Re-thinking "Senior Moments"

3 Reasons Why Forgetting Things Can Be the Sign of a Perfectly Normal Brain

We all have those occasions where we can't recall something we think we should remember. 

I'm not sure what the precise age cutoff is, but somewhere along the way these memory lapses get rebranded as "senior moments," as they do seem to become more frequent as we get older. And they're often used as evidence to support the common story we tell about getting older. 

According to that story, "senior moments" are a signature feature of an aging brain that's not as sharp as it used to be. Our neurons just wear out over time, and they can't sling their electrical signals as fast and accurately as they could back in the good ol' days.

The real story? Not quite so simple. 

That's because while on the one hand it is true that we are more likely forget certain things as we get older, it is also true that in many instances those "senior moments" are a sign of a perfectly healthy brain working perfectly normally. 

So let's now review 3 reasons why forgetting things as you get older can be a sign of a perfectly normal brain. 

Reason #1: The older you get, the fewer memories your brain "needs" to store. 

Each and every day your brain processes an extraordinary amount of information. Most of that information comes from your sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, joints and skin). Some of it also comes from the thoughts rattling around in your head. 

Though it can be challenging to quantify, it's been estimated that your brain processes about 11 million bits of information per second (though almost all of it by parts of your brain entirely hidden from your conscious mind, which only processes around 50 bits per second).

While those numbers are a bit hard to comprehend, suffice it to say that it's a lot of information. In order to store any of that information as a memory, our brain must change itself. Regardless of whether that memory is of the capital of Delaware, how to make a turkey sandwich, or the color of your grandmother's eyes, the only way that information sticks around is if your brain wires it into its physical structure.

That rewiring requires precious energy and resources, so storing every bit of the information our brain processes would be incredibly wasteful. To be a responsible, energy-efficient organ, our brain must be very selective in what it chooses to remember, and what it chooses to forget.

Many people seem to think of their brain like a video recorder, and its job is to store everything that happens to you so you can revisit the events from your past any time you please. From that perspective, the less your brain stores, the worse it's performing.

Thankfully, our brain is much more intelligent than that.

Remember this: our brain's main assignment is to keep us alive by maintaining stable conditions inside the body. One of the ways it does this is by making predictions about what is likely to happen next.

So, from the brain's perspective, the information it processes is worth turning into a memory only if it is useful. Only if it tells us something about the world we didn't know before - something that might come in handy later on (like where the bison like to hide, or what personal habits your spouse finds irritating). 

From your brain's point of view, remembering trivial information like what you had for breakfast or the capital of Delaware is wasteful. That's why persuading your brain to remember such trivialities often requires extraordinary measures, like the threat of summer school. 

What this means is that, in the vast majority of cases, forgetting things is a feature, not a bug. 

So why does this essential forgetting feature mean we "forget" more as we get older: it's because the more time we spend on this earth, the less likely we are to encounter new information that our brain finds useful. 

In other words, the less likely we are to encounter something our brain thinks is worthy of remembering.

We store the things we pay close attention to. And our brain instinctively pays close attention to things that are new, and ignores the familiar.

That's not the sign of an aging brain malfunctioning, it's the sign of an intelligent brain operating exactly as it should.

(Aside: there are rare individuals with "hyperthymesia" whose memories do function like a video recorder, and they are able to recall the vast majority of their life events. It's quite likely that every human brain is capable of doing this, but most don't for the reasons given above. Those with hyperthymesia tend to see it as a curse rather than a blessing.)

Reason #2: Memory retrieval gets much harder the more memories you have.

In order for you to remember something, two things must happen.

First, you must store, or encode, the memory (as just mentioned, one reason why we think we "forget" more with age is because we store fewer memories).

Second, your brain must also retrieve memory. It has to find where it put the darn thing!!

How many times have you had the name of a famous actor or actress on the tip of your tongue, confounded by your inability to retrieve it (until it randomly surfaces 6 hours later while you're washing the dishes)?

And here's the thing about finding things: the more things you have (including memories), the longer it takes you to find a specific thing (like a specific memory). And it doesn't just get a little bit harder as you add new things, it gets exponentially harder.

It's similar to the reason why a hacker can crack a password of upper and lowercase letters that's 7 characters long in 25 seconds, but one that's 16 characters long takes 2 billion years. Each additional character makes the task exponentially harder.

The older you get, the more memories you have on your brain's hard drive. So we should expect it to become harder to retrieve specific memories as we get older, shouldn't we?

Again, it's not because your brain is malfunctioning, but rather because it's up against the mathematical reality of having to work harder and harder to achieve the same result.

In fact, when we consider the difficulty of the task, I think it's quite remarkable that we retrieve our memories as well as we do, a testament to the sophistication of our brain's "search algorithm."

Reason #3: We live in unprecedented times.

Yes it's cliche. But it's also true. These are truly unprecedented times. From the standpoint of our brain, these times are virtually unrecognizable.

Memories are information. And as you may have heard, we're now living in the information age.

The advent of the internet and the proliferation of smartphones means we have access to vast amounts of information at any time and place. As a result, most of us are processing far more information each day than at any other time in human history.

Our brains were certainly not built for these times, and we really have no idea how a "normal" brain should perform in them. In my opinion, it's incredible that our brains are holding up as well as they are, considering just how different the world of today is from the world our brain evolved to make sense of.

