WHEN IT’S NORMAL TO FORGET THINGS

ONE of the first questions people ask themselves when they can’t recall a neighbour’s name is: ‘Is this normal, or the first stages of cognitive decline?’

Memory problems tend to increase as we get older. But it is OK to wake up and momentarily forget what day of the week it is, and there’s nothing wrong about realising you can’t remember your old P.E. teacher’s name.

Our memory’s speed and accuracy begin to slip as early as our 20s. Sometimes this can be rectified by sharpening memory skills.

Here are five normal memory lapses you don’t need to worry about!

WHERE ARE MY KEYS?

NO idea where you’ve put your keys? Or why you’ve walked into the kitchen?

Momentary memory blanks like this are really common, and are usually caused by lack of attention.

If you are distracted by a thought or a conversation when you put your car keys down, you will struggle to find them again later.

If you paid attention to everything, your brain would be overwhelmed, so it tries to help by automatically filtering out anything it deems irrelevant. But sometimes the system can be overzealous.

There’s a big difference between forgetting the directions to somewhere you haven’t visited in a while (perfectly normal) and emerging from the local supermarket only to realise you can’t find your way home (talk to your GP). TRY THIS: If your mind is distracted when you perform an action, there will be no real observation, awareness or memory creation.

You have to pay attention to encode a memory. So, when you set your keys down on a table, make sure you are aware of what you are doing — actively observe your keys and where you’ve put them. The important thing here is the word ‘active’. There is a difference between what your eye ‘sees’ and the mind ‘observes’.

IT’S ON THE TIP OF MY TONGUE

IT CAN be immensely frustrating when you know the word you’re searching for, or the name of the person standing in front of you. It is right on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t grasp hold of it.

This very common memory lapse is called ‘blocking’ and usually results from similar memories jamming to create a disruption in the brain.

Memories are made up of many elements (the smell, the time, the mood...) all stored in different parts of the brain.

As we age and our memory banks fill up, we must work harder to retrieve a memory by searching multiple areas of the brain. Don’t worry — this is just your memory retrieval button getting jammed for a while. TRY THIS: Searching your memory for words with the same first letter (start with ‘a’, then ‘b’ and so on) and then the first syllable can help.

REMEMBERING