complicated super computer, but a complicated…brain! There’s nothing in the world closer to it. Unlike computer hardware which does what it does, stores memory and stuff, when a task given is overwhelming or over its maximum hardware capacity, we need to get a new hardware, or a new computer. Our brains, on the other hand, responds to the overwhelming challenge and grows accordingly.

Did you know that the brain of life-time video gamers is 13% larger than the average population?

Yes! They are larger, but…they are EMPTY. Okay, not good example. That was supposed to make you laugh. Anyway, here’s another:

Did you know that the brains of London Taxi drivers are 15% larger than London Bus drivers?

Yes, they are larger, especially at the brain area called the ‘hippocampus' where the awareness of space is processed. Scientists believe this is so because they spend much more time each day thinking of the best route to go by, compared to the bus drivers who follow a set of routine routes every day. This process of thinking and memorizing routes and places causes the brain to grow.

It has long been known that Einstein’s brain is larger than most of us, but the greatest mistake scientists of the past made is to postulate that he was born with it. Only recently, with the discovery of neuroplasticity, we know Einstein grew his brain throughout his lifetime of study and experience.

This ability of the brain to grow is remarkable, especially in the field of education and medicine. In medicine, it gives hope to those who acquired disabilities after a stroke attack. Stroke, which causes the death of a patch of brain cells, can cause paralysis of a part of the body. It has long been thought that it is permanent. But in a new rehabilitation technique, the patient's normally functioning limb is tied up (so it can’t be used). After awhile, the patient slowly gains control over the other limb which once thought to be permanently paralyzed. This hasn’t been discovered until recently because of the prior doctrine that brain cells can’t grow and most patients give up even before trying because:

1. They become comfortable with their existing functioning limb
2. It takes a LOT of effort to move the bad limb
3. It takes a LONG time before we can see improvements

Perhaps the most amazing case is with the child patient known as ‘Jodi’ who underwent a ‘hemispherectomy’ at The John Hopkins Hospital in the US as a last-resort treatment for her seizure. HALF of her brain was removed. Common logic is that she would lose HALF of her brain function, paralyzed at one side, and is unable to speak. The neurosurgeon that did the operation, Dr. Benjamin Carson, also had thought of it and warned the parents of the complications. However, an amazing thing happened. She begins to speak again after a few days, and began walking after a few weeks…with half of her brain! Today, she scores straight A’s in her exams and living a relatively normal life. On brain scans, it was found out that all the functions on the part of her brain that has been removed is now transferred to the existing part of the brain, and that part of the brain grows. Isn’t that amazing? If a child with half of her brain can grow and learn normally, how about us with fully functioning brains?

Taking paralysis and the ‘bad limb’ as a metaphor, here’s what preventing us from growing our brains:

1. We become comfortable with our existing knowledge and experience
2. It takes a lot of effort to gain new knowledge
3. It takes a long time to see improvements

Here’s something I found on a lecture about neuroplasticity by Dr Mark Barnes & Janae Adamson. These are the optimum environment for our brain to grow when learning:

1. Attention / Focus – You know you’re focusing on your studies when you lose track of time, or when you don’t checkout Facebook notifications every 30 seconds
2. Intensity – Learning which involve intense emotions are most effective. Like studying the subject you feel deeply about, for example studying heart failures because a loved one suffers from it creates an intense emotion.
3. Timing – It takes a night’s sleep to properly organize what we have learnt. The most important ones are stored in long-term memories during this time
4. Constraint – Like regaining control of a bad limb, we learn more effectively when going the hard way, like without using aide such as calculators, checking the answers at the back every 10 seconds. We need to struggle to grow our brains
5. Visualization – Our unconscious brain can’t really distinguish between a memory of real experience and a vividly imagined situation. So if we visualize a skill (especially clinical skills, OSCE, for medical students), we would actually activate the part of the brain involved in actually doing the real thing
6. Imitation – Watching a person do something activates the observer’s part of the brain involved in doing the same thing. That’s why children dance along when they see adults dancing. As we grow up, our conscious functions in the frontal area of the brain inhibits this

How Our Brain Cells Determine Our Talents

What’s the difference between the brain of the talented and the less?
Why do the world’s top athletes or musicians start young?
What’s the formula of being a Nobel-prize genius?

