As We Age, Keys to Remembering Where the Keys Are

The New York Times:

I recently told my 70s-something walking group that I wanted to write about “retrieval disorder,” our shared problem with remembering names and dates, what we had just read and where, even what we had for dinner last night. Or, in my case, the subject of the column I wrote the day before.

One walking buddy suggested I call it delayed retrieval disorder. “It’s not that we can’t remember,” she said. “It just takes us longer, sometimes a lot longer, than it used to.” Then she wondered, “Is it really a disorder? Since it seems to happen to all of us, isn’t this just normal aging?”

…

Denise C. Park, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, reports that while the brain’s “processing capacity” declines rather steadily from the 20s onward, “world knowledge,” including vocabulary, increases, at least into the 70s, when it seems to plateau. Still, it is important for people to recognize possibly pathological symptoms of cognitive impairment, like getting lost driving to a familiar place, having difficulty with finances, or failing to take medications correctly — deficits that warrant medical attention, Dr. Wagster said.

Read the whole story: The New York Times