Clenched fist helps the brain

Retrieving memories is easier with a clenched fist

25/04/2013

Who clenches a fist, can easily retrieve memories. That's what US psychologists found out. It depends on which hand applies the fist trick. The experiment was conducted with 51 right-handers. Many were able to improve their small memory impairment.

Right hand clenched hand helped right-handed learners to learn
A clenched fist does not always mean trouble. This was proven by Ruth Propper of Montclair State University and her team. The bale of a fist can help retrieve memories and lessons learned. In doing so, the researchers made use of the already long-accepted thesis that movements of the left half of the body are connected to the right brain region and activities of the right half of the body are connected to the left brain region.

51 Right-handed people were either forced to squeeze a rubber ball for 45 seconds with the same hand, not at all or twice in quick succession. At the same time, the subjects focused on one „X“ on a screen. After that you should remember 36 words that have been displayed. Before the memorized words were interrogated, part of the subjects should again press the rubber ball, while the other part did nothing. Like the researchers in the online journal „PLoS ONE "best cut off those study participants who had pressed the rubber ball with their right hand and fetching the information with their left hand when remembering.The respondent returned an average of eleven words, with nine answers being correct They did almost twice as well to the group of study participants who had pressed a rubber ball with both hands in both experiments, but those who had not pressed a rubber ball did almost as well as the first group.

Clenched fist could also help with other memory skills
As Propper explained, the results concluded, „Simple movements may enhance memory, for example, by temporarily altering brain activity. "However," no measurement of this activity has occurred during the experiments. "Nevertheless, it is possible to use these experiments to investigate the responsibility of the brain's halves for certain tasks. „It has been hypothesized that the simple one-sided bale of the hand can be used as a tool to study the functional specialization of the halves of the brain of healthy people“, the researchers write. Also the already known thesis, according to which the memorizing of words in the anterior left brain and retrieving in the right, would be supported by the study. Further investigations will now test "whether the Faust-trick is helpful not only for learning words but also for other memory skills such as the spatial imagination or the recognition of faces".

The study results of Propper and her team are only for right-handed people. To what extent the results also apply to left-handers and two-handed people, the researchers have not yet explained. Although some of these results are available, they would be presented later, according to the researchers. (Ag)

Picture: Gerd Altmann