In one of my articles, ‘The Scientific Difference between Liking & Wanting’, I have mentioned about brain circuits. In this article, I would expand on them. Specifically, how it determines our talent, and how can we use it to improve our skills. Brain circuits consists of a few ‘wires’ we call neurons, which transmits signals from our senses to our brain. From there, the brain processes the information, decides a response and ‘wires’ back the information through another set of circuits to appropriate parts of the body. Like when you are eating hot dogs when you are supposed to be on a diet, and then your friend suddenly comes up to you and say “Hey, why are you eating? Aren’t you on a diet?” The words made its way from your ears to your brain, processes it, decides a response, and sends back signals to your hand, mouth and tongue muscles, throwing away the hot dog and say “Oh no, no, I was just looking through that hot dog. I think it’s really hot…uh…the dog…anyway, why are you here?” Your brain tries to change the topic of hot dog to distract your friend. That’s our brain, it’s smart.

A neuron is like a wire cut off at both ends where at each end will be the shrub of shiny coppers sprouting out from the plastic insulator at the middle. In neurons, these ends are called dendrites on one end, and synaptic knobs on the other. In between those is the long part of the wire we call axon. Most neuron don’t have axons long enough to make it all the way to the brain. So the synaptic knobs connect to the dendrites of another neuron by small divisions called synapse (like soldering ends of wires to make it longer) until it reaches the brain. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer a neuron as a ‘wire’, and synapses as ‘wire connector’.

Unlike fishes or worms, most of our wires can’t be grown again after childhood. Logically, the more wires we have, the faster, the more accurate we respond, right? However, the good news is, we can always add more ‘wire connectors’. We don’t really have to grow new wires. These wires form basic function, like lifting your hand, or tilting your head (even a baby can do that). Scientists believe that even if we have the brain of a fish, we can still button our shirts! But that’s as long as we add wire connectors. Fishes don’t have much wire connectors like in humans, hence they don't wear shirts. Adding more wire connectors will strengthen the connection. In science we call this ‘synaptic plasticity’, the strengthening of synaptic connections. A strengthened connection allows you to respond faster, more accurate, and with less effort.

Now here is how wire connectors work:

1. The more we use the wire, the more wire connectors are built
2. The more wire connectors there are, the stronger the wire connections
3. The stronger the wire connections, the faster and more precise the connection signals
4. The faster and precise the connection signals, the less aware you are that you are using them

Remember, wires are just parts of a circuit. So when a circuit is used, not only one, but a few bunch of wires gets stronger. The last two points are the most profound. It holds the key to our talents, to being an Olympic athlete, a world-class musician, or a Nobel-prize winner. Now let’s go back to the questions:

What’s the difference between the brain of the talented and the less?
Why do the world’s top athletes or musicians start young?
What’s the formula of being a Nobel-prize genius?

To answer these questions we’ll need real-life proof. Let us start with Tiger Woods. Taking scandals aside, Tiger Woods is no doubt the world’s greatest golfer. However, he didn’t turn into a world champion overnight. He became a champion after decades of brain wire strengthening. There is no doubt that he started playing golf when he was very young, but how young? It was accounted that at the age of 5 months, Tiger started watching his dad play golf on a baby chair. By 9 months, his father made him a sawed-off golf club which he could handle. By 1 year old, he started going to golf courses. At 2, he already won Under Age 10 golfing competition. After the age of 11, he surpassed his father’s skill, and was never again beaten by his dad in golf. He won his first national junior tournament at the age of 13. I guess I do not need to keep on. You get the point from here. The question is not ‘what else did he won?’ but ‘what was happening inside his brain?’

