Teenagers and young adults are more likely to remember certain information after going to a place they have never been before.
- There are five types of memory that rely on different neural networks.
- Emotions, lifestyle or the social context influence our memory.
Locking yourself in your room to study or staying in your favorite corner of the library before an exam is not a wise choice, according to neuroscientist Judith Schomaker. With researchers from the University of Leiden (Netherlands), she discovered that exploring a new place was beneficial for memory. To reach this conclusion, they carried out a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“Exploration of a new environment has been shown to promote memory formation in healthy adults. Animal research has suggested that these novelty-induced memory boosts are mediated by dopamine The dopamine system is known to grow and deteriorate throughout life, but so far the effects of a new location on memory throughout life have yet to be determined. been studied”wrote the authors.
Memory: 439 people explored various environments
As part of the work, the team recruited 439 people between the ages of 8 and 67. They asked children, teens, younger and older adults to virtually explore new environments and familiar places to determine the effects of “spatial novelty” on memory.
The scientists had them explore a forest twice. Half of the participants passed through the same environment twice, the rest visited a new location the second time. The volunteers were then subjected to a series of tests, including the memorization of a sequence of words.
New environment: young people remembered words better
According to the results, teenagers and young adults who had explored a new environment remembered the word list better. The authors also found that participants who walked away and went to another location uninvited also remembered words better than people who stayed on the path.
“After exploring a new environment, you’re most likely to remember what you’ve learned. So get outside, preferably somewhere you’ve never been before,” said Judith Schomaker in a statement. According to the scientists, this novelty effect was not observed in the elderly. “The older you get, the less your memory benefits from a new environment,” they specified.
Better memory thanks to dopamine
The authors suggested that young people who explored a new environment the second time remembered words better thanks to the dopamine system. As a reminder, dopamine is a neurotransmitter released by the brain. “A new environment boosts your dopamine, which is projected to the hippocampus, the area of the brain linked to learning. (…) In the elderly, the dopaminergic system is in decline and in children, this system is still in development, which might explain why novelty doesn’t have a memory-enhancing effect in them,” explained Judith Schomaker.