The Venue Fine Art & Gifts made a temporary departure from the world of arts during the latest installment of the gallery’s weekly Tuesday evening lecture series.
Members of the Bloomington community attended “The Art of Memory,” a talk by Lesa Huber, associate professor in the School of Public Health, to learn memory-fostering skills and discuss the nature of memory, especially in older age.
Huber began with an anecdote about her own recent memory slip, which involved materials she was supposed to bring for her presentation Tuesday.
“So last night I was thinking about this presentation, and I carefully put together all the things that I would need for today. I put them in a bag and put it in the refrigerator,” Huber said. “This morning, I thought to myself, ‘Put those things in the car right now.’”
The audience laughed as Huber admitted she forgot those items in the refrigerator.
“It’s just what happens to us all the time,” Huber said. “We have the intention to remember, something happens, and there you are — you’ve forgotten the thing you were so sure you were going to remember.”
At the beginning of the lecture, Huber said in order to begin the process of committing something to memory, one must focus on that information for 20 seconds. That will not ensure complete committal, but if repeated the same day, the next day and five days down the line, that bit of information has a better chance of sticking.
Huber mixed into her presentation interactive activities for the purpose of memory practice. One game involved each attendee turning to a stranger and introducing him or herself, then creating a movie in their mind to remember their partner’s name.
Another activity involved Venue curator Dave Colman, who was told to sit in the front of the room and pretend he was driving.
“I was assured I would not be humiliated during this presentation,” Colman said.
Huber then constructed a narrative: Colman is driving to the store and decides he wants to make an egg sandwich. She placed a plastic container on his head and cracked an egg in it, placed slices of bread on his shoulders and mayonnaise at his feet.
The goal of the exercise was to highlight how associating lists with something familiar, such as parts of the body, can help one remember the items in the list more effectively. While one does not need to attach these items to themselves, they can create those associations to commit them to memory.
Allen Safianow, professor of history at IU-Kokomo, said he attended the talk after observing he and his colleagues have been experiencing memory troubles.
“Everyone is afraid of Alzheimer’s because sometimes you can’t remember something — I know people in their 50s who have Alzheimer’s — so I think that there’s kind of this fear we have. We say, ‘Well, forgetting things is normal,’ versus being a sign of dementia,” Safianow said.
Safianow said the strategy he will probably employ was talking to himself to assure certain frequent tasks are complete. By incorporating verbal repetition and physical action, Huber said people can lessen the chance they will panic later.
“I find I can’t remember if I closed the garage door or if I locked my car,” Safianow said. “Sometimes I go back, especially if I’m going away for a few days.”
One conclusion Huber drew during her lecture was the importance of personal well-being as a way to combat memory loss.
Habits such as eating healthy foods, exercising regularly and sleeping well were the most important. Additionally, staying in touch with family, friends and acquiantances; treating depression; and regular checkups; were ways to combat memory loss.
“If you have a smart body, a healthy body, you’ll have a smarter mind,” Huber said.
