I have an artist friend who keeps paper journals of artwork, pages and pages of lovely drawings, collages and watercolor images that serve as a sort of visual diary. Inspired, I took a lackluster 3-ring notebook binder, decorated the front cover, and now keep a writer’s log of musings, to-do lists and ideas, all accompanied, of course, by some doodling in the margins.
I also use my notebook to take notes during webinars, while listening to podcasts, and when watching instructional videos. My “old school” method of taking notes on paper is a comfortable habit, harkening back to my college days in the late 1970’s.
Now it would appear that most students use laptops or tablets to take lecture notes, perhaps encouraged to do so from educators themselves. But a recent study of Japanese university students has revealed that writing on physical paper can lead to more brain activity when remembering the information an hour later. Moreover, the researchers conclude that the complex, spatial and tactile information associated with writing by hand likely leads to improved memory.
The study, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, upends the notion that digital tools increase efficiency. Volunteers, ages 18-29 years old, read a fictional conversation between characters discussing their plans for two months in the near future, including 14 different class times, assignment due dates and personal appointments.
Next, the volunteers were asked to record the fictional schedule using a paper datebook and pen, a calendar app on a digital tablet and a stylus, or a calendar app on a large smartphone and a touch-screen keyboard. After an hour, volunteers answered a range of simple (When is the assignment due?) and complex (Which is the earlier due date for the assignments?) multiple choice questions to test their memory of the schedule.
What is the Brain Doing When Taking Notes on Paper?
The researchers also looked inside the brain by using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, which measures blood flow around the brain. This technique, known as functional MRI (fMRI), reveals where increased blood flow is observed, in turn indicating increased neuronal activity in specific areas of the brain.
Lo and behold, the volunteers who used paper had more brain activity in areas associated with language, imaginary visualization, and in the hippocampus – the hub for new learning, memory and navigation. Researchers say that the activation of the hippocampus indicates that analog methods contain richer spatial details that can be recalled and navigated in the mind's eye.
The Results: Faster Retrieval, Better Visualization
Participants who used a paper datebook were faster with filling in the calendar – they took about 11 minutes. Tablet users took 14 minutes and smartphone users took about 16 minutes. One clarification here: the volunteers who used analog methods in their personal life were just as slow at using the devices as volunteers who regularly use digital tools, increasing the researchers’ confidence that the difference in speed was related to memorization or encoding in the brain, not just differences in the habitual use of the tools.
Are you a person who likes to scribble in the margin, uses heavy underlining or highlighting to embellish your notebook? That’s even more helpful according to the researchers who point out that paper notebooks contain more complex spatial information than digital paper. Physical paper is tangible and non-uniform, like folded corners. In contrast, digital paper is uniform, has no fixed position when scrolling, and disappears when you close the screen.
By personalizing digital documents by highlighting, underlining, circling, drawing arrows, handwriting color-coded notes in the margins, adding virtual sticky notes, or other types of unique mark-ups can mimic analog-style spatial enrichment that may enhance memory. No wonder I can recall my own notes, with its silly scribblings, much more readily than text on a screen.
What’s the Take-Home Lesson?
Because the brain activity was so much richer with hand-written notes than digital recordings, this research heartily favors the paper notetaking for better memorization and learning new material. And it stands to reason that creative pursuits – composing music, designing art projects – benefit from a paper approach as well since the brain becomes more engaged in those vital areas that both capture information and enhance visualization.
Don’t ditch your laptop. But sharpen your pencils and scribe on.
Study Details
Keita Umejima, Takuya Ibaraki, Takahiro Yamazaki, and Kuniyoshi L. Sakai. 19 March 2021. Paper Notebooks vs. Mobile Devices: Brain Activation Differences During Memory Retrieval. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634158