Do you know writing on paper may lead to more brain activity, especially while remembering the information after an hour? A recent study by Japanese University Students and Recent Graduates found it. Researchers have found that spatial, unique, complex, and tactile information associated with your writing by hand on physical paper is something that improves your memory.



What Is The Reason?

The main reason is that physical paper is more Advanced and Useful compared to your electronic documents. Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai said that it contains more one-of-a-kind intimation for stronger memory recall. He’s a neurologist at the University of Tokyo and also is the author of the research published recently in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. This research was done in collaboration with the NTT Data Institute of Management Consulting.

What This Research Found?

In this research, volunteers using paper to complete the note-taking tasks have done their work 25% faster than those using digital tablets and smartphones. Volunteers had written both with stylus and digital tablets or pen and paper. The researchers found that paper books contain more complex spatial information compared to Digital Paper. Paper allows tangible performance, uneven shape, and irregular strokes. But the Digital Paper has no fixed position while scrolling and is uneven viability. It disappears after closing the app.

How Did This Study Was Done?

This study included 48 volunteers who had read a fictional conversation between characters and were discussing the plans for the next two months. It included 14 different class times, personal appointments, and assignment due dates. Researchers used a pretest analysis to make sure all volunteers of age group 18-29 get recruited from the university campuses of offices of NTT. It divided them into three groups based on various criteria like a personal preference for digital or analog methods, gender, age, memory skills, and other aspects.

Volunteers had recorded the fictional schedule through their paper datebook and pen, a calendar app on their gadgets, and a stylus. Volunteers were not under the pressure of the time limit. It was asked to record the fictional events in the same way they may see in their real-life schedules. There was no need to spend extra time.

What’s Next?

Researchers included break and interference tasks to distract the volunteers from thinking about the calendar. After spending one hour, they asked a range of simple and complicated questions to volunteers. For example, when is the assignment due? Which is the earlier due date for the assignment? These were MCQs to test their memory. After finishing the test, they sent volunteers inside an MRI scanner to measure the blood flow around the brain. The increased blood flow at a specific area of the brain shows increased neuronal activity in that region.

Results:

Participants using paper books filled in the calendar within 11 minutes, those using tablets took 14 minutes, and smartphone users took 16 minutes. Volunteers using analog methods scored better than others. Researchers said that activating the hippocampus indicated that analog methods have richer spatial details that minds can quickly recall and navigate. And the digital gadgets have uniform-scrolling up and down, standardized arrangement of texts, and picture size. Remembering physical paper helps you by closing your eyes and visualizing the photos, but digital docs by circling, underlying, highlighting, drawing arrows, and handwriting color-coded notes in margins, adding virtual sticky notes, and other unique markups can mimic the analog-style and can enhance the memory. This way, people using digital tablets and smartphones can improve their memory power and memorize the places and locations of texts and pictures to recognize them immediately.