The British scientist has been studying how memories have been affected by recent events, and shared her first results during a radio show on the BBC.

Loveday, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster, explained how she used the “Every Memory Questionnaire” to assess how different facets of respondents’ memories have been performing recently.

Sample questions include “did you forget to tell people something important?” and “did you start reading something, only to realise you’ve read it before?”

Respondents were also asked whether they thought their memory had improved, stayed the same, or deteriorated during the pandemic. Loveday’s data seems to confirm many people’s impressions – 80% of the respondents said at least one aspect of their memory had deteriorated.

However, she acknowledges there could be an issue with the representation of the sample. Those involved responded to a call for participants via social media, which could give rise to an over-representation of people who consider their memory to have deteriorated.

Tip of the tongue

For 55% of those surveyed, the most frequent change was forgetting when an event or incident happened.

The next most common change they reported was forgetting the words to say in a sentence. This is known in psychology as the “tip-of-tongue” phenomenon.

It is unclear why forgetting words has increased during the period of Covid restrictions, but it may simply be because most people have spent the last year working alone, at home or remotely, with fewer opportunities to talk to others.

In other words, you may have lost the habit of social interaction and your neurons have been less active.

Loveday’s findings also reveal other common difficulties, such as forgetting things you have been told, or forgetting to do something you said you would do.

The most likely explanation is the lack of cues from the outside environment. Instead of going to work, moving around an office, going to other places for meetings, and constantly encountering people, many are confined to their homes.

Going out, walking past rooms, or seeing someone can remind you of something you are supposed to do. So, seeing other people could be necessary for proper brain function. People who went out and about to different places reported fewer memory difficulties.

In short, if you want to remember things better, get moving!