Playing golf involve complex movements, requiring precise coordination between the mind and muscles. When I say complex movements, it means that it involves a lot of muscle-brain circuits. For example, the one controlling hand movements, the one maintaining the hip positions and the ones keeping the eyes on the ball. Everything needs to be precisely coordinated. However, as stated before, the more we use these wires, the more connections are built, the stronger, faster and more precise the connections, and hence, the less aware he is that he’s using it. Remember the first time you try to play the guitar, piano or learn dancing? It was a struggle wasn’t it? You need a lot of effort. You need to be so attentive to the movements of your hands, your fingers or your feet. But after hours and hours of practicing it feels less of an effort, until you reach a stage where you can play a song or dance and talk to your friend at the same time. That’s because the wire connectors inside your brain have become strong enough that you start doing the movements automatically. We call this 'automaticity'. Once you have reached automaticity, you don’t need to pay enormous amount of attention on what your muscles do. Hence, allowing you to play music or dance while paying attention to other things, like talking to your friend. That is exactly what happened to Tiger Woods.

Since 5 months old, Tiger has started strengthening his connections, at the age of 13, he already perfected his craft, with connections as solid as steel. By that time, the complex movements of hitting the golf ball ceases to be an enormous effort. It’s already automatic, and when that is combined with focused attention, he starts shooting like a machine. Tiger keeps on winning because he has an advantage over others: he has strong wire connectors since young, and all he has to do is keep on practicing to keep ahead of others. There are many other world-class athletes that start young. Roger Federer starts playing tennis at six. Lionel Messi started playing soccer at five. This is not limited to sports. Mozart started composing his first piece at 4. Jimi Hendrix started playing the guitar at 10. Each and everyone of them started stimulating their wires at a young age, and day by day strengthening them to perfection so that when they reach adulthood, they’re already the master of their art.

Now do not be disappointed when I said that most of them start young, thinking that it is too late for you. The essence of what I have explained earlier is not actually starting young, but spending a whole lot of time honing your craft more than anyone else. For example, before the rise of The Beatles, there were many other bands that started playing young. However, The Beatles went the extra mile by playing for 8 hours a day even before their first hit single, strengthening their ‘music wire connectors’ each and every minute they play. Soon, they surpassed the abilities other bands which mostly played 3 to 4 hours a day. Pablo Picasso once did a painting in 2 minutes and sold it worth millions of dollars. When asked how he created the masterpiece in just 2 seconds, he answered: “It took me 20 years of practice to do that painting in 2 seconds’. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the founders of Sun Microsystems were given access computer at a time when computer access is limited to others, allowing them to strengthen their wire connections long before others. Today, they are the big players in the computer industry.

Hence, it is apparent in that world-class achievers either start young or spent countless hours on the things they’re focused to. ‘Focused’ means that they aim to be the master of one, instead of being the jack of all. Tiger Woods never changed his focus to tennis. Federer never tried to be a musician. Bill Gates never wanted to join the bands. They are all focused on the things they like and good at. They focused on it like crazy, strengthening their wire connectors related to their craft. As what Robin Sharma, the author of the bestselling book ‘The Monk Who Sold his Ferarri’ once wrote:

Daily improvement + focus = genius

It means find something that you like and focus on it, improving it each and every day. It doesn't have to be golf, tennis, or music. It could be literature, business, science or even Lego-building. You can become a genius in any field you want by applying the formula. So, what kind of genius you want to be in the future? Start practicing today. Nothing is too late. If you practice and improve every day, no matter how little, in 5 to 10 years from now, you will become a world-class achiever. When that day comes, I'd be happy to hear from you

Memory Recall & Prejudice

How can an expert doctor deduce a diagnosis even from the moment a patient enters the room?
Do you know that when you judge someone you barely know, you are actually judging someone else you already knew before?

