A pox on passwords and PINs. Just thinking about how many of the secret log-in codes you need to navigate through life these days is enough to bring on brain cramp.
There's your debit card PIN. Your credit card PIN if you've got a newer card with an embedded security chip. Your log-in for your work email. Your log-in for your home email. The codes to retrieve voice mail at home and at work.
You need a password to buy songs or TV episodes from iTunes. Ditto if you are ordering a book from Amazon or buying concert tickets online. Want to stop delivery of your newspaper because you're going on vacation? Arranging vacation stops online is a snap -- if you can remember your password.
If you are a social media type, you need a password to get onto Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you book frequent flyer rewards online, you need one there too. Oh, and there's your password for online or telephone banking. The password to get into your office or to get from your underground garage to your apartment. The PIN for your home security alarm.
Modern life has become a plague of passwords and PINs. And they in turn are taxing our memories as we try to recall: Is this the one that requires a number and a combination of upper- and lowercase letters? Did I get creative with this one? Is this the one where I slapped a "2" onto my standard password? Or was it a "9"?
"Most of us probably have our stock password. But it doesn't work everywhere," says Dr. Gary Small, director of the Memory and Aging Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"So then you have your amended stock password and it may not work and then you can't remember: Is it your amended of your amended stock password? Or what was it?"
It's a serious mental challenge, what with the explosion of circumstances in which you need passwords, the importance of ensuring you don't use the same one every time, the varying demands for password creation used by different websites and the fact some PINS need to be changed every few months or so.
"It's a big problem," admits Small, who addresses these issues in his book "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind."
"We're all struggling with it. And there are so many sites and so many passwords. In the old days it was just my combination lock at the gym. That's all I had to remember."
Ah, the good old days. Now nearly every convenience of the electronic age is hiding behind a password wall. And even healthy minds and memories can find it tough slogging to keep them all straight.
"I think it's a challenge for everyone," says Kelly Murphy, a neuropsychologist at Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System in Toronto.
"I think that (new) technology is going to be very helpful for some aspects of memory, although it won't help with everything. And I think these passwords are a really good example of that -- where you really do have to do some mental gymnastics in order to find a way of making the information meaningful or rehearsing the information, so that you can retrieve it when you need it."
"Because it's not something that lends itself to you looking it up. If you're at the cash trying to buy your sweater and you put your Visa card in there and it wants the number then you've got to know the number."
Experts say there are some basic tips for coming up with passwords that you can remember, and remembering passwords that are assigned to you -- though the latter is harder than the former.
"When a password is given to you, that's more difficult. When it's meaningful to you, it's a bit easier to come up with these strategies," says Nykema Wright, an occupational therapist with Toronto Rehab, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. Wright works with patients who've sustained brain injuries.
Murphy says a memory technique that's been shown to work is what's called "spaced repetition." Repeat your new credit card PIN a number of times. Then awhile later, try to remember it. Try again several times later in the day or the next few days. That process of retrieving it from your memory actually helps to embed it, she says.
Security experts might have their own ideas, but people who specialize in memory and the way the brain works suggest that if you can choose a password or a PIN, choose something that has meaning to you.
"What helps us with memory -- and that really gets to the crux of it -- what helps us remember things is when the information has meaning. And it has a context," says Small.
One tip he suggests is having a pass phrase as opposed to a password. A sentence like "My dog is a black Labrador" reduces down to a password of MdiabL. Not as obvious as the name of the actual pet, but still something you could remember.
A similar technique can work when you are assigned a password. Experts say if you personalize it -- figure out how it makes sense in the context of your life -- you are much less likely to forget it.
While keeping this all straight is hard on everyone, what about people with aging and injured brains? How do they navigate the perplexing world of passwords?
Small says though it's true people develop difficulties drawing from their memory as they age, aging brains actually have an advantage.
"We know that even though our memory retrieval may be slower, our frontal lobe capacity is better than a young brain. So we're better at seeing the big picture, complex reasoning," he explains.
"So we can create these more complex algorithms or systems to have a simple, secure password that is even changeable on a regular basis."
When asked about injured brains, Robin Green, a neuroscientist at Toronto Rehab, explains the study of people who cannot form new memories -- like Guy Pierce's character in the movie "Memento" -- has revealed the differences between two different memory systems, the explicit and the implicit.
The explicit system is what we use to remember what we ate for breakfast and other details of the life we're living. The implicit system stores habits and facts, such as the name of the capital of France -- and passwords.
Implicit memory is very resilient, Green says, and can remain intact even after a brain injury such as a stroke or head trauma. "Even after brain injury of different types, you might still be able to manage in this information age and with all your passwords."
Stress on the word "might." Green notes that programs like the one Wright works in help people with brain injuries use mnemonics (verbal or visual memory tricks) or technological tools like BlackBerrys to help them overcome memory deficits.
"But that doesn't mean you're good at it," Green says. "So for some people who have a mild brain injury and have had fabulous rehabilitation, they might do a better job of memorizing that weird password than you or I. But for most, it's going to be disproportionately harder.
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