"Will you get me a bowl
of ice cream?"
"Sure."
"Don't you think you should write it down so you can remember it?"
she asks.
"No, I can remember it."
"Well, I'd like some strawberries on top, too. Maybe you should write
it down, so's not to forget it?"
He says, "I can remember that. You want a bowl of ice cream with
strawberries."
"I'd also like whipped cream. I'm certain you'll forget that, write
it down?" she asks.
Irritated, he says, "I don't need to write it down, I can remember
it! Ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream - I got it, for
goodness sake!"
Then he toddles into the kitchen. After about 20 minutes, the old man
returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and
eggs. She stares at the plate for a moment. "Where's my toast?"
"Sure."
"Don't you think you should write it down so you can remember it?"
she asks.
"No, I can remember it."
"Well, I'd like some strawberries on top, too. Maybe you should write
it down, so's not to forget it?"
He says, "I can remember that. You want a bowl of ice cream with
strawberries."
"I'd also like whipped cream. I'm certain you'll forget that, write
it down?" she asks.
Irritated, he says, "I don't need to write it down, I can remember
it! Ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream - I got it, for
goodness sake!"
Then he toddles into the kitchen. After about 20 minutes, the old man
returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and
eggs. She stares at the plate for a moment. "Where's my toast?"
* * * * *
Many older people
worry about becoming more forgetful. They think forgetfulness is the first sign
of Alzheimer's disease. In the past, memory loss and confusion were considered
a normal part of aging. However, scientists now know that most people remain
both alert and able as they age, although it may take them longer to remember
things.
A lot of people
experience memory lapses. Some memory problems are serious, and others are not.
People who have serious changes in their memory, personality, and behavior may
suffer from a form of brain disease called dementia. Dementia seriously affects
a person's ability to carry out daily activities. Alzheimer's disease is one of
many types of dementia.
However, it is perfectly normal to forget things from time
to time, and it is also normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age. As
people get older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain.
As a result, some people may notice that it takes longer to learn new things,
they don't remember information as well as they did, or they lose things like
their glasses. These usually are signs of mild forgetfulness, not serious
memory problems.
Some older adults also find that they don't do as well as
younger people on complex memory or learning tests. Scientists have found,
though, that given enough time, healthy older people can do as well as younger
people do on these tests. In fact, as they age, healthy adults usually improve
in areas of mental ability such as vocabulary.
But how much forgetfulness is too much? How can you tell
whether your memory lapses are within the scope of normal aging or are a
symptom of something more serious?
Typical Memory Issues
Healthy people can experience memory loss or memory
distortion at any age. Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with
age, but — unless they are extreme and persistent — they are not considered
indicators of Alzheimer’s or other memory-impairing illnesses. Let’s review
some normal memory issues in more details:
1.
Transience. This is the tendency to
forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information
soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality:
memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be
forgotten. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain
scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused
memories, making way for newer, more useful ones.
2.
Absentmindedness. This type of
forgetting occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention. You forget where
you just put your pen because you didn’t focus on where you put it in the first
place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in
particular), so your brain didn’t encode the information securely.
Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do something at a prescribed time,
like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment.
3.
Blocking. Someone asks you a question
and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know that you know it,
but you just can’t think of it. This is perhaps the most familiar example of
blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. In many cases, the
barrier is a memory similar to the one you’re looking for, and you retrieve the
wrong one. This competing memory is so intrusive that you can’t think of the
memory you want. Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with
age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other
people’s names. Research shows that people are able to retrieve about half of
the blocked memories within just a minute.
4.
Misattribution. Misattribution occurs
when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail,
like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs
when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came
from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This
sort of misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a
writer passes off some information as original when he or she actually read it
somewhere before. As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution
becomes more common with age. As you age, you absorb fewer details when
acquiring information because you have somewhat more trouble concentrating and
processing information rapidly. And as you grow older, your memories grow older
as well. And old memories are especially prone to misattribution.
5.
Suggestibility. Suggestibility is the
vulnerability of your memory to the power of suggestion — information that you
learn about an occurrence after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory
of the incident, even though you did not experience these details. Although
little is known about exactly how suggestibility works in the brain, the
suggestion fools your mind into thinking it’s a real memory.
6.
Bias. Even the sharpest memory isn’t
a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, your perceptions are filtered
by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your
mood at the moment. Your biases affect your perceptions and experiences when
they’re being encoded in your brain. And when you retrieve a memory, your mood
and other biases at that moment can influence what information you actually
recall. Although everyone’s attitudes and preconceived notions bias their
memories, there’s been virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind
memory bias or whether it becomes more common with age.
7.