Unsurprisingly, the information age has also ushered in an apparent epidemic of memory "problems." I definitely saw a significant surge in patients complaining of memory issues after dawn of the smartphone era.

It's not just the amount of information we encounter that's changed, either, but how we engage with it. 280 character tweets, pithy sound bytes, 10 second videos, text and email alerts, and on and on. Our attention is hopping from one stream to the next, barely touching the surface, hardly ever going deep. That's not the kind of engagement that leads to memory formation.

That said, it's entirely possible that we're remembering more information than ever before, but feel as if we're remembering less. How could that be?

Because the proportion of what we remember has almost certainly gone down. Even if the numerator (the amount we remember) has gone up, the denominator (the amount we're exposed to) has surely gone up much more.

The Caveat

Okay, so we've added a lot of nuance around the concept of "senior moments," and memory lapses in general. Nuance that not only brings us a bit closer to the truth of the matter, but that also may make you feel a bit better about your brain.

But here's the caveat: it is true that there are factors that make it so that our memory abilities worsen with age (it's also true that they can occasionally be the sign of a more significant problem).

However, that worsening with age is not some inevitable fact of "aging," but a direct result how we use and take care of our brain.

And how to maintain and even improve your memory as you get older will be the subject of the next issue of The Brainjo Connection.

Quick Memory Quiz

In the spirit of this issue, let's put your memory to the test!

What were the 3 reasons why forgetting things can be a sign of a perfectly normal brain? See if you can remember, and then keep reading.

To recap, the 3 reasons are (to help you remember them, I'll give you 3 memorable mental images below to serve as a visual aid. That memory will strenghten if you if you try to share them with someone else later on.):

#1: As we get older, we don't need to store as many memories

(mental image: think of the Willy Wonka image of him asking you to tell him something he doesn't know).

#2: As you add memories, retrieving them becomes much harder

(mental image: think of golden retriever trying to retrieve 100 frisbees at once)

#3: We live in unprecedented times, exposed to far more information than ever before

(mental image: think of a crowd of people staring at their smartphones).

Now just imagine Willy Wonka throwing 100 frisbees to a golden retriever and the golden retriever running into a crowd of people staring at their smartphones. Now those 3 reasons are much more likely to stick!

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BRAIN BOOSTING RESOURCES

In this section, I'll provide some of my favorite recommended resources for improving brain health and function (I am not paid to do so, I just like and use these things). .

FROM THE BRAINJO LIBRARY...

Remember It: The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget

Though it may be hard for us to imagine, there was once a time when the only way we humans could store and pass along information of any kind was to store it in our brain. 

No writing. No recording. No internet. 

So being able to store information in your brain (and retrieve it when you needed it!) was much more important then than it is now. As a result, over the years humans developed all sorts of clever strategies to vastly expand their brain's memory capabilities. 

These days, those techniques are most commonly used and mastered by memory athletes like Nelson Dellis. 

In the book Remember It, Nelson shows the exact techniques he has used to win the US Memory Championships a record-breaking 5 times. 

In my view, the best part about the book aren't the strategies themselves (as entertaining and useful as they are), but for how it demonstrates just how much more your brain is capable of than you realize. 

Click here to grab a copy of "Remember It"

(note: though I read mostly digital books these days, this is an instance where I'd recommend getting the physical copy).

Click here to read more about how books are selected for inclusion in the Brainjo Library) 

From the Brainjo Archive: 
Interview with US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis

For more on Nelson's story of how he went from being an ordinary guy with no special gift of memory to the 5-time US Memory Champion, click here to listen to my interview with Nelson on the Intelligence Unshackled Podcast.

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Product Recommendation: Padded Sleep Mask 

As I mentioned, the only way we make a memory is if our brain remodels its synapses.

Well...you know when all of that synaptic remodeling happens? During sleep.

Poor sleep is arguably the most common cause of memory problems today. And in our modern world, poor sleep is extraordinarily common.

One reason for that: too much light hitting our eyeballs at night!

Light has a significant effect on our brain even when our eyes are closed. Just the smallest amount of light in the room where we sleep can disrupt sleep quality and quantity, disrupting all of those growth and repair processes that are critical for brain health.

The simplest and cheapest way to deal with it: a sleep mask.

The super luxurious padded mask I've linked here costs a mere 20 bucks, and I can't imagine now living without it (in fact, I keep an extra one in my suitcase to ensure I'm never without one).

(added sleep mask bonus: getting to feel like a diva each and every night.)

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Movie Recommendation: "Memento"

In the movie "Memento," a man with no short term memory tries to solve his wife's murder, which is the last thing he remembers.

Besides being a powerful illustration of the importance of our memory, and the challenges of living without it, Memento is also incredibly entertaining and brilliantly told.

Ironically, the clever, non-linear way in which the story unfolds will give your own memory a bit of a workout. Not in the tedious way that a story with 8 bajillion main characters and multiple plot lines makes watching feel like work, but rather like a fun puzzle that focuses your attention and stokes your curiosity until you've discovered the solution.

It's one of my all-time favorites.

That's it for this edition of The Brainjo Connection. Hope it's been a memorable one! ;)

Josh Turknett, MD

p.s. - if you know of anyone who’d enjoy reading this issue of The Brainjo Connection, please share!