Writing your autobiography can be a very rewarding activity—you preserve your life experiences for the benefit of other family members and exercise your brain in the process. Recalling previous events requires a strong memory (which may be aided by going through photo albums, letters, etc.), and the act of writing improves visual spatial skills. Expressive writing—that is, writing that tries to capture emotion and explain why and how things happened, such as you would do in a memoir— has been shown to help people cope with negative events. They experience fewer unwanted thoughts about these past events. Researchers speculate that writing it down helps free up the brain for other cognitive tasks. One study of college students showed that writing about their life experiences helped them gain insight (they used more so-called “insight” words than the control group), and it also improved their grade point averages.