Researchers at Florida State University found that a sense of purpose is related to better memory

"Personal memory plays a very important role in daily life," said Angelina Sutin, the lead author of the paper and a professor of medical school

Nearly 800 study participants reported the purpose and completion of tasks, in January and February 2020, measuring their cognitive processing speed before the coronavirus pandemic, and in July 2020, a few months after the public health crisis broke out, U.

Participants with a strong sense of purpose in life reported that their memories were more accessible, coherent, and vivid than participants with a weak sense of purpose

Researchers also found that depressive symptoms have little effect on the ability to recall vivid details, which suggests that the link between life goals and memory recall is not because people with higher goals have fewer depressive symptoms

Life goals have always been associated with better episodic memory, such as the number of words correctly retrieved in memory tasks

"We chose to measure the ability to recall memories with the COVID-19 pandemic because the influenza pandemic is an event that touched everyone, but already has extensive experience and the response to it should be an obvious memory," co-author Martina Said Luchetti, an assistant professor at the medical school

In addition to being associated with better memory, previous research has also found many other benefits associated with sense of purpose, from lower risk of death to better physical and mental health

Professor Antonio Tracciano of the School of Medicine, one of the authors of the research report, said: “Memory helps people maintain happiness, social relationships and cognitive health

Damaris Aschwanden is a postdoctoral researcher at FSU College of Medicine, and Yannick Stephan is a researcher at the University of Montpellier, France , They contributed to this research

This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging under the National Institutes of Health, and the award number is R01AG074573

Magazine

RAM

DOI

10.

Subject of research

people

Article title

Phenomenology of life's sense of purpose, cognitive function and autobiographical memory

COI statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest