Some Aspects of Memory Get Better As We Age (nytimes.com) 45
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece for The New York Times, written by neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin: Short-term memory contains the contents of your thoughts right now, including what you intend to do in the next few seconds. It's doing some mental arithmetic, thinking about what you'll say next in a conversation or walking to the hall closet with the intention of getting a pair of gloves. Short-term memory is easily disturbed or disrupted. It depends on your actively paying attention to the items that are in the "next thing to do" file in your mind. You do this by thinking about them, perhaps repeating them over and over again ("I'm going to the closet to get gloves"). But any distraction -- a new thought, someone asking you a question, the telephone ringing -- can disrupt short-term memory. Our ability to automatically restore the contents of the short-term memory declines slightly with every decade after 30.
But age is not the major factor so commonly assumed. I've been teaching undergraduates for my entire career and I can attest that even 20-year-olds make short-term memory errors -- loads of them. They walk into the wrong classroom; they show up to exams without the requisite No. 2 pencil; they forget something I just said two minutes before. These are similar to the kinds of things 70-year-olds do. The relevant difference is not age but rather how we describe these events, the stories we tell ourselves about them. Twenty-year-olds don't think, "Oh dear, this must be early-onset Alzheimer's." They think, "I've got a lot on my plate right now" or "I really need to get more than four hours of sleep." The 70-year-old observes these same events and worries about her brain health. This is not to say that Alzheimer's- and dementia-related memory impairments are fiction -- they are very real -- but every lapse of short-term memory doesn't necessarily indicate a biological disorder. In the absence of brain disease, even the oldest older adults show little or no cognitive or memory decline beyond age 85 and 90, as shown in a 2018 study. Memory impairment is not inevitable. Some aspects of memory actually get better as we age. For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and to make accurate predictions improves over time because we've had more experience. (This is why computers need to be shown tens of thousands of pictures of traffic lights or cats in order to be able to recognize them). If you're going to get an X-ray, you want a 70-year-old radiologist reading it, not a 30-year-old one.
But age is not the major factor so commonly assumed. I've been teaching undergraduates for my entire career and I can attest that even 20-year-olds make short-term memory errors -- loads of them. They walk into the wrong classroom; they show up to exams without the requisite No. 2 pencil; they forget something I just said two minutes before. These are similar to the kinds of things 70-year-olds do. The relevant difference is not age but rather how we describe these events, the stories we tell ourselves about them. Twenty-year-olds don't think, "Oh dear, this must be early-onset Alzheimer's." They think, "I've got a lot on my plate right now" or "I really need to get more than four hours of sleep." The 70-year-old observes these same events and worries about her brain health. This is not to say that Alzheimer's- and dementia-related memory impairments are fiction -- they are very real -- but every lapse of short-term memory doesn't necessarily indicate a biological disorder. In the absence of brain disease, even the oldest older adults show little or no cognitive or memory decline beyond age 85 and 90, as shown in a 2018 study. Memory impairment is not inevitable. Some aspects of memory actually get better as we age. For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and to make accurate predictions improves over time because we've had more experience. (This is why computers need to be shown tens of thousands of pictures of traffic lights or cats in order to be able to recognize them). If you're going to get an X-ray, you want a 70-year-old radiologist reading it, not a 30-year-old one.
Some Aspects of Memory Get Better As We Age (Score:5, Funny)
Like the price
I can remember when RAM was 100 bucks per Meg
Re: (Score:1)
You don't need RAM. You need an external brain pack https://dilbert.com/strip/1994... [dilbert.com] (Source = www.dilbert.com)
Re: (Score:2)
I can remember when RAM was 100 bucks per Meg
I can remember when one meg was more than you had the address bits to access.
Only 4K memory was a pain (Score:2)
On PDP-8s. But then memory was almost $1 per bit.
It was great when they introduced banking to allow 32K, but hard to program.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can remember when RAM was 100 bucks per Meg
I can remember when one meg was more than you had the address bits to access.
"I finally have megabytes!" A guy from the local BBS after up upgrading his 386 to 2M
Re: (Score:1)
This is more reliant on long-term memory (Score:5, Insightful)
This goes to show that long-term memory may be essential in acknowledging what is needed to focus on in priorities, or even being able to judge what details in short term memory is important.
I am 35 and suffered a TBI. This brought memory issues while I still have 2 years later. I notice my ability to recognize certain priorities from knowledge before my car accident is a lot stronger than anything I have since engaged in since the car accident.