In my last post, I have explained that memory is better stored when we use multiple circuits together. Today, I will explain about memory retrieval. How do we recall the memory we have stored, and what it has to do with intuition, wild guess, and even prejudice. First, here’s an experimental view. For long, scientist has thought of a specific cell in the brain which stores memory. Like when you remember a news article you read yesterday, it is stored in a cell in your brain, so that when we remove that area by operation, you’d lose the memory. They later discovered that memory doesn’t work that way by this experiment:

In the 1920s, a scientist by the name of Karl Lashley believed that there is a certain area of the brain which stores memory. So, he tried to destroy different parts of the brain of rats. Beforehand, the rats were trained to go through a maze with a cheese at the end. In other words, the rats were able to remember the route to the end of the maze without ever encountering blind ends. After destroying the parts of the brain, and the rats going through the maze, his hypothesis were accepted, all rats forgot how to get to the end of the maze, encountering more blind ends.

However, something puzzled him. He destroyed DIFFERENT parts of the brain in every rats in search of this ‘memory cell’, but the problem is, EVERY rat, no matter where their parts of brain destroyed is, forgot their way to the end of the maze! In other words, no matter where they destroy the area, they still forget. So, where is this memory cell? This experiment failed to locate a specific area or cell for memory storage, but what it discovered is much more intriguing: There is no such thing as a specific cell or area for memory storage and memory is actually a link of different brain circuits scattered throughout the brain. Memory is everywhere inside our brains. When we recall a fact, we don’t activate a single ‘memory cell’ located somewhere in our brains, we activate many cells scattered throughout our brains. That’s why destroying any parts of the brain affects memory. It is not the memory cell is destroyed; it’s the brain circuit that is destroyed

Confused? Let me explain further. Lashley’s student, Donald Hebb expended his teacher’s experiments and came out with a few findings. Hebb proposed that memory is an interconnection of brain circuits, and the activation of one circuit activates another. He also deduced, from the experiment done by his teacher, memories are stored in different parts of the brain depending on the senses used. For example, what we see is stored in the visual cortex, a part of the brain. What we hear is stored in the auditory cortex, a different part of the brain. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you’re in a lecture and your teacher gave you an important fact you would later remember. During memory recall the next day, you cannot ‘extract’ only hearing what your teacher has said. It is ‘linked’ with seeing the teacher, so the image of the teacher will also come out in your mind. Unless you didn’t look at the teacher when she explains, now that’s rude, isn’t it?

As I have explained in my previous post, memory is stored better when we combine different circuits, like seeing and hearing circuits. So we remember better if we see and hear at the same time, rather than just hearing, because those memories are linked, and activation of one activates another, creating a stronger memory and recall. Another example is the perfume your mother always wears. When you smell that perfume again somewhere across the globe, the image of your mother would come out, won’t it? That’s because one circuit activates another, so when the memory from ‘smelling circuit’ is activated, it automatically activates the ‘seeing circuit’, hence the image of your mother. The amazing thing about this is that even the SMALLEST stimulus that activates the SMALLEST circuit will activate other LARGER circuits, like a domino effect, allowing you to reassemble the whole picture in your mind.

Now what does this has to do with the great doctor and the stranger? Let’s start with the doctor. This link of one circuit towards another is called ‘engrams’. The linking of circuits doesn’t only apply to ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’. It also links between past memory circuits. As I said before, even the SMALLEST stimulus that activates the SMALLEST circuit will activate other LARGER circuits, like a domino effect, creating a large picture. An expert doctor is a doctor with years and years of training and experience. In his brains, memories circuits of different types of diseases he has seen are scattered throughout his brain. So, from the moment a patient enters his room, a single, even the smallest detail in the patient, could trigger a whole lot of memory. Like the drooping eyelid, the puffy face, the aching gait, the rapid breathing, anything! One symptom relates to another, so the doctor starts looking at the skin appearance, the color of the eyes, and so on, without even touching the patient. All this happens even without the doctor thinking. It just comes out like a torrent of water. That’s what I call thinking without thinking. So usually, the most expert of doctors already know the diagnosis beforehand. But of course, we need to be sure. We can’t confirm the diagnosis without properly examination of the patient. We’d get sued!

