EVENING. Health.

Aging And Memory

April 08, 1994|By Kalia Doner. Special to the Tribune.

The phone rings at work. "Hi, this is Philip Jones," a man says pleasantly. "I'm returning your call." Who? My call? Your brain spins. As you thank him for calling back, you hope it will dawn on you who Philip Jones is and why on earth you wanted to talk to him. Are you losing your mind?

Probably not. But chances are, if you're over 40, you'll blame the lapse on your failing memory.

"Anyone of any age can draw a blank, says Dr. Deborah Best, a psychologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "But when you're young, you don't even notice a moment of forgetfulness. When you're older, if the exact same thing happens, you assume you're losing your grip."

Certainly our brain chemistry changes as we age, and as a result, the ease with which we can learn and recall information may diminish by 30 percent or more between the ages of 25 and 70. But for many people, a decline in the brain's chemical memory systems may not be the main obstacle to quick recall or learning.

What has declined in most people in midlife is not memory, says Dr. Richard Mohs, a psychologist at New York City's Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. "They're not losing old memories or the capacity to remember. But they've reached a point where their ability to put new information into the system can't keep up with the demand and they don't know how to cope."

Memory involves taking in sensory information, storing it, relating it to what we already know and then recalling it under appropriate circumstances. But memory is not a single system: It has several aspects. Short-term memory allows us to look at a written phone number, then turn and dial it. The number will be forgotten almost immediately unless we spend the time or attention it takes to transfer it into long-term memory.

There are two main types of long-term memory, explicit and implicit: Knowing that Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 is an example of explicit memory. Implicit memory is our unconscious knowledge of procedures, such as how to ride a bicycle.

Some forms of long-term implicit memory work with explicit information to make recall easier. "A person builds up vast collections of chunks of memory, and the chunks are then associated with one another," says Nobel Prize-winning cognitive scientist Dr. Herbert Simon of Carnegie Mellon University. These chunks, which may be conscious or unconscious, are sometimes called memory palaces. "They have empty areas within them, little rooms or slots where you can insert new, particular information," says Simon.

With age, our memory palaces can begin to resemble a lean-to. The main biological culprit in memory decline seems to be the neurotransmitters. These chemicals, which carry information between nerve cells, may become less plentiful with age. The speed with which they make connections between nerve cells may decline, and their delicate feedback mechanisms may be thrown off. As a result, healthy people don't actually lose memories, but they may have trouble accessing them.

"The challenge is to strengthen how you register and recall information," says Dr. Douglas Herrmann, a research psychologist at the National Center for Health Statistics.

To sharpen the way you take in information, Herrmann recommends the following tactics:

- Enhance your visual observations by taking mental snapshots. Notice what newly met people are wearing, their separate features, where they're standing in the room.

- Use auditory reinforcement. Repeat a new name out loud at least three times after you meet someone: "Hello, John." "Tell me, John . . ." "Nice to meet you, John."

- Recognize emotional clues. Ask yourself about your feelings and judgments. The brain's limbic system, which carries emotional responses, interacts with memory to imprint vivid impressions.

- Use associations to enrich your memory. If you meet Mr. Moss and you think his toupee looks as if it grew on the side of a tree, chances are the next time you see him you'll come up with his name.

- Learn large amounts of factual information in short, concentrated sessions to register and recall it better.

- File facts according to patterns. "Organized information can be learned four times as fast as information presented randomly," Herrmann says.

- Strengthen recall. Review information soon after you absorb it. Don't wait for days or months or until you have to remember it.