The biggest issue with things like Dementia and Alzheimers is that it severs or severely restricts links between long-term memory and short term, or long-term and areas of the brain that help compare items in it. But if you can keep those links open (a lot of the times by mentally challenging yourself) you can keep those links open or expand their abilities.
A lot of memory comes down to being efficient in how you recognize important details. High Efficiency such as different learning techniques can also dictate how well your memory works. Things like Cramming before a test is almost the worst thing you can do. Where as using patterns over time or certain mneumonic techniques can especially help with improving that bandwidth and ability to transfer thoughts from short to long term and logic centers efficiently and without errors (which frequently happen if data is over-written/amended such as feeding a lie to a person over an event they remember. Something like police investigators have done on some witnesses.
The scariest thing I find, is when someone tells me I said something 5x over the last 20 minutes and have no recollection of hitting on the topic. Since I have a damaged link, and my IQ used to be very high before the Traumatic Brain Injury from the car crash, it happens a lot. Issue is, when those links don't work, or don't work right, I can't even recognize it. This is why a lot of people with Dementia and Alzheimers don't even recognize when they have cognitive issues.
My dad always told me, if you worry about having Alzheimers, you don't. If you don't think you have Alzheimers, that's usually the inidication you do. Most people notice a lapse in memory, or at least can pin-point when you have episodes where memory is impaired. It's when you can't recognize that, that you should worry.
Keeping your mind open and working as you age also helps keeping these links from shutting. reading new books, or learning something completely new can severely help keep the impairment at bay. but you have to make this an attitude. Sitting in front of a TV since day 1 of retirement is quite possibly the worst thing you can do if you want to live to old age. In addition to the sedentary lifestyle making your physically worse through out the body, but not engaging your brain with something new or mentally challenging, you are doomed to an early death, or at least a rest-home within 10-15 years easily.
And no, taking a new route to work is not enough. You need to actively challenge your mind. and try to learn something totally irrelavent from what you are already good at. Similarities end up turning into autonomous thoughts and don't involve memory. I think this might be why some people go back to school after 50-60 years old when they don't need it for work. It may be a way to keep their brain healthy. Not to mention, school can be fun and interesting.
But back to the article, you can't be good at comparing unless you have experience. No wonder a 20 year old can't recognize patterns. If you haven't come across it yet, you don't know what you aren't seeing. Wisdom = Time+Experience+Logic. It's why older people can usually see something coming way earlier than a 20-30 year old. They can spot the signs. They've seen it before
Re: (Score:3)
I hate to rain on anybody's parade -- my FIL just had a TBI, and I understand the importance of optimism in recovery -- but there is evidence that "brain training" doesn't have any effect on cognitive function, and there is further evidence that the more forgetful someone is (even at age 20, as indicated in this article) the more likely they are to develop Alzheimer's and dementia.
Personally I'm super forgetful, and both of my maternal grandparents developed Alzheimer's, so hopefully I can get a refund for
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there's a lot of evidence of links to other things like Vitamin D deficiency, and high cholesterol too. And, there's evidence that you can do something about both of those...I have because I have a family history of Alzheimer's, as well as those.
Re: (Score:2)
there is evidence that "brain training" doesn't have any effect on cognitive function,
The evidence you are (referring to but not) citing is weak, spotty, and mainly limited to certain types of training like Lumosity. Thus you would be more correct if you said, "Lumosity doesn't help with cognitive function," but you didn't stop there.
Re: This is more reliant on long-term memory (Score:1)
The problem is we sleep less as we age (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
and that pretty much screws everything.
I agree. In many ways our parents and grandparents seem to have cooperated in their own aging and decline. How many times have I seen small, frail elderly people eating tiny meals and avoiding really nourishing food such as meat. That deprives them of physical strength, which discourages exercise, thereby weakening them still further through muscle atrophy. Yet 90-year-olds complete marathons!
And I have also often heard older people saying, "Of course one needs less sleep as one ages". Well, I'm over 70 and
I put it down to boredom mostly (Score:5, Insightful)
My father is 79 this year, one ofthis biggest complaints is how irritating it is that his mind is not as sharp as it was but he was always mentally prepared to know that his mind will slow down, so as he got to around 50 he started making sure he filled his life with plenty of things keep his mind active. He spent his working life in boiler rooms, always working with his hands and later on learning computers and electronics. He still builds things in his workshop today, still repairs his own car, he loves tinkering with gagdets and computers but he says to me that now he has use pen and paper and his Alexa to make notes for things to do in the short term as it's the little things that you forget to do.