This linking of circuits can be very useful, but it’s like a double-bladed sword, where it has its disadvantages. Here comes the story of Big Bob:

Big Bob is a large, hulking figure. Like the one you see in wrestling shows. Everyday, Big Bob goes to work at a local factory by the same bus, with the same driver. This driver is the opposite of Bob. He’s small, skinny, frail, and a little bit judgmental. Everyday, the driver would pick up Big Bob, and every time he enters, he will say to the driver “BIG BOB DOESN’T PAY!”. The driver, small and skinny as he is, didn’t want trouble. He’s actually afraid of Big Bob, so he let him ride the bus for free. This went on for years, until one day, the driver had financial problems, and was so stressed that morning. Then, he picked up Big Bob, and, as usual, Big Bob will say: “BIG BOB DOESN’T PAY!” With the financial problem the driver was having, he couldn’t take it anymore and shouted to Big Bob: “Who do you think you are?! You think just because you’re big and all muscular, you’d get a ride for free?? Everyone pays, including you, BOB!” Confused why the driver got so angry at him, Big Bob says:

“Big Bob doesn’t pay because Big Bob got a monthly pass”, and showed the driver his pass, which he always wore on his belt.

So, the essence of this story is prejudice. Here’s how it is related to engrams. As I said before, a memory circuit will activate another. When we see a big, muscular man like Big Bob, we’d tend to remember the violent, bullying wrestlers we saw on TV. Big Bob ain’t a wrestler, but when we see one, the image of violence in the TV with someone big and muscular like Big Bob will appear. Because our memory circuits are interconnected automatically. We didn’t choose to be that way, but its biologically meant to be. Scientists even did an experiment where beforehand, the subjects, who were white people, were specifically told not to be judgmental or prejudice. They were shown many pictures of a white man and a black man for ONE SECOND, and push in a button labeled “GOOD” and “BAD” as fast as they could. These people were known not to be prejudice, they are highly educated scholars, and plus, specifically were told not to be prejudice. But when they started showing pictures of black people, they still, press the ‘BAD’ button most of the time, and this happens to everyone in the experiment. They only got one second to press the button, so they don’t really have the time to think. So when our conscious mind doesn’t work, the unconscious takes over, where memories of black people we see in Hollywood movies comes out, the articles about criminals by the black people. We consciously choose not to be prejudice, but our mind actually doesn’t. Our mind depends on our memories, which are interconnected to one another.

The same goes for judging someone you barely knew. Simply put, when you judge someone you don’t really know, you tend to link him or her to someone similar that you’ve already known before. Like a women who has relationship troubles with men in the past would associate other men with the one she knew before. It’s just like the case of Big Bob. That’s how first impressions lead us.

So, taking things back home, after reading all these crazy stuff I wrote, what do you think of me? Who do you link me to? Well, I’m sorry to say, you can’t judge me from my writings, cause you’ll soon realize that what you judge is really someone you already knew. When you meet me in person, you’ll see that I am a whole different person than you previously thought

How our memory works and how to remember better

Why do we easily remember some facts but not another?
Why do we remember more what we did on last New Year’s Eve than what we do 3 days ago?
How do we improve our memory?

Most people with great memories aren’t really good ‘rememberers’, they are great ‘associators’. Have you’ve seen one of those colored pen advertisements saying that by using those colored pens to make notes, you’ll remember 70% more? It’s not really the color that makes you remember more, it’s the association between the words and the color. For example, let’s say in a biology note you wrote the word ‘chlorophyll’ in green. Your brain registers both the word and color together through different circuits which end at the same part of the brain. Firing through two circuits makes the signal stronger, which in the end, is stored in the brain better. Like making a dent on a piece of steel, hammering with both hands creates a deeper dent compared to using just one hand. So is using 2 of your brain circuits, like in this case the language circuit (for the word chlorophyll) and color recognition circuit (for the color green). The more circuits are fired, the deeper the memory is embedded in our brains.

