Trevor Ponder Human Memory

An interesting and free article from the Journal of the American Medical Association follows a particular 60-yr old woman and her memory capability. JAMA. 2008;300(13):1566-1574.

Many older individuals experience or demonstrate cognitive impairment that is significantly abnormal for their age and education yet beneath the threshold for a diagnosis of dementia. This mild cognitive impairment causes minimal functional impairment and is often overlooked in clinical settings, yet affected individuals are at heightened risk for a range of adverse outcomes including conversion to dementia. The case of Ms E, a 60-year-old woman with mild memory impairment and white matter lesions on magnetic resonance imaging, provides an opportunity to consider the questions that face patient, family, and clinicians when mild cognitive symptoms prompt a search for diagnosis and management options. Discussion of her case reviews mild cognitive impairment with emphasis on an evidence-based approach to evaluation and treatment, including management of comorbid medical conditions, lifestyle changes, and pharmacotherapy.

You can read the full study here: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/300/13/1566

Memory Loss Memory Loss

A new study suggest that taking a 45-minute nap at daytime can boost your memory and help you remember what you studied. However, it will only take place if you learned it well.

Declarative memory is a type of human memory that stores facts, while procedural memory is for long-term skills or a memory for skills. According to the researchers, taking the daytime nap or sleeping can help set the declarative memories, which makes the facts you studied easier to remember.

Matthew A. Tucker is the lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Sleep and Cognition. He said that, “sleep appears to have an impact on what is learned well, but not so much when on is not motivated to learn.”

A study was created requiring 33 people and a series of test: memorizing words, memorizing a maze, and memorizing a complex line drawing. The researchers had trained the 33 participants with certain declarative memory tasks. 16 of them took the 45-minute nap or non-REM nap and the 17 had to stay awake and watch a movie. On that same day, all the participants took the tests.

What Tucker’s team found wast that the three different declarative memory tasks, those that took a nap improved their performance compared to the one’s who stayed awake. But, a daytime nap would only work for people that learned their task well.

According to Tucker, “The nap group performed better overall than the awake group, but the difference wasn’t significant. However, when we looked at individual performance during training, we found those who did better during training benefited from napping.”

Tucker also said, “There is a likely basic level of learning that has to be attained before sleep can have an impact on performance.” And according to their study, the participants seem to perform well on one task, but not all of the three tasks.

He also said, “There is a lot of data starting to come in that there are benefits from naps on memory.” So, Tucker thinks that by taking a nap and if one has that motivation to learn what he studies, then napping may help improve the declarative memory.

According to Sara Mednick, “This paper is further evidence of how sleep, specifically naps, can be a tool for memory consolidation. Interestingly, the data shows that not all subjects utilize sleep for consolidation to a similar extent.”
Sara Mednick is an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego’s Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Nueroscience.
The paper was published on the journal Sleep’s February 1, 2008 issue.

Lifestyle for Better Memory memory, sleep

What is short term memory?

Short term memory is one of the two types of brain memory. The other one is called long term memory. Short term memory is also known as the primary memory and the active memory. Its process is to temporarily store and manage data which then transfers it to our long term memory or it simply discards it.

How Short Term Memory Loss Happens
Memory loss happens when our brain process failed to retrieve the information that you immediately needed. When we suffer from it, our learning ability decreases. People suffering from short term memory loss should be checked out by a specialist.

Prevention of Short Term Memory Loss
There are tons of ways to improve your short term memory. It is achieved through the food that we eat, our learning capabilities, our daily brain activities, and many more. Living a healthy lifestyle can really help in improving our memory.

Symptoms of Short Term Memory Loss
Short term memory loss is one of the symptoms when you have a mental disorder or disease, suffering or attained a head trauma, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, anxiety, side effects from a medication, and aging.

1. Mental disorder or diseases – one leading cause is having an Alzheimer’s disease. It is the most common form of dementia. It destroys brain cells and very fatal.
2. Head trauma – the causes of head trauma are: car accidents, sporting accident, home and occupational accidents, and assaults.
3. Depression – this occurs when there is an imbalance of neurotransmitters in our brain. It can be brought about by genetics, stress, personality, physical condition, and the social environment.
4. Alcohol and Drug abuse – this causes poor judgment, poor concentration, and other related brain function that is needed for our learning ability.
5. Anxiety – one cause of anxiety is stress. This disrupts the function of neurotransmitters.
6. Side effects from medication – some anti anxiety drugs and sleeping pills are known to cause memory loss.
7. Aging – the most common of all causes. As we age, we suffer from mild forgetfulness. Because this is a natural process, we can improve our memories so that we can avoid being forgetful.

When we know someone who is suffering from short term memory loss, we should not disregard them. Their loved ones and friends should support and help them.

Memory Loss short term memory