Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental-health education videos.
Working memory is an executive brain function
that is very important to your thinking process.
It's your ability to hold information in your mind
in temporary storage, then retrieve it later.
In an earlier video where I talk
about executive function problems in ADHD,
I compared working memory to RAM in your computer.
But another computer-related analogy
is the clipboard on your computer.
When you want to copy and paste something,
the information is copied to this invisible clipboard,
and will stay there while you work on your computer.
Then, when you want to use the information,
you execute the Paste function and the information appears.
Sometimes, if you try to copy too much information,
you'll get an error message.
And this can happen if your computer
doesn't have enough memory
to temporarily store the information.
Our human brains work similarly.
Some people are able to store more information
for quick retrieval than others.
Many things can affect the size
of your working memory capacity, but people who have ADHD,
or something else that affects your executive function
can have reduced working memory capacity.
When you don't have much working memory,
you can be very forgetful.
Here are some signs of low working memory capacity.
In conversation, you need to ask what the person just said
because you already forgot it even though they just said it,
you may have even forgot what I just said.
You need to interrupt people to say what you're thinking,
otherwise, you'll forget by the time they stop talking.
You can't remember people's names.
You're always misplacing things, like your keys or phone.
You leave a lot of unfinished task
because you forgot about the things you started previously.
And this could be something you started in the morning,
then got distracted by phone notifications,
then got an email instructing you to do something else.
Then, by the end of the day,
you don't remember the things that you started earlier.
It takes someone reminding you
or asking you about it for you to remember.
And this is different from the person
who juggles a lot of unfinished projects
because you're easily bored and lose motivation,
that happens too.
But when you have a low working memory capacity,
you outright forget about what you were doing,
and this is one of those things that it's hard to understand
even for the person who experiences it.
When you tell someone, "Oops, I forgot about that
even though you reminded me five times about it."
The other person just can't see why
you can't follow through.
And you can think, "Is there something wrong with me?"
"How can I forget about something
that I was actively working on?"
Working memory can be like that.
If yours is limited,
you can only hold so much in your mind.
And once you exceed your capacity,
previous activities or thoughts
can fall out of your mind as if they never happened.
If someone reminds you, you will be able
to remember what they said or what you started,
but without the prompts, the information is gone.
If you do some of these things, all is not lost,
there are things you can do to improve your working memory.
One approach is to use your senses,
your senses can help you make associations that serve
as a trigger to remember and retrieve the information.
For example, you can use sound by talking through a task
or hearing someone else talk about it.
Then, at a later point, hearing the person talk again,
or even hearing your own voice in your head
talking about the task can remind you of it.
Some people retain information visually.
In this case, try to visualize
whatever you need to remember.
For example, if someone's talking to you
and you're having trouble following their story,
try visualizing their story as if it were a movie.
Here's another example.
If you realize you need to call someone later,
picture yourself dialing the number,
and picture the person picking up the phone
and talking to you.
That visualization can bring the experience to life
and help you remember to make the call.
Smell and taste can create powerful associations.
In fact, your sense of smell
is controlled by your olfactory nerve,
which runs along the temporal lobe of your brain
where your hippocampus is located.
Your hippocampus processes emotional memories,
and this is why aromatherapy is so powerful.
Researchers have found that inhaling
rosemary essential oil expands working memory, how?
It does this through the organic
chemical compound 1,8-cineole.
Plants have oils that have
physiological effects on the body.
This 1,8-cineole is to rosemary
as CBD or THC is to cannabis,
simply a chemical compound found in plant oil.
I have references to two of those studies
in the description if you're interested.
Then, there's the sense of touch.
Touch gives your brain
different kinds of information about an object,
you get temperature, texture, and shape.
Depending on the task, touching an object
or having someone touch you
when they're telling you to do something
may create an association that helps you remember.
Another thing you can do
is what's called cognitive offloading,
and this is a fancy word for writing things down with lists
to reduce the demand on your memory.
This doesn't expand your working memory,
but it can still improve your working memory
because it frees up your internal storage.
Instead of needing to remember all of the items,
you just need to remember where you stored the information.
There's lots of other things that you can do,
but the last thing that I'll mention
is that you can establish routines and structure.
These routines can include things
like putting your keys or phone in the same place.
Here's an example of how you can combine
these last two interventions.
You can set aside the first 15 or 20 minutes
of your day to lay out your day and create goals.
This is a routine that you can do every morning.
Then, make a list of the things that you want to accomplish.
Make the list in such a way
that you can mark each item off as complete.
I suggest that you include things like batch-checking emails
and text messages three times a day,
or however often is sufficient for what you do.
Making the list is offloading,
and batch-checking messages it's routine and structure.
Then as a bonus, you can use your senses
by inhaling rosemary essential oil
or sipping your favorite tea while you work your list.
You can turn a reading assignment
into a tactile experience by holding the book or paper,
and then highlighting or underlining with a pen.
Watch this video on how aromatherapy affects your mind,
and this one for more on executive dysfunction.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.