Tips on How to study and effectively remember what you studied

How To Study

When medical residents are learning how to perform procedures and save lives, they have to remember a lot of information. It's crucial that they can remember this information, because if they make a mistake, someone's life could be at risk. In 2006, researchers took a class of residents learning how to sew up arteries and split them into two groups. Both groups were given the same study materials, but one group used a study technique that made them perform better than the other group when tested a month later.

SECRET TO THAT GROUP SUCCESS

To understand how these study methods work, let's first look at how the brain learns and stores information.

Imagine you're trying to remember the anatomy of the heart. When you first learn about this concept, your brain temporarily stores the information in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. As you continue to study the heart and learn more about it, you reactivate the neurons in the hippocampus, strengthening the connections between them. Eventually, the knowledge of heart anatomy is stored in a different part of the brain called the neocortex.

Every time you recall knowledge about the heart, it becomes susceptible to change. This process, called reconsolidation, is an important part of learning. It means that your knowledge isn't fixed, but can be updated to include new experiences and information. So, recalling knowledge isn't like reading from a book; it's an active process that modifies the original memory. Over time, this process of recall and updating can lead to a more complete and nuanced understanding of the topic.

This brings us to our first study method

STEP ONE (1)

Test yourself with flashcards or quizzes.

This forces you to actively recall information, rather than just looking at it in a textbook. You may be tempted to reread your notes or highlight them, but those strategies can give you a false sense of confidence. When you test yourself, you can get a more accurate idea of what you know and don't know. If you can't remember an answer, don't worry! Making mistakes can actually help you learn in the long run.

STEP 2 (TWO)

Building on the first technique, our second technique involves mixing up your flashcards so that you're studying different subjects in the same session. This is called interleaving, and research suggests that it leads to better retention than focusing on one subject at a time. The reason for this may be that the act of temporarily forgetting and then retrieving information strengthens the memory. You might also find connections across subjects and better understand how they're different. So, instead of studying biology flashcards for an hour, then moving on to history flashcards, try mixing them together.

This brings us back to our medical residents. Both groups studied the surgery for the same amount of time. Yet one group’s training was crammed in a single day, while the other more successful group’s training was spread over four weeks.

Here's the idea: your brain needs breaks. When you’re not actively studying, the brain goes through a process called consolidation. During this process, the brain connects new memories with old ones and ultimately stores them in long-term memory. Cramming before a test may seem like a good idea, but it doesn’t allow for consolidation. Instead, you should space out your studying, letting the information settle in your brain overnight or even over multiple days.