Quiet helps us remember better

Paris Buttfield-Addison / CC

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes the harder you try to remember something, the farther away from recollection it feels and other times you can easily recall obscure moments of your life with perfect clarity. Researchers (Heriot-Watt University) discovered a connection between how well we remember something and the conditions under which the original memory was formed. What they discovered was that calm surroundings contribute to much better memory retention than anything else and that moments of silence actually help to galvanize memories and strengthen them, allowing them to be recalled with greater detail at a later time. The researchers call this period of quiet calm “quiet resting,” and say the memory of something is stored in greater detail than in those who did not get the benefit of resting.