10 Scientific Ways to Overcome Exam Panic

The countdown to exam are most feared by students, the “baccalaureate”, has begun. In order to arrive at the examination as prepared as possible, I have prepared a nice gift for you: a list of tips for studying based on scientific studies in the field of learning and neuroscience.

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SCIENCE ADVISES

Even science can help those studying for high school and for those studying in general for an exam and, to begin with, here are the three "fundamentals": it is proven that adequate diet, sufficient sleep and exercise can increase the number of neuronal connections, and therefore improve reasoning and memory skills. But of course, starting with the best practices the night before the exams is not much use …

Here are, in a nutshell, 10 anti-rejection rules suggested by common sense and confirmed by science. (Which applies to all students, of course).

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EXERCISE YOUR 5 SENSES

To enhance learning and memorization skills (history, mathematics ...) you need to train your brain. To do this without too much effort it is necessary to exercise all five senses as much as possible: not using a sense, in fact, means not training a brain area. And since we mainly use sight (the areas dedicated to vision are 25% of the brain) an example of "training" suggested by the experts is ... memorizing with your eyes closed.

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GO TO BED EARLY

Sleep plays a key role in storing information learned during the day. Science has shown the direct correlation between sleep duration, certain body functions and health. For example, with fewer hours of sleep than necessary (at least 7-8), memory, judgment, learning, the ability to make associations, creativity, and attention drop rapidly. And it increases the risk of depression.

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STOP STUDYING

Studying or reviewing until the last moment of the exam only serves to increase stress. Much better to stop studying 48 hours before the exam. The brain, in fact, "uses" a couple of days to re-elaborate the information and choose which ones to store in the long-term memory.

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NO DOPING

Avoid coffee or pills that keep you awake to study at night because alterations in the regular "sleep-wake" cycle can damage information retrieval. Also beware of cigarettes because nicotine reduces deep sleep. Deprivation of the right hours of sleep, in addition to putting you in a bad mood, damages your memory. Yes instead to a coffee in the morning before starting to study: caffeine stimulates attention.

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BLACK OUT? DON'T PANIC

If the day before the exam you don't seem to remember anything, don't worry. In the course of the night it will all come back to you (see tip 3). And don't stress: strong and negative emotions damage memory (see tip 8).

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START EARLY

Memory is a process of cataloging and re-cataloging: it takes time to learn. A test: Some researchers subjected 3 groups of volunteers to the same mathematical exercise. The first group slept one night before repeating the exercise, the second did the exercise first in the morning and then in the evening, the third worked on it all night. Result: twice as many successes for the members of the first group.

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WATCH OUT FOR REVIEW

Reviewing is essential, but it is important to do it well: if you review badly, the wrong notions will remain in your mind. It's the same phenomenon that happens with memories: when recalled to memory they return to an "unstable" state from which they can be stored (consolidated) again, but also lost if the process is disturbed by interference. You can take advantage of this instability to rewrite and modify bad (or wrong) memories, making them more acceptable. Review, in short, changes the information you store in your memory.

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NO TO NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

Boredom and repetitiveness numb the brain's abilities, while emotions and attention allow you to remember more. But it is better to avoid strong and negative emotions before going under scrutiny: they lose the immediately preceding memories. This happens because the stress hormone cortisol interacts with the amygdala , the organ that "calculates" the emotional meaning of the memory. The amygdala alerts attention, bringing out emotionally significant events at the expense of those that precede them.

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YES TO SPORT

Spending a lot of time studying doesn't have to mean giving up sports or other normal physical activities. Indeed, the brain works better if we also keep ourselves in good physical shape. Several studies have shown that those who walk briskly for 30 minutes a day "lose" fewer neurons.

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BEWARE OF YOUR DIET

The right diet to improve brain activity must be rich in omega-3 fatty acids , found above all in some types of fish and vitamin E, present in wheat germ and whole meal bread. If you are a little overweight, get back in shape: research has shown that this improves brain activity that optimizes the use of glucose, a substance associated with more efficient memory.

I will be wrapping it up here watch out for my post. Thanks for reading!!