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Getting Rid of Stress
Memory: Your Unique TreasuryHow it works—and what you can do to keep your memory in tiptop shapeMisplaced your keys yet again? Can’t recall the title of a book you just finished? Join the club. These kinds of memory lapses are common to many people over age 40—and absentmindedness about things like people’s names can strike at any age.
What exactly is memory? It’s the brain’s way of retaining things we’ve learned and experienced by means of neural pathways formed throughout our lives. Though the number of brain neurons declines steadily from our 20s onward, we have so many that most of us don’t notice any memory loss until middle age. The more pathways we can lay down as we’re growing, through education and varied experiences, the better our brains can cope with later memory loss or brain damage, says Cindy Barter, M.D., family practice physician with Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “Imagine that you’ve beaten down 20 paths across a meadow,” she says. “If a tree falls and blocks several, you still can cross the meadow.” Attention is the key“The brain works like a computer—in three stages,” says psychologist Mary Kaland, Ph.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “Our experiences are the data input, memories are what is stored, and language and behavior are the output.”If you’re not paying attention or have too many distractions during a particular experience, the data may not make it into storage at all, Kaland says. Later, when you try to retrieve it, you draw a blank. Also, a certain amount of time must pass before an event is actually stored; disturbances during that time can interfere with the “recording” phase, causing the data to be lost. Stressed out? Depressed? Too much alcohol? Factors like these reduce your ability to pay attention, and so can cause memory lapses. Fortunately, these are conditions you can usually do something about. Just as we have different learning styles, we have different memory styles, Barter says. Some of us pay attention to people’s names, others to scientific facts, still others to emotional content, sounds, colors or historical dates. What we attend to, we remember better. When should you worry?“Some patients come to me in a panic because they no longer can remember all 10 items on their mental grocery list,” says neurologist Lorraine Spikol, M.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. Self-reports of such forgetfulness are less worrisome than reports about the person from a close family member, she says.“Most of us will have some word-finding difficulty after age 50—recalling people’s names or calling something a ‘whatsis’ for lack of the right word,” Spikol says. “We don’t think as fast as a 20-year-old either. We may have trouble shifting mental gears or coping with distractions.” If you’re concerned about yourself or a loved one, she says, consult your doctor.
Want to Know More? For information on screenings for memory loss, call 610-402-CARE or click here This page last updated 2/12/08 04:08 PM
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