Michael Gruneberg, memory whiz, is telling me how he would remember my name. "I'd imagine your brow is sweating. You're pale. You'd be an ill man." How about names without such obvious and unfortunate associations? My colleague's - Roger Tredre, for example? "I'd imagine a treadmark in his face," says the co-author of Your Memory For Life.Gruneberg, former President of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, in Britain, claims the technique can enhance memory by up to 80 per cent. But this memory enhancer, he warns, is rather like booze - best used in moderation. Don't try it at a party while trying to socialise. It is very hard to create an appropriate mental picture and converse sensibly.A senior lecturer, Gruneberg uses it at the University of Wales to memorise students names. His book, written jointly with an American psychologist, will strike a chord with forgetful or "vague" people.There is a decade by decade drop in memory function. If you're in your 20s or 30s suchlapses irritate. If you're 40 or over, you suspect you're losing your marbles (and you may be right, according to conventional thinking). By the time you're 65, you have problems recalling names and numbers and manipulating words.But how much of this decline is inevitable? Is there anything we can do about it? We are, it seems, too ready to attribute memory loss to ageing. Since the age of 35, I've been able to recall the registration number of my first car, a super white mini, more readily than my current one. I've put this down to age, but it may be because this was my first car and may have nothing to do with the passing years, says Gruneberg.He believes we should all be taught the tricks of the memory trade from 11 to 12 years of age. "Such skills are not just for returns. They're for life, and are good for everything from remembering jokes to birthdays and language. Some 50 papers shows this approach can increase retention by up to three times normal learning methods." Telephone numbers andbirthdays are rather more difficult, but Gruneberg swears by the digit letter system.Each number is represented by a particular letter: 1 by T - because there is one downstroke in the letter, 2 by N - because there are two downstrokes, 3 by M - because there are three downstrokes and so on.In future, there will be simpler options, such as memory-enhancing drugs. Says Professor Steven Rose, of the Open University, "Gruneberg says we should accept a gradual decline in mental functioning in the same way as we accept we cannot run for a bus at 60 as fast as we could when we were 20." He stresses, "The important thing is we can still get there."(Your Memory For Life by Michael Gruneberg and Douglas Herrmann has been published by Blandford Press, London).- Observer News Service
