5 exercises to IMPROVE your MEMORY | Neurologist Explains

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]You walk into a room and you've forgotten why you came in. You see a colleague that you've known for two years and you suddenly blank out their name. You're reading a book and by the end of the paragraph you have already forgotten what the paragraph said at the beginning. If these things are happening to you and you might be thinking your memory is going away, let me assure you it's not you getting old. It's just that your brain is struggling to retain information. And the good news is this can be fixed. I'm Dr. Sedat Warrior. I'm a neurologist. I spend a lot of time thinking about how your brain works. And this is my YouTube channel where we talk about your brain, your health, and everything to make your life better. If you've not subscribed to the channel yet, do so. You'll see a lot more such videos on your timeline. In this video, I'm going to break down memory and what are some things that you can do to improve your memory. So, before we get to the exercises to help you improve your memory, a 60-second neuroscience lesson in what memory is, and I promise you it'll be worth it. See, memory is not like filing some things in a folder.

[00:01:02]Memory is more like a web. Imagine a spiderweb full of interconnected facts.

[00:01:08]That is how your brain stores information where every piece of information is connected to several other things. And if you miss out on one, you might struggle to remember another. And on the other hand, the more stronger the connection between two facts, the easier it is to remember one when you think of the other. So imagine billions of neurons in your head all connected together, sharing information with each other. And the stronger two neurons fire together, the more they wire together, and your memory improves.

[00:01:36]So now that you have this context of how memory is stored in your brain, let's look at five things you can do on an everyday basis to improve your memory.

[00:01:45]Number one is something I've been using since I was in college and that is the recall walk. When I would read a chapter, I wouldn't just go on to the next chapter immediately. I would close the book. I would go for a walk and I would just try to recall everything that I've read while walking. And now after years of studying neurology, I understand why. When you walk and move, your brain releases dopamine. And dopamine is important for your brain to store valuable information. You see in our brain movement and learning were never separate. For millions of years, every animal has learned to remember important things by moving. It's only human beings who have divided our activities into outdoor and indoor. Some things you should do in a classroom and some things you should do on the playground. That doesn't exist in nature. So, if you want to remember something better, incorporate it with movement. Go for your recall walk and you will remember whatever you've read much better. And a pro tip on the side, as you're walking, imagine that you are teaching your friend what you've just read. Just having that visual image of you teaching somebody what you've just read will pull in more networks in your brain and make that information stick more deeper into your head. The next thing you can do to improve your memory is using some memory games. Now, a lot of these are free on the internet. One such memory game that I recently came across is called Dual and Back Light.

[00:03:10]Now in a nutshell what it does is it improves your brain's working memory. If your brain is like a computer your working memory is the RAM. The lesser the RAM in your brain the less information your brain can hold on to at a time which means your working memory is less which means your overall memory will suffer. So a way to improve your working memory is by playing games like this. So dual and back is a very simple game. You can even play it without an app. You can play it with a friend. Have a friend read out a sequence of random numbers to you. And you need to listen and find when a number that you just heard matches with a number that was two numbers ago. Not the last one, but two numbers ago. Your brain essentially has to hold on to a number, keep it in your memory, skip one number, and then match the one that you've just heard. It sounds easy, but it is not. You keep playing this, your brain will hate you for a while, but that's a sign that it is working. And doing this for 10, 15 minutes every day has shown to improve working memory. The third exercise that you can do to improve your memory is using a memory palace. Now, there are two important steps in building your memory palace. Number one is to give a piece of information importance and say, I want to remember you. And second is to connect it to something that you already know. In other words, keep that information in a room that you are familiar with. The memory palace technique actually hijacks a primitive network in your brain which is spatial recognition. Your brain is wired to remember places and geography much more than it is wired to remember facts. So if you can somehow connect a new fact to a geographical place, your brain will be able to make that connection much better. So imagine if you have to remember 10 things in your grocery list.

[00:04:57]Rather than just remembering it by name, if you can visualize each of those 10 things in a different corner of your bedroom, you will be able to navigate yourself through all the 10 things. And when you reach a supermarket, you will still be able to remember everything.

[00:05:12]Try it out. And the more you try, the better you will get at expanding your palace, adding more rooms, adding more details until you have a very real three-dimensional structure to keep new facts in. Fourth exercise to improve your memory is learning something completely new. Now, when you learn something new, there is a dopamine spike, right? There is an excitement, an anticipation. That dopamine spike reinforces your memory and that can be carried forward to other things as well.

[00:05:43]That could be learning a new language, learning a new instrument, or even simply learning a new way to tie a knot.

[00:05:48]It doesn't matter. As long as you're learning something new and teaching it to someone within 24 hours, the dopamine networks in your brain will adapt, evolve, and your memory will thank you for it. And finally, exercise number five to improve your memory is not an exercise at all. It is in fact sleep.

[00:06:07]Now I've talked about sleep many many times before but I have to bring it up again because too often we forget that sleep is where information is finally encoded in your brain. It is like packing a suitcase but forgetting to take it with us when we travel. If you don't sleep and you're just spending all day reading new information, you are not going to be able to use it at the time of your exam or whenever you need that information. So if you truly want all that powerful memory to be useful, sleep. Make sure that you're getting at least 6 to 8 hours of quality sleep.

[00:06:43]That means you're waking up fresh. And then all the information you read the previous day is now converted into useful memory. So these are the five exercises. Recall walk, working memory, games, learning something new and teaching, building a memory palace, and focusing on your sleep. Now, if you enjoyed this video and you want to learn neuroscience at a much deeper level, go check out my workshops. It's on my website. I'll put a link down below as well. There is the basics of neuroscience course which is meant for everyone and a neuromarketing course specifically designed for professionals, for marketing agents, um just to help you understand how the brain works when you're buying and selling things. If you like this video, hit the like button, subscribe to my channel. It means a lot to me. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye everyone. Take care.