The science behind brain farts

It happens to you all the time. You're mid-sentence during a meeting with your boss, working on The New York Times' crossword puzzle, typing up an essay for grad school, or even talking to your mom on the phone — and the next word you're looking for just doesn't ... come.

You know the word. You've used it before. Maybe you remember the letter it starts with or the syllabic rhythm when it leaves your mouth.

There's a scientific term for this totally common phenomenon, which we like to call a "brain fart." You're experiencing tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) syndrome, from the phrase "it's on the tip of my tongue." And while there's no universally accepted cause, scientific theories abound.

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Psychologist William James was the first person to describe the TOT phenomenon in 1890. "A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term," he wrote in his book Principles of Psychology.

But there wasn't empirical research until 1966, when Harvard researchers Roger Brown and David McNeil published a paper in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. They read definitions to people, and then asked them to recall the defined words. During the TOT state, these people could recall certain aspects of the word, and the closer they were to remembering it, the more accurate their associations became:

The signs of it were unmistakable; he [the subject] would appear to be in mild torment, something like the brink of a sneeze, and if he found the word his relief was considerable. While searching for the target, [he] told us all the words that came to his mind. He volunteered the information that some of them resembled the target in sound but not in meaning; others he was sure were similar in meaning but not in sound.

The TOT phenomenon is unique because of a feeling of "imminent recall," Brown and McNeil found. If we keep trying to remember the word, eventually it will turn up in our brains.

So, what do today's scientists think actually causes a brain fart? It could be psycholinguistic — a temporary breakdown in lexical word retrieval. Other researchers approach the phenomenon as a sign that something in the memory retrieval process has gone awry. Some believe a tip-of-the-tongue moment is the actual feeling that arises when retrieval fails.

"It's really hard to say what causes it," says Gary Small, M.D., professor of psychiatry and aging at the UCLA Semel Institute. "I don't think we've had enough research on it. But we do know that as our brains age, our neurons don't communicate as effectively as they did when they were younger ... The retrieval process becomes less efficient."

Stats vary widely, but older studies have shown that people between the ages of 18 and 22 experience TOT moments about once or twice a week, while older adults (ages 65-75) experience twice as many. Aging, sleep deprivation, anxiety, alcohol, distraction — anything that can affect physical and cognitive health will increase the frequency of "brain farts."
Whenever you try to remember something, your brain calls on your memory network — the hippocampus and other parts of your brain — to work together to access encoded memories.

"Long-term memory is more solid than short-term memory. It's easier to remember your high school graduation than what it is you had for lunch two days ago. The other side of that is, if, you don't retrieve a memory often, it may be harder to remember. You know you have it somewhere, but you just haven't used the information for a while. It gets a little a bit dusty," Small says.

The brain makes room for more important information to maintain its efficiency, taking the phrase "use it or lose it" literally. Small gives the example of phone numbers — we don't have to remember them anymore, because they're automatically stored in our smartphones. A new study even suggests that our memory includes a sort of "just-in-case file," storing trivial information for later — which may further explain why we forget words we don't use often.

Despite how common tip-of-the-tongue syndrome is, there aren't many practical strategies for overcoming it. In Small's experience as a clinician and a scientist, there are four major memory complaints: names and faces; places where you put things; prospective memory (i.e., remembering to remember things, such as leaving the house with your briefcase); and tip-of-the-tongue moments.

When Small couldn't find any successful tip-of-the-tongue strategies already out there, he simply made up his own — the "Look, Snap, Connect" technique — for his latest book, The Alzheimer's Prevention Program. "Look" reminds you to focus your attention, "Snap" means to create a mental snapshot and "Connect" is a way of giving the mental snapshot meaning.

Small says memory works in neighborhoods — you associate a memory with certain things, like an emotional or visual experience. "Look, Snap, Connect" aims to solidify these associations.

 "The next time you have a tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, write down your associations to what you're trying to remember. Once you have that information, you can create a 'Look, Snap, Connect' mnemonic, so next time it happens, it won't be as daunting," Small says.

Coincidentally, Small had his own tip-of-the-tongue moment as I spoke to him on the phone, when he tried to remember the name of a film to use in an example. He could remember the star, actor Jeremy Irons, curled up on the floor and playing dead, wearing rings on his fingers. The word "rings" helped Small remember the title: Dead Ringers.

The same technique works for single words, too. For example, if you can't remember the word "metronome," write down your associations with that word. Small's associations would be "thermometer," "metrics," "metro" and the baby grand piano he learned on as a child, which would help trigger it.

"It sounds quite elaborate, but it's very effective," he says.

We all experience tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. Despite being named after an English-language idiom, it's known the world over. Cheyenne Indians call it navonotootse'a — "I have lost it on my tongue."
In Korean, the phenomenon is called hyeu kkedu-te mam-dol-da — "sparkling at the end of my tongue." Even those with hearing loss experience "tip-of-the-fingers" syndrome during signing.

While science is still trying to figure it out, we can at least find solace in the shared experience. Our brains all pass gas once in awhile.


Original Article at:  The science behind brain farts
By:  Matt Petronzio