However he says everyone blames it on old age but he says that it's more likely that as you get older you've done so much in your life that the tiny little things you do every day are so mind numingly tedious and repetitive that your mind is not interested anymore. He says now he's retired he has so much time that he spends a lot of time dreaming up ways to find things to do, so the new and exciting things fill his mind, the latest project he's working in the workshop, the new gadget he's ordered coming later in the week. We lost my mum around 15 years ago and it shocked him into realising that time his so precious, you have to spend it doing interesting stuff and so the boring daily stuff is tedious and almost gets blocked out by the excitement of filling your day with interesting things.
I don't thing your memory goes, it's simply boredom. As babies we crave attention and excitement, why wouldn't we as adults too? The boring stuff like eating, shopping for groceries, the dentist, picking up the mail, commuting to work, all that tedious life BS stuff, no wonder your mind wants to block it out and find the exciting stuff, the new car your buying, the new gadget you've order coming tomorrow, the new game or movie coming out, the new partner you've met. I think we simply distract ourselves with the "new shiny stuff" so we don't get bored, the important but boring daily stuff gets less attention. When you realise that time is running out and you want to make more of it, then you know the boring stuff in life will look after itself of the most part and you want to make the most of every day.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
All very true. Another thing that you usually don't realize until you yourself get old is the effect of no longer having any great expectations, hopes or plans for the future.
A young person embarking on a career may have very definite plans, or just big vague hopes - but either way you have a lot to look forward to.
After retirement, it's an exceptional person who can still feel as committed and engaged. It's so much easier to sit back and coast while observing the world. And a lot of the hopes and wishes of
Re: (Score:1)
comment (Score:3)
Nuts, I was going to make a comment here, but now I can't remember what it was.
Re: (Score:2)
You were just about to remind me where I left my meds.
Re: (Score:2)
Does buying an (Score:2)
Can we buy some air filters for a set of old people and let another set of old people not have air filters...
Then see if memory gets way better for the old people who got the air filters?
Clean air, the way to better IQ, memory skills and keeping your smartness...
Re: (Score:2)
People aren't aware how unreliable memory is. (Score:3)
When they start noticing, it's easy to think something's wrong.
You can't remember something you aren't paying attention to. If your attention shifts, you *might* remember what it shifts to, but you'll almost never remember what it was on at the time. That's why you lose your place. Unless you go back over your preparations step by step, you won't realize you never made it to the place where you put the #2 pencils in your backpack.
I think that the improved performance of older people on some memory tasks might have to do with a reduced reaction to novel stimuli. I'll never forget riding in the car with my elderly father-in-law and his brother; I think that was one of the last times my father-in-law drove. He was navigating by piecing together where things *used to be*; it wasn't clear that he was even seeing anything that had changed. If a street didn't *used to be* one way, he'd go down it.
Not always (Score:2)
For example ...
shit, I forgot what I was going to say.
Not memory (Score:1)
"Some aspects of memory actually get better as we age. For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and to make accurate predictions improves over time because we've had more experience."
Those are indeed cognitive skills that improve, but they aren't "memory." Maybe the author forgot.
Re: (Score:3)
"Some aspects of memory actually get better as we age. For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and to make accurate predictions improves over time because we've had more experience."
Those are indeed cognitive skills that improve, but they aren't "memory." Maybe the author forgot.
Those things are memory functions. Seeing a pattern is a skill, but extracting it is a memory function.
Making predictions because you've seen the same things unfold time and time again is definitely drawing upon memory.
Re: (Score:2)
Pattern recognition is used in many things, chess for example where there are books written about it, and older players do very well with it. GP, as you mentioned, is incorrect.
Re: (Score:2)
Pattern recognition is used in many things, chess for example where there are books written about it, and older players do very well with it. GP, as you mentioned, is incorrect.
What is amazing is how good we are at pattern recognition.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, it seems like the same thing as remembering a face, or the route you took to drive somewhere. For me, I'm good at both of those, but terrible at remembering peoples names, so I'm assuming it's a different type of memory.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, it seems like the same thing as remembering a face, or the route you took to drive somewhere. For me, I'm good at both of those, but terrible at remembering peoples names, so I'm assuming it's a different type of memory.
What happens is that humans respond to face like things. In addition, humans can do things like see objects in clouds and rocks, as well as detect patterns in music, and even words and letters (as in decoding encryptions.
I've gotten better at remembering names (Score:2)
Still terrible at it, though. I remember all kinds of arcane technical crap on the first go, but names take multiple tries.
How good things were ... (Score:1)
Now get off my lawn!
Some Aspects of Memory Get Better As We Age (Score:1)