Handwrite to Remember
Moving to make memories
It is the process of converting language into motor movements, and visual notes, that creates the endurance of memory. Personally, when learning from lectures in medical school, I always rewrote and condensed my notes when studying for an exam. This method never failed to get me good marks. I could even visualize the specific page of handwritten notes, when retrieved to answer a question.
A recent report captured the brain wave activity associated with this encoding process.
As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard. Connectivity analyses were performed on EEG data recorded with a 256-channel sensor array. When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/ alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning. Our findings suggest that the spatiotemporal pattern from visual and proprioceptive information obtained through the precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen, contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning. We urge that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning. Although it is vital to maintain handwriting practice at school, it is also important to keep up with continuously developing technological advances. Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware of which practice has the best learning effect in what context, for example when taking lecture notes or when writing an essay. …
Handwriting requires fine motor control over the fingers, and it forces students to pay attention to what they are doing. Typing, on the other hand, requires mechanical and repetitive movements that trade awareness for speed. Our results reveal that whenever handwriting movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated, resulting in the formation of more complex neural network connectivity. It appears that the movements related to typewriting do not activate these connectivity networks the same way that handwriting does. The concurrent spatiotemporal pattern from vision, motor commands, and proprioceptive feedback provided through fine hand and finger movements, is lacking in typewriting, where only a simple key press is required to produce the entire wanted form.
- FR (Ruud) Van der Weel, ALH Van der Meer.
My past newsletter also addressed the seductive pull of tech, to take over the storage of info, from the brain.
“Yes the smart brain is an efficient brain, energy-wise. Just Google it. Don’t remember it. If your mind knows it can 'look it up' then it will not invest effort to encode a memory, only the code for searching it. Even having a smart phone in your line of sight, will hinder memory formation and its retrieval.” … “Question: I wonder how long you have to be off the grid to train the brain to think again?”
And this other past newsletter emphasizes the motor cortex in memory formation and retrieval, even in sleep.
Learned Motor Patterns Are Replayed in Human Motor
Cortex during Sleep
“When learning to jump horses, I would fall asleep and immediately go back to training for the arena course, in my ‘dreams’. Same thing happened with figure skating jumps. Turns out, I was tuning up my motor memory of the techniques involved, while I slumbered away. Replay is a strategy the brain uses to remember new information.
A recent case report from a 36-year-old man with tetraplegia, T11, shows clear evidence for the phenomena happening in humans. Prior mouse experiments looked at maze running. Monitoring devices can show that a specific pattern of neurons will light up as it traverses the correct route. Checking back when the rodent sleeps, those same neurons will fire again in that same order. Is this how the brain allows a memory to be consolidated?”
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Signing off, for now. I need to go handwrite my grocery list …
… maybe then, I will remember what to get.
REFERENCES
FR (Ruud) Van der Weel, ALH Van der Meer. Handwriting but not Typewriting Leads to Widespread Brain Connectivity: A High-Density EEG Study with Implications for the Classroom, Frontiers in Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945
Absolutely true that taking notes aids the memory, and I usually remembered things by where they were on the page. When I was a young lawyer (40+ years ago), a partner would start telling me about a case, I'd start taking notes, and he or she would inevitably say, "You don't have to write this down." My response was always, "I do, because that's how I'll remember it."
I handwrote all my notes in college. Color coded flash cards for review. I could usually visualize the information later both for exams and at work years after. Typing never does that although it's much neater on a page.