Now that’s only the association of language (the words) and color. It doesn’t have to be only 2 circuits. The more circuits are fired together, the deeper the memory is embedded. There are unlimited other association, like associating the information with shape by drawing, with sound by reading out loud, or, most profoundly, is by associating it with emotion. Do you remember the details of the dullest day of your life? The days where you’re neither really happy nor sad, you just have nothing to do. All you do is stay on your bed or looking out the window watching the day pass by? Chances are you won’t. But if I ask you to remember the happiest or the saddest day of your life, I believe you can come up with more details. Like the people you talked to, the clothes that you wore, and the people you’ve encountered. Emotion plays an important role in memorization. It’s like the heaviest hammer there is. One strike creates a deep, deep dent. One emotion circuit firing makes a deeply embedded memory. We remember our happy days, and also the worst days of our lives because it is associated with our emotions. To take advantage of it, we can remember more when reading the things that interest and excite us. Remember that you remember all the storyline and how the character in the comic book you like ended up? But you can’t remember the storyline of that historical event you consider boring? That’s memory and emotion in action.

One way to make remembering fun is by eliciting emotional responses by imagination. For example, if you’re required to remember that the main exports of a certain country is coffee, sugarcane and bananas, imagine yourself drinking coffee added with sugar (processed from sugarcane) while eating bananas. That’s really weird and somewhat funny isn’t it? Who drinks coffee with bananas? But that, is what stimulates our emotional response, and makes us remember better. I know it takes time to think of those kinds of associations but the effects on memory are profound!

So, like it or not, to pass exam, you either have to like what you read, or keep on repeating them until it creates a deep ‘memory dent’ inside your brain. Oh, I haven’t explained to you about repetition? Repetition is reading again and again the information that you read. This is really a boring way to memorize, but it works. It’s like you repeatedly hammer a piece of steel, the more you hammer it, the deeper the dent is. Luckily, I do have a technique which is much more effective than just reading repeatedly, but takes a little more effort. Here’s how. The conventional way of note-writing is like this:

“The heart is a muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system (including all vertebrates), that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions”

Man, that’s dull, so here’s another way of writing:

“The heart is a ________ organ found in all animals with a ________ system (including all _________), that is responsible for pumping _____ throughout the blood vessels by repeated, ___________ contractions”

Isn’t this familiar? It’s like “fill in the blanks with the correct answer” in primary school! Anyway, first, you read the full text. Then you make a note like the above. Now, the most important part is you leave out the words that are critical to remember. Like ‘circulatory’ or 'rhythmic'. It doesn’t make sense to leave out the word ‘the’ or 'with' does it? This is not an English prepositions test! The trick is like this, on the next page, you fill in the answers to those blank spots

• muscular
• circulatory
• vertebrates
• blood
• rhythmic

So, the next time you read the note, you try to remember what the correct word for the blank spots is. If you cannot remember, halt it, don’t turn to the next page! Take a guess! After you have taken guesses of all the answers, then you turn to the next page. If your answer is correct, you will stimulate your emotion of happiness. Yay! But, if you got it wrong, don’t worry. Because you took the guess instead of just looking at the answer, you in a way telling your brain that “Hey, you’re giving out the wrong facts here!”. The brain will register the error, and, as a result will make you remember the answer better. Better yet if you gave the wrong answer because you are confusing it with another fact. That mistake will clear up the confusion. As they say, we learn more from our mistakes.

So, by doing this kind of note-writing, you don’t have to make the mistakes in the exams. Make the mistakes now, in your room, so that when you enter the exam hall, you’ve already done enough mistakes to make you a perfect scorer! (You might ask why not just buy an exercise book, do the exercise and check your own answers instead of painstakingly writing those ‘fill in the blanks notes’. But if you’re asking this question you might be a primary or high-school student. In university, we don’t have many exercise books to test our knowledge. Lecturers like to write slides and slides of presentation and expect us to remember word by word. They don’t like to do exercise books. So this is one of the way)