"Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought."
-- Emily Dickinson
My severely scarred, old-age memory currently operates at random with a menagerie of brief movies and stills I cannot remember ever giving my amygdala, hippocampus, cerebellum, and the prefrontal cortex the privilege of storing memories and employing them wisely in the process of maturation. How come I can still recite the Gettysburg Address from my fifth-grade assignment but forget to zip the fly of my Wranglers just yesterday?
Quite frankly, this condition pisses me off so often that I now figure I'll just leave any good and bad "sorting out" of thoughts and actions to a higher power. I am over-the-hill in body I know, yet being feeble of mind is very frustrating. Foggy days and nights confound some of my very most critical situations. Plus dealing with bad decisions, I totally confess to doing my fair share of committing senior "fuck-ups" -- a process that ignites the eternal question of "What was I thinking?" The answer, of course, is that "I WASN'T thinking at all" but I just instantly took off and operated assuming the risk and power to accomplish actions these simple deeds in decades past.
I decided today to learn a little more of what is happening with all this cranial dysfunction as I age. So, I'll give it a try. Here is the brief summary of fading memory.
1. The hippocampus is associated with declarative and episodic memory as well as recognition memory. The cerebellum plays a role in processing procedural memories, such as how to play the piano. And, the prefrontal cortex appears to be involved in remembering semantic tasks. (If I can make a quick notation, all of this brain division is more confusing to me than my concept of delineating and understanding all those tricky feminine nether regions. I typically wrap my general knowledge of both in generalities of "brain" and "Vajayjay." As you can tell, I am unaccustomed to solving the many mysteries of both.)
2. Karl Lashley and other researchers and psychologists have been searching for the engram, which is the physical trace of memory. Lashley did not find the engram, but he did suggest that memories are distributed throughout the entire brain rather than stored in one specific area. Now we know that three brain areas do play significant roles in the processing and storage of different types of memories: cerebellum, hippocampus, and amygdala. The cerebellum’s job is to process procedural memories; the hippocampus is where new memories are encoded; the amygdala helps determine what memories to store, and it plays a part in determining where the memories are stored based on whether we have a strong or weak emotional response to the event.
Strong emotional experiences can trigger the release of neurotransmitters, as well as hormones, which strengthen memory, so that memory for an emotional event is usually stronger than memory for a non-emotional event. This is shown by what is known as the flashbulb memory phenomenon: our ability to remember significant life events. However, our memory for life events (autobiographical memory) is not always accurate.
("Parts of the Brain Involved With Memory." Openstax College.https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/psychology/chapter/parts-of-the-brain-involved-with-memory/. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 2024.)
Procedural memories, encoding, neurotransmitters, hormones, lost engrams -- for Betsy's sake, no wonder brain surgeons make so much money while monkeying with your plethora of brain parts -- the hippocampus, the cortex, and the amygdala.I assume they know what they are doing; however, I suspicion they actually understand just a small fraction of what will become future practice.
The question remains -- "Why do old geezers forget so much and still suffer frequent flashbulb memories. Are these experiences impressed more deeply in our craniums?
Seven Normal Memory Problems
1. Transience
This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it. However, your memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones.
2. Absentmindedness
This type of forgetting occurs when you don't pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn't focus on where you put it in the first place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn't encode the information securely. Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do something at a prescribed time, like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment.
3. Blocking
Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know that you know it, but you just can't think of it. This is perhaps the most familiar example of blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. In many cases, the barrier is a memory similar to the one you're looking for, and you retrieve the wrong one. This competing memory is so intrusive that you can't think of the memory you want.
Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other people's names. Research shows that people are able to retrieve about half of the blocked memories within just a minute.
4. Misattribution
Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but you misattribute some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This sort of misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a writer passes off some information as original when he or she actually read it somewhere before.
As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution becomes more common with age. As you age, you absorb fewer details when acquiring information because you have somewhat more trouble concentrating and processing information rapidly. And as you grow older, your memories grow older as well. And old memories are especially prone to misattribution.
5. Suggestibility
Suggestibility is the vulnerability of your memory to the power of suggestion — information that you learn about an occurrence after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory of the incident, even though you did not experience these details. Although little is known about exactly how suggestibility works in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it's a real memory.
6. Bias
Even the sharpest memory isn't a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, your perceptions are filtered by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your perceptions and experiences when they're being encoded in your brain. And when you retrieve a memory, your mood and other biases at that moment can influence what information you actually recall.
Although everyone's attitudes and preconceived notions bias their memories, there's been virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind memory bias or whether it becomes more common with age.
7. Persistence
Most people worry about forgetting things. But in some cases people are tormented by memories they wish they could forget, but can't. The persistence of memories of traumatic events, negative feelings, and ongoing fears is another form of memory problem. Some of these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be negative distortions of reality.
("Forgetfulness — 7 types of normal memory problem." Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/forgetfulness-7-types-of-normal-memory-problems. February 12, 2021.)
Are you old and desperately wish to remember certain things? Here is a summary for you:
(1) Call and Recall a recent memory quickly over and over to increase its "staying power."
(2) Pay closer attention to information deemed important -- avoid off-handing the simplest thoughts.
(3) Delineate similar older memories from the new to avoid blocking intended added memories. Few things are alike; most have unique differences.
(4) Remember things accurately in full, not in part. Avoid assuming facts (that later fade) -- reread or rethink ASAP.
(5) Avoid suggestive thoughts about situations. Remember and reinforce just the facts, not the subsequent suggestions of the memory.
(6) Remember bias affects your clarity of perception, so be open to different ideas, especially when the facts involve emotional and personal positions.
(7) Don't worry about forgetting things. Some things are best forgotten and put out of mind forever. You age: you tend to forget much more.
Towards the end of his life, Einstein said: ""I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to." Obstinate? Perhaps. But, be proud of your age and wear it well with all of its infirmities and lost recollections. Concentrate on the present and avoid dwelling on the past. William Wordsworth put it this way: "The wiser mind mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind."The spirit of the soul is what really matters. Deep reminiscence soothes sadness.
When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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