The Best Way to Memorize Is Apparently While Exhaling

Japanese researchers stuck tubes in 30 people's noses to discover the best time to memorize things.

So, this is a thing now

Researchers in Japan believe they've found the optimal moment in your breathing cycle for memorization. Apparently, it’s when you exhale.

A team at Hyogo Medical University Hospital is about to publish a study on it, which is an interesting development because until now, this was something they'd only tested on mice. For the human trial, they got 30 volunteers to let them insert a tube into their noses to track airflow. Then they showed them 40 pictures of plants and animals. For science.

The big reveal

After the slideshow, they tested everyone's recall. The results showed people were slightly faster at remembering an image if they had first seen it while finishing an exhale. They also physically answered the questions faster while exhaling, too.

There wasn't a big difference in how many answers they got right, but the researchers noted the task was pretty easy to begin with. This whole thing weirdly explains how I learned a ton of Japanese from singing along to J-pop hits two decades ago. All that vocalizing was just one long, continuous exhale with a melody.

What you're supposed to do with this

So, the next time you're trying to cram kanji or memorize the order of the Yamanote Line stations, I guess you should try saying them out loud at the end of a breath.

It feels like one of those productivity hacks that takes more effort to implement than whatever you were trying to do in the first place. The researchers have not yet confirmed if this effect is amplified by blowing dust out of an old Famicom cartridge, which feels like a missed opportunity.