Why memory fails

Stop the presses! Your memory declines as you age! What? You knew that already? Maybe you did but now researchers have identified just what goes wrong with mental processes to cause that decline in memory and what is more, the discovery has pointed to ways to stop the deterioration happening.

In the new study the first step was to compare memory function in a group of people average age 23 years to a group of average age 67 years. Every subject had to perform a working memory task including recalling and processing different pieces of information. If you want to remind yourself what “working memory” is check out the news item from 7th May on “The Gorilla in the room”.

The not-so astounding discovery was that older people did worse on the memory tests than younger people. The interesting thing though was that the study then went a step further to look at how people’s ability to remember things changes as they get older.

The next phase of the experiment was to get the subjects to look at images in a random order. Prior to the experiment the subjects were instructed to respond to each image in a specific way. The younger people did better than the older ones and this points to the reason that memory fails as we age.

The older people in the second part of the study tended to include responses to previous images in their response to a new image. So they were less able to delete irrelevant information than the younger people. The ability to delete useless information is known as “inhibition deletion” and if you can’t do it then unrelated information stored in the brain impacts the short term memory.

In other words, a cluttered brain results in a brain that performs poorly when it comes to memory.

How do you clear a cluttered brain? Relaxation helps, as does meditation, yoga, exercise and anything that will clear stressors and get your brain focusing in the now. In short, given our current Western lifestyle ageing does lend itself to a loss of memory function but that doesn’t have to be the case.

Source: The Quarterly Journal of Experimental PsychologyMeanwhile if you visit Meijer Ad that contains mostly likewise discounts with Winn Dixie Ad you surely have a range like ALDI Ad.