Speakers need to understand how the brain works because, well, because they’re always talking to brains in the audiences they encounter.  At least, that’s the hope.

Some recent studies shed light on an essential part of the way the brain works.  The findings have two implications for speakers – one for themselves, and one for their audiences.  Here’s what the research found.

It turns out that the brain uses the hippocampus (yes, so called because it looked like a seahorse to an early genius who named it) for two things in particular during memory formation.  First, pattern completion:  we remember something because it’s similar to something else we’ve already stored away.  Second, pattern separation:  we remember something because it’s different.

Contrary to popular belief, we create new neurons all the time.  And that’s a good thing for memory.  The more new neurons we make, the more pattern separation we can file away.  That’s important because otherwise everything new looks like something we’ve seen before.  If you’re a trauma victim, or have anxiety, then pattern separation is particularly important to you because otherwise you’re trapped in the old, and unable to escape.  If you’re afraid of public speaking, or you have been traumatized during a speech, and you’re not creating many new neurons in this part of your brain, every occasion is going to trigger that old trauma because it looks like that old trauma.  If, on the other hand, you have lots of new neurons, you can more easily distinguish new events from old and you’re less likely to become anxious or re-live the trauma at every instance.

Basically, you want your dentate gyrus (that’s where the action is in this case) to keep making new neurons so that you can keep telling things apart.

How can you affect your new neuron production?  Like everything else, neuron production is enhanced with exercise, so speakers now have one less excuse not to exercise – particularly if they want to shed some old fear of public speaking that keeps recurring.

And audiences?  What is the implication for them?  Knowing a little more how the memory works should help speakers realize that the game is to be filed away in memory as a new thing – pattern separation.  That way you’ll be making new memories in the audience’s minds.  So how can you break the speaking pattern?  How can you ensure that you’ll be remembered?

When Montel Williams gave his first speech –to an audience of sleepy high school students – the speech was unforgettable and it launched his incredibly successful, long-running TV career.  How did he do it?  He started speaking, not from the podium, but from the back of the room.  In a loud voice.  He must have shocked those students into wakefulness.  And he was certainly filed under pattern separation.  As he walked to the front, bellowing in his Marine-drill-sergeant voice, the audience had to turn to see what in the world was going on.

Unforgettable.  Pattern separation.  What you need to focus on as a speaker if you want to be filed under “wow, that was cool,” rather than, “same old, same old.”

And don’t forget to work out today to keep your new neurons forming and your phobias at bay.