Persistence. Most people worry about
forgetting things. But in some cases people are tormented by memories they wish
they could forget, but can’t. The persistence of memories of traumatic events,
negative feelings, and ongoing fears is another form of memory problem. Some of
these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be
negative distortions of reality. People suffering from depression are
particularly prone to having persistent, disturbing memories. So are people
with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD can result from many different
forms of traumatic exposure — for example, sexual abuse or wartime experiences.
Flashbacks, which are persistent, intrusive memories of the traumatic event,
are a core feature of PTSD.
Causes of Memory Loss
Some memory problems are related to health issues that may
be treatable. For example, medication side effects, vitamin B12
deficiency, chronic alcoholism, tumors or infections in the brain, or blood
clots in the brain can cause memory loss or possibly dementia (see more on
dementia, below). Some thyroid, kidney, or liver disorders also can lead to
memory loss. A doctor should treat serious medical conditions like these as
soon as possible.
Emotional problems, such as stress, anxiety, or depression,
can make a person more forgetful and can be mistaken for dementia. For
instance, someone who has recently retired or who is coping with the death of a
spouse, relative, or friend may feel sad, lonely, worried, or bored. Trying to
deal with these life changes leaves some people confused or forgetful.
The confusion and forgetfulness caused by emotions usually
are temporary and go away when the feelings fade. The emotional problems can be
eased by supportive friends and family, but if these feelings last for a long
time, it is important to get help from a doctor or counselor. Treatment may
include counseling, medication, or both.
Aging and Forgetfulness
Scientists and physicians have come up with various ways to
describe memory loss due to normal aging. The most basic definition is simply
that, as we grow older, the ability to learn new information and recall it at
will declines somewhat; for most of us, this decline falls within the average
(i.e. normal) range expected for people our age. Forgetfulness is only a cause
for concern when the severity of it falls below that normal range.
Forgetfulness due to aging goes by different names. One name
in wide use is age-associated memory impairment, or AAMI. This diagnostic
category is used to identify people who show a minor-to-moderate decline in
memory, but who remain essentially healthy. To be diagnosed with AAMI, you must
meet all of the following criteria:
- You are at least 50 years old.
- You have noticed that your memory is not as sharp as it used to be.
- Other possible causes for your memory slips besides the effects of aging have been ruled out. These other factors include a recent heart attack, chronic insomnia, reactions to medications, and Alzheimer's disease.
- Your score on a standardized memory test is lower than that of an average 25-year-old. This is a way of confirming that your memory is likely to have declined since you were younger.
According to psychologist Steven Ferris, Ph.D., director of
the Silberstein Aging and Dementia Research Center at New York University
School of Medicine, research conducted to date suggests that up to half of all
people 50 or older would meet the criteria for AAMI. Clearly, age-related
forgetfulness is widespread. Not everybody over age 50 becomes noticeably
forgetful; but many of us will show some degree of AAMI at some point in our
lives.
What is Forgotten?
Thanks to a lot of research on healthy aging people, the
effects of ordinary forgetfulness are well understood. Clearly, AAMI doesn’t
affect the recall of established memories, such as where you grew up, or the songs
you learned how to play on the piano. What AAMI does affect is the ability to
learn and recall new information, as in: "Where did I leave those darn
scissors? I just put them down!" As such, what we think of as age-associated
memory loss is really more like age-associated learning loss.
Many studies on healthy volunteers back this up. For
example, research by Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and
neurology at the Harvard Medical School, suggests that the rate at which people
acquire new information slows down as they age. Unfortunately, the rest of the
world doesn’t always slow down along with our aging brains. Information floods
into our lives–new names, new faces, new skills to master–but not all of it
gets stored as enduring memories. As a result, we may think we’ve forgotten
things that were never really stored in memory in the first place.
On the plus side, although it takes older people longer to
learn new information, once they do so they can usually recall it just as well
as a younger person. For most of us, mild forgetfulness can be overcome with a
little extra effort: by paying closer attention when meeting new people, or by
taking things a little more slowly. AAMI "shouldn’t even impair fairly
complex activities of daily living, such as filling out a tax return,"
Ferris emphasizes. "It may take you a while longer to do your tax return,
but you’re still going to get it done, and it’s going to be accurate."
Hereditary or Not?
What we do know is that memory loss or age related
forgetfulness is only 50% hereditary. It means we can do a lot to prevent these
common signs of aging even if we don’t take into account our genetic
disposition. Fortunately for us we can even alter the expression of certain
genes to assist in the anti aging battle. Some evidence that genetics play a
part in memory loss is apparent when you consider the different symptoms shown
in ageing men and women. As men get older they lose their ability to sort out
difficult problems and their command of speech deteriorates. As women get older
they lose their ability to process information quickly and lose their sense of
spatial awareness. Research has also shown that people tend to lose competency
more quickly in those areas in which they are already weak. Knowing this gives
us an advantage because we can start to strengthen those areas of competency in
which we are weak whilst reinforcing those areas in which we are not.
Sources and Additional Information:
