Adventure Island: Can you crack the code?

Author Helen Moss stops by for a visit as part of her blog tour to celebrate the publication of the latest book in her Adventure Island series - and to share the next question in her blog-and-clue trail.

Adventure Island 8: The Drowning Man

Memories are made of this...

Today we're going to start with a quiz.

1) What did you have for dinner last night?

2) Who did you sit next to on your first day at school?

3) What's your name?

4) What does the word 'polite' mean?

5) Do you know your way from your bedroom to the kitchen?

6) What did you have for dinner on January 3rd, 2009?

Could you answer them all? I bet you had trouble with Question Six!

If you're thinking this is the strangest quiz ever, you're right! But I had a reason for choosing such an odd bunch of questions.

They show that MEMORY isn't just about the facts we learn at school, but all the everyday stuff we know about ourselves (like what we are called, and what we had for dinner last night), how the world around us is organized (like how to find our way to the kitchen) and what words mean. In fact, there are many different types of memory that depend on different parts of our brains to work.

It's perfectly normal to forget things (like what we had for dinner three years ago - unless you are one of those people who eat the same meal every day, of course!) although we often remember important events for a very long time (like our first day at school). If we didn't forget anything our brains would be clogged up with all kinds of details we don't need.

But imagine how frightening it would be not to be able to remember anything at all. That's what happens to a character in The Mystery of the Drowning Man. Scott, Jack Emily and Drift rescue a man from the sea. He can't remember who he is or how he came to be in the water. Figuring out the identity of the mystery man leads the friends into a whole new investigation. It turns out to be a very complicated story!

In real life it's actually very rare for people to suffer from this kind of total memory loss and not even know their name - even though it happens a lot in books and films. Also, amnesia (the scientific word for memory loss) would usually affect learning new memories and not just forgetting everything in your past - like Dory in Finding Nemo.

Do you have any tests coming up at school? I spoke to Professor Gareth Gaskell, a leading memory scientist at the University of York and he passed on these top tips for helping to remember those important spellings, Spanish verbs or key dates in history.

1. Research has shown that testing yourself on what you are learning is a great way of improving your memory. That's because memory involves both getting the stuff into your head in the first place, and getting it out again when it's needed. Think of your memory like a big filing cabinet. You have to lock the important information away in a drawer but also find the right drawer and open it next time you need that information. If you practice retrieving the information by testing yourself (or getting someone else to test you), it's like unlocking the drawer a few times - so the key will turn smoothly. But if that drawer has never been opened before, the key can get stiff and jam in the lock! Not what you want to happen in the middle of a spelling test!

2. Make sure you get lots of sleep. When you learn something new, your brain stores it in a small part of the brain called the hippocampus. Sleep helps to spread your memories out into a bigger brain network, so that you can remember them better the next morning. One experiment has shown that even a six-minute nap can improve your memory (but we don't think you should try this in your classroom!).

3. When you're taking a break from studying, it's good idea to get some exercise! A recent study showed that when you exercise regularly, the hippocampus gets just a little bit bigger, meaning that you can remember more of what you learned. So next time you're out playing football or hockey or going for a swim or a bike ride, remember that as well as having fun, you're boosting your memory power! Good luck!

Here's the next question in the blog-and-clue trail...

OPERATION DIAMOND Question 8:

One to test your memory! What is the most commonly stolen type of food? (if you need to refresh your memory, revisit Helen's first post on the Guardian Children's Books website)

Chocolate (E) Cheese (T) F

For your next clue, visit www.orionbooks.co.uk/operationdiamond on Thursday 31 May

For more information about Helen Moss's blog tour, visit the Adventure Island website