We All Lose Our Memory Sometimes

You’ve driven home from work along the same course for the past five years. However, lately, you’ve been stopping at the same intersection, struggling to remember if you must turn left or right. Many occasions in everyday life could make us question whether lapses in memory are common, a sign of cognitive decline, or even the start of dementia.

Our first instinct might be that it is due to deterioration in our brains. And it is true that, like the rest of our body, our brain cells shrink when we get older. They also keep fewer connections with other neurons and store less of the chemicals required for sending messages to other neurons.

But not all memory lapses are due to age-related modifications to our neurons. In many cases, the influencing elements are more trivial, including being tired, anxious, or distracted.

Some forgetfulness is normal

Our memory system is built in a way that some degree of forgetting is regular. This is not a flaw but a feature. Keeping memories is not just a drain on our metabolism; however, too much unneeded information can slow down or hamper retrieving specific memories.

Unfortunately, it’s not constantly up to us to decide what’s essential and should be remembered. Our brain does that for us. Generally, our brain prefers social information (the latest gossip) but easily discards abstract info (such as numbers).

Memory loss becomes an issue when it starts to affect your common day-to-day living. It’s not a huge issue if you can not remember to turn right or left.

However, forgetting why you are behind the wheel, where you are meant to be going, or even how to drive are not typical. These are signs something might not be right and should be investigated further.

After that, there´s mild cognitive impairment

The road between aging-associated memory loss and also the more concerning memory loss is coined as mild cognitive impairment. The level of impairment can remain stable, improve, or worsen.

Nevertheless, it shows an increased risk (around three to five times) of future neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. Every year, approximately 10-15 percent of individuals with mild cognitive impairment will develop dementia.

For individuals with mild cognitive impairment, the ability to undertake typical activities becomes gradually and more significantly impacted over time. Besides memory loss, it could be accompanied by other issues with language, thinking, and decision-making abilities.

A mild cognitive impairment diagnosis could be a double-edged sword. It affirms older individuals’ concerns their memory loss is abnormal. It also raises concerns it will advance into dementia. However, it can also lead to the exploration of potential treatment and also planning for the future.

Losing your way can be an early marker

Impairment in navigation is thought to be an early marker for Alzheimer’s illness, the most common type of dementia. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) researches have shown the regions that crucially underpin memories for our spatial environment are the 1st to be affected by this degenerative illness.

So, a noticeable increase in occasions of getting lost could be a warning sign of more pronounced and widespread difficulties in the future.

Given the predictive link between declines in the ability to discover your way and dementia, there is an incentive to advance and use standardized tests to spot deficits as early as possible.

Presently, the scientific literature describes varying strategies, ranging from pen-and-paper tests and virtual reality to real-life navigation, but there is no gold standard yet.

A specific challenge is to establish a test that is accurate, cost-effective, and easy to administer during a busy clinic day.

We have developed a 5-minute test that utilized scene memory as a proxy for way-finding capability. We ask participants to remember images of houses and subsequently test their ability to differentiate between the images they have learned and a set of recent photos of homes.

The researchers discovered the test works well in predicting natural variations in way-finding ability in healthy youngsters, but are presently still evaluating the effectiveness of the test in older individuals.

Get help when your memory lapses are consistent

While everyday memory lapses are not something we must unduly worry about, it is prudent to look for specialist healthcare advice, like from your GP, when those impairments become more marked and consistent.

While there is presently still no cure for Alzheimer’s, early detection will permit you to plan for the future and also for more targeted management of the disorder. The Discussion

Oliver Baumann, Assistant Professor, Institution of Psychology, Bond College, and Cindy Jones, Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Bond University

Read the original article on SCIENCE ALERT.

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