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While aging is a beautiful blessing, taking steps to ensure your mind remains sharp is integral to overall well-being. The mind always needs to be stimulated, whether you’re taking vitamins to support brain health, prioritizing socialization and hobbies, or engaging in word puzzles and other mental exercises that keep you thinking. 

Now there’s another tip to add to your aging well arsenal. A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that if people actively adopt positive emotions while learning, it could help improve memory and brain health. 

Researchers found that pairing positive emotions with memorization helped with retention.

From the study, researchers found that positive emotions can actually help us remember better by creating stronger neural connections while we’re learning something new. After participants in the study learned new information while experiencing positive emotions, their brains were able to develop more consistent neural patterns across multiple learning sessions.

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Because of this, it directly transferred to better memory performance later on. Researchers from China conducted an experiment involving 44 students who were tasked with memorizing shapes paired with emotional images. After a 24-hour break, participants took a recognition test to see how well they remembered the shapes they’d seen.

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Participants were able to better recognize shapes that had been paired with positive images.

Researchers were able to make a real breakthrough by closely monitoring participants’ brain activity. When people learned shapes paired with positive emotions, their brains showed remarkably similar neural firing patterns each time they encountered the same image.

Positive emotions were concluded to help orchestrate neural coordination, which helps ensure that all brain regions stay synchronized. Participants in the study who showed the greatest neural similarity patterns in response to positive emotion-paired images that they were looking at also happened to score the highest on the memory tests. 

It seems that positive emotions can have a drastic effect on a person’s memory and can help the brain store more information. So, in our everyday lives, doing things that bring us joy, whether it’s listening to music, hanging out with friends, being creative, and spending time out in nature, can all be things that are stimulating our minds and allowing us to still be in control of our memory and brain functions even when we reach old age.

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Neurology experts recommend practicing specific memory strategies to maintain healthy cognitive functions.

Neurology professor Andrew E. Budson explained that there are certain strategies that people can use to ensure their memory stays sharp. Some of those strategies include practicing active attention, repeating information spaced out over time, writing down information, and even reviewing names before attending any event or social interaction.

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These aren’t just tricks for an aging mind, either. These should be used at any age to help with memory retention. Admit it … how many times have you completely spaced on someone’s name literally seconds after they tell you? Yeah, you’re not alone. But using some simple memory boosting tricks like Budson recommended, combined with positive associations like the study found, could have a drastic impact on that retention. 

There’s no reason why keeping your mind sharp can’t be fun. But don’t forget to keep up with the basics for well-being like eating a balanced diet, getting good sleep, surrounding yourself with friends and family who make you happy, and testing yourself with new things like hobbies and artistic pursuits.

If you’re learning, it means your brain is stimulated. It’s a muscle, after all, and the only way to exercise it is to use it. If you exercise your brain while enjoying yourself, well, there’s no way you can’t stay sharp as a tack, regardless of age.

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Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.