Taking notes with pen and paper, instead of on a tablet or smartphone, may seem obsolete but it is faster and above all allows you to remember better. A study published in Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience by a group of researchers from the University of Tokyo. In the study 48 volunteers aged between 18 and 29 read a dialogue between two people discussing their plans for the future, talking about 14 dates, appointments and various tasks to be performed. At the end of the reading, the subjects were divided into three groups and were asked to write down the sequence of actions to be performed over time on three different media: a paper notebook (using a pen), an app with a digital calendar for tablets ( using a stylus), and a calendar app for smartphones (using the touch screen).
After an hour – in which, as a distraction from the experiment, the participants were asked to listen to a story and answer questions completely disconnected from what they had done before – the three groups were subjected to a test with questions related to the notes previously transcribed, such as: “When should task X be done?”. As the subjects filled out the questionnaire, an MRI device they were attached to analyzed brain blood flow and thus the regions of the brain that activated the most. “We have seen that those who took notes with pen and paper had, compared to other groups, more activity in the brain areas associated with language, visualization of the imaginary and in the hippocampus, an area known to be associated with memories and information. space, “explains Kuniyoshi Sakai, professor of neurobiology at the University of Tokyo. “Those who used pen and paper were quicker to fill in the questionnaire (11 minutes against the 14 employed by those who used the tablet and 16 minutes by those who used the smartphone). We believe that this difference is due to the different way of training of the memories that those who write in pen and those who write on a digital medium have. Furthermore, the subjects of the first group got more answers right, even if this last difference was seen only for the simpler questions “.
How can you explain the association between pen and paper and more vivid memories? “When we take notes by writing in a physical notebook, the information we write occupies a specific place in space, which is permanent. We can reopen the notebook at any time, and the information will always be in the same place,” explains Sakai. “With digital it is different. The space in which information is stored is more confusing, because it is virtual and it is not unique but only relative: we create it simply by sliding the screen. But if I scroll the screen, or if I turn off the tablet , it is as if what I wrote before had, in my eyes, disappeared (even if it remains in the memory of the device). This “liquidity” of digital means that the brain is unable to attribute a unique spatial position to the information. is affected “.
After all, we know well how much the placement of information in space is an aid to remember: techniques already known at the time of Cicero as “the palace of memory”, where to remember a sequence of things one imagines arranging them in an orderly manner in the various rooms of a palace. Furthermore, previous studies suggest that the use of pen and paper induces note-takers to mentally summarize what they have learned and then actively transcribe it, in their own words, appropriating more of the content. While the use of a computer keyboard would encourage the transcription of information in a more passive and literal way, activities which, by involving the brain less, results in a softer and less effective memorization.
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