Sign up for our newsletters! Memory card game Photo: Adam
Voorhes  How'd you do? Recalling five or more of the words means
your baseline short-term memory is in good shape. But if you
came up with fewer, don't panic. maybe you were distracted by a
text message, or maybe something else on the page caught your
attention while you were reading the list (research shows that
simply being unfocused can make it nearly impossible to add new
information to your memory bank). Or maybe you just need to
incorporate some brain training, which can activate and
strengthen neural connections over time, allowing you to call up
stored information faster.  Gary Small, MD, director of the UCLA
Longevity Center, who designed our test and uses a similar one
to help diagnose memory problems in his patients, believes that
certain behavioral techniques can help you stay sharper, longer.
If you're perpetually misplacing your keys and forgetting to
pick up milk at the grocery store, use these tactics to boost
your memory today—and help