This important strategy should help improve your learning efficiency and memory. It’s presented in college student context, but of course applies to anyone looking for a good study tip.

Imagine that a psychology lecture has just let out. The vast majority of students will wait several weeks to review their lecture notes. Unfortunately, when they do so, very little of what they’ve written will make sense. The notes will be difficult to follow, and the content hard to understand. They might as well be seeing the material for the first time. Why? The answer is simple: Their memory of the material has long since decayed.

Why does forgetting happen?

Most students incorrectly believe that after learning new information, they steadily forget a little bit each and every day that passes.

This is a myth. Actually, newly learned information has a relatively short half-life in your brain. This fact is demonstrated very nicely by the forgetting curve.

The forgetting curve is not a new phenomenon. German psychologists (e.g., Herman Ebbinghaus) were plotting these curves 150 years ago. Since that time, a great deal of accumulated data has supported their validity. Take a look at the forgetting curve shown here:

The peak of the curve (T) represents your memory for material immediately after the learning session—let’s say the end of a lecture. Now, we can conclude 2 things from the curve: The Obvious and the Not-so-Obvious.

The Obvious:

We can see it makes no sense to wait until midterms or final exams to do your first review (that is, to wait until Day 30 or longer on the above graph). By that time, you’ll have forgotten more than 95 percent of the material. You’ll feel as if you’re encountering the information in your notes for the first time, and what should take you only 4 minutes to review will now take you 40 minutes. The notes will look foreign because you won’t remember anything.

Not-so-Obvious:

However, there’s a more important conclusion we can reach from the curve: You don’t have to wait several weeks for this degree of forgetting to occur. Massive forgetting actually happens within hours of the initial learning session. Therefore, even those students who wait several days to review the material are in trouble! If you look carefully at the graph, you can see that even before Day 2 arrives, you will already have forgotten 40–70 percent of what you learned!

The crucial point is this: Make sure to review new material within hours of any initial learning episode.

The vast majority of students could save dozens of hours of study time per semester by using this one technique alone to markedly improve learning efficiency and memory.

Notice how a small investment up front pays huge dividends come exam time.

It is also worth noting that these recommendations apply not only to lectures, but to any academic learning—whether from a textbook, video, or computer learning session.

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Stimulants are being used with increasing frequency by students across college campuses (see ‘Harvard Students: Reaching for drugs to boost brain power). Many of them, however, probably aren’t well aware of the various side effects. In addition to chronic cognitive problems, amphetamines can also induce catastrophic acute events.

An article in the December 2006 issue of Neurology [Reference here] describes a couple of cases of carotid artery dissections following amphetamine use. The carotid arteries are two of the major blood vessels that travel up the neck and supply blood to the brain. When these arteries dissect (tear), strokes often ensue. A stroke is a focal area of permanent brain death due to lack of blood flow.

Cocaine, another sympathomimetic (drug that mimics the effects of sympathetic nervous system stimulation), has also been reported to cause tears in major blood vessels.

It is also important to note that amphetamines and cocaine can also lead to strokes via another mechanism: inflammation of blood vessels in the brain [click here for reference]. The medical term for this process is Vasculitis.

Since the vast majority of strokes are "silent", I suspect the prevalence of strokes due to stimulants is much higher than officially reported or recognized.

As far as more common chronic side effects, an earlier smartkit post details how just 3 months of Ritalin use (an amphetamine) can significantly damage the very blueprint of cell architecture- DNA.

In future posts, I’ll discuss oxidative damage as well as cardiac side effects.

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One of the greatest misunderstandings people have about the brain is their belief in “free energy”.

Hundreds of millions of students and workers all over the world consume drinks and pills in the hopes of magically relieving fatigue and boosting their energy levels without suffering any downside. Hence the popularity of Red Bull, Monster, Mountain Dew, Coke, Pepsi, energy pills, caffeine pills, amphetamines, cocaine, and of course coffee.

I’m a firm believer that when it comes to brain circuitry and energy metabolism, Newton’s Third Law still holds: Every action has an equal an opposite reaction.

Based on my years of studying the brain and expertise as a neurologist, I am deeply convinced that, on a fundamental level, the consequences of a chemical energizer are twofold:

• As high up as the drug brings you, you will afterwards sink to an equally commensurate low
• Pushing neural circuits into overdrive stresses the hardware, and leads to cumulative wear-and-tear type brain damage

In life, there are always tradeoffs, and everything has a benefit and a risk. Surely, there are times when it is worthwhile to consume a chemical energizer. The important point is to realize there is a downside to taking it, and therefore only use the minimal amount needed to get the job done.

Taking a large dose initially doesn’t mean the beneficial effect will last longer. It just means your handgun gun just magically became a nuclear bunker buster.

Back in college, I never thought twice about downing an oversize vanilla cappuccino to help get in the studying mood. In actuality, all that was probably needed was a few sips at the start and maybe another couple sips an hour or two later.

Just because Monster Energy shoves 16 ounces of caffeinated sugar into a can doesn’t mean you need to drink all of it.

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Read today that the founder of the biggest U.S. trucking company died on Thursday from an accidental fall.

Although I don’t know the entire story of J.B. Hunt, I do know that he dropped out of school in the 7th grade.

About 1 hour reading of his death, the front page of digg.com featured this economic analysis by REEF, which suggests college is a financial mistake for more than half of the American young people today.

Considering how incredibly costly a college education is today, I don’t doubt the findings from this report one bit.

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