The next time someone asks you to stop sharing your fun facts about rare coins, or teases you about your obsession with Norse mythology, tell them you’re working on your brain health.
According to a new Baycrest study that examined memory in expert birdwatchers, having expert knowledge in a subject helps us memorize new information. This is because, while forgetting often happens when similar memories interfere with each other, expert knowledge provides a mental organizational structure, or scaffolding, that helps us keep new items that we want to learn distinct from each other. This reduces confusion between similar items — in this case, similar-looking birds.
“Unlike memory functions that tend to decrease with age, expert knowledge often continues to accumulate as we get older. This makes it an area of strength in older adults that we may be able to harness to mitigate age-related…
