Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath

The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

Our memory seems like a mystery. Why can I rattle off the stating lineup of the 1967 Red Sox but can’t remember what had for lunch yesterday? Charan Ranganath can explain. He joins us to discuss his new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Mattersand what we can do to strengthen our cognitive fitness.

Charan Ranganath joins us from California.

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Bio

Charan Ranganath, Ph.D, is the author of the new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters. He is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California.

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For More on Charan Ranganath, Ph.D

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters

Website

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Wise Quotes

On Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

“…I really recommend for people to do new things and get out of their comfort zone. Novelty can be hugely important. It can be anxiety provoking for some people and you’ve got to be careful about that. But one of the things that we know is curiosity and novelty are associated with activity in these areas of brain that release and process dopamine. Dopamine is a modulator that, as I mentioned, promotes plasticity. Some work even suggests that if you, let’s say, put an animal in a box and you let it explore this box that it’s never been in before, its brain gets flooded with dopamine. Then if you give it some task, now it will be better at remembering the things that it was doing for this task. So in other words, that dopamine can have this spreading effect. So I think that is something that will improve people’s memory, potentially. And also I think that kind of engagement is just good for people in general. There’s also just a lot of value in seeing and feeling that you’re learning. It can get very easy to get into a rut and then feel like everything is the same. Sometimes you lose that curiosity as you get older. I know because I see this in my colleagues sometimes and I’ll say, Hey, what are the findings in your lab that you’re most excited about? And they’ll say, Nothing’s new, it’s all the same, we’re all just rehashing the same stuff. And I find that so depressing because it is like my whole business is curiosity and I am a big believer in the power of curiosity.”

On The Mind-Body Connection

“If you want to improve your cognitive functioning, or you want to retain your cognitive functioning over time and you want protect your brain health, consider that your brain is the seed of the mind and it is a part of your body. I think a lot of people have this idea of somehow I am my mind, and then my brain is separate. And it’s not. It is all connected. What this means is that if you’re not taking care of your mental health, your emotional health your physical health, it’s going to affect your cognition and possibly increase your risk for dementia…. If you want to get in to the positives, sleep and exercise are very important.”

On Prioritizing & Memory

“So at a minimum you want to prioritize, right? So I don’t hear people telling me, Boy, I remember this temporary password that I had from 10 years ago. That’s really great. I’m so happy about this. Even if you remembered everything else, you wouldn’t tell me this, right? And you certainly wouldn’t tell me I remembered that you’re happier about remembering the temporary passwords than you are about remember that you have a doctor appointment. So, I think that there’s this intuition that we have that we should be able to remember everything, that any inability to remember is a weakness. I think that intuition is wrong. But, of course, I lose my phone. I lose my keys. So I experience the everyday moments of frustration and of forgetting. And so I can empathize with that feeling. But on average, I think you would not want it in the opposite direction.”

On Habits & Memory

“Having good habits can help you at a day-to-day level, like just minimizing the number of distractions that you have in front of you, which I kind call memory hygiene, turning off alerts on various devices and things like that, not trying to do ten things at the same time….You say that I want be able to do a better job of remembering where I put my keys. And part of it could be put a sign, put sign saying, Hey, put keys here and just develop a habit. You don even need to remember, right? ”

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About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.