A simple nightly habit—recalling personal events from the day—may help improve memory in older adults, including those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
In a recent study, adults around age 70 were asked to remember 5 things they did during the day before going to bed. The next morning, they performed better on a memory test compared with nights when they did not do the recall task.
The study involved 26 participants: 8 with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s, and 18 healthy age-matched adults. All participants completed a memory task on 2 separate occasions. Each time, they were shown 20 words in the evening and tested the following morning to identify those words among a mix of familiar and unfamiliar ones.
On one of the two nights, participants were instructed to recall and write down five events from their day. Task order was randomized to minimize bias.
Memory performance improved after the autobiographical recall task. Overall recognition accuracy increased from 82% to 86.4%. Participants with Alzheimer’s showed a 7% improvement, while healthy adults improved by about 3%.
Most of the gain came from better ability to identify unfamiliar words—“correct rejections”—rather than improved recall of the original list. There was no significant change in identifying target words (“hits”) or in recalling words without cues. The authors discussed mPFC stimulation as a possible explanation for improved correct rejection performance.
To examine whether sleep played a role in the memory improvement, investigators monitored brain activity with at-home EEG headbands. They measured total sleep time, efficiency, and brain wave activity linked to memory, including sleep spindles and slow-wave patterns.
No significant changes in sleep quality or brain activity were found between conditions, which suggested the memory boost was more likely related to the act of recalling personal experiences than to sleep itself.
While the sample size was small, the findings indicated that reflecting on daily events before sleep may activate brain areas that are involved in both personal memory and recognition. This type of task is simple, low-cost, and has no known risks.
Investigators said further studies with larger groups are needed to confirm these results and explore whether bedtime recall could support long-term memory health.
If proven effective, this strategy could offer an easy, accessible way to support memory in older adults, particularly those with early cognitive decline.
The authors did not list any conflicts of interest.
Source: Science Direct
