What is Age Associated Memory Impairment?

Before we can discuss the causes of age associated memory impairment, let's first spend a moment discussing exactly what it is. Most seniors begin to find it difficult to recall names and sometimes words as they get older. This is not a symptom of dementia it is just normal forgetfulness.

Age associated memory impairment or dementia?

The difference between normal forgetfulness, that increases naturally with age also known as "age associated memory impairment" and dementia is that age related memory impairment although very frustrating is not disabling.

As we age memory lapses are more likely to occur when a person is either tired or sick or just under unusual stress. Under less stressful circumstances that same person can easily remember information that before escape them. It's important to note studies have shown that seniors who have done poorly on timed tests have actually outperformed college students on the same tests when they weren't being timed.

Another difference between normal forgetfulness and dementia is that people that worry about memory loss are unlikely to suffer from serious memory conditions. However when memory lapses interfere with your normal daily functions and close friends and relatives believe that the lapses are serious, the underlying corners may be more complex.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what age associated memory impairment is let's discuss it causes It's believed that the brain contains more than 100 billion neurons. The very calm and disbelief is that millions of neurons die each day. This is not true few neurons die over a person's lifetime, but unfortunately they do shrink. This shrinkage is suspected to be the reason mental functioning slows as we age. Not only does the shrinkage of neurons occur in middle-age we produce less neuron as we get older.

Although there are certain chemical changes affected as we age, as we get older we expect our memory to get worse. The question seems to be is your memory getting worse or are you becoming less diligent in trying to remember.

The same mental capacity to remember new information researchers believe is the same mental capacity needed to retrieve memories from long ago. Retrieving memories from long ago seems to be a snap for older people. This seems to imply that older people although they have the capacity to recall recent events they may not consider the new information to be important so therefore it's being discarded rather than stored.

As a senior I would like to interpret this research has meaning an occasional lapse in memory may result from a failure to pay close attention rather than the ability to remember. So it appears that forging new memories may depend largely staying interested active and alert.


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For more interesting information on how your memory works and how you can improve your memory. Visit the memory site at http://thememorysite.com


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