Your eyeglasses were missing and you frantically searched for them everywhere, only to find out that they’re just right there – perched comfortably on your head. Your phone, which was on silent mode, has disappeared, and there’s no way to let it go from your perplexed mind other than to think that it must have been stolen.
You walked into a room and you don’t have any idea why you’re there. You missed a deadline, you forgot your friend’s birthday, and you left your wallet on the bus. You studied hard for an exam the night before, and the first question was so easy but you suddenly find it hard to answer because you can’t seem to remember what you studied and you almost want to squeeze your brain out.
So what is this all about? Is it memory loss already? Or is it simply a case of inattentiveness?
Memory lapse due to absentmindedness afflicts all of us, teenager or adult, young or old, female or male, busy or not. The curse of being absentminded is that you suffer from a difficulty of trying to recollect something or a piece of information that was poorly registered in your memory. It was not quite stored in your memory because, well, you hadn’t been paying full attention in the first place.
Unlike memory loss, absentmindedness is a condition which need not be clinically diagnosed. It is simply an indication of a lack of attention or interest in something, or of the boredom that we ordinarily go through sometimes in our daily lives, or the result of being distracted and preoccupied with something else.
Actual memory loss, on the other hand, may be a symptom or consequence of a variety of medical conditions. It may be due to Alzheimer’s, dementia, seizure or a brain injury. It may also occur along with absentmindedness.
Despite these differences, what is interesting about memory loss as a medical symptom and simple absentmindedness is the fact that these two are both conditions of the neuroplastic brain.
Memory loss, particularly, is a case in point because the possibility of its reversibility was unraveled by a team of researchers in Northwestern School of Medicine[2]. The “nun study”, as it was called, was an unprecedented finding about the brain and its diseases, thanks to the elderly nuns who participated during their lifetime and who consented that their postmortem brains be scrutinized for the sake of neurological research.
The nuns in that convent were tracked regularly for their memory performances and mental acuity. There were nuns who were noted for their superior mental performances and optimistic disposition. They wrote autobiographies and were active both physically and mentally. When they died, it was found out that their brains exhibited signs of full blown Alzheimer’s, and yet, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s did not exist during their lifetime.
Although the nuns’ brains showed physical signs of memory disorders such as plaques and lesions, their cognitive skills seemed to have been unaffected.
This led another team of scientists to use PET brain-imaging technology on the brains of live patients, and the results confirmed the previous finding that it is possible for the human brain to develop complete dementia or Alzheimer’s without suffering the outward symptoms of cognitive impairment such as confusion, poor judgments, memory loss, etc.
If you mull it over, even a brain-related disorder which is biological and natural such as aging can be reversed by utter force of human will. This means that our proneness to aging-related cognitive disorders in the future, which will affect every one of us by the way, may be deviated and is subject to possible offset. This means that we can actually choose to develop habits and engage in activities that will protect our mind before this decline takes its toll on us.
Improving one’s memory is definitely not only for the elderly. In fact, it appears that in today’s age of distraction and constant forgetfulness even for the young people, it is the new generation of millennials who will need it the most.
In this section, the keys to improving memory are summarized in the list below. Each key will be discussed in the next sections, along with the strategies and systems that may help in memory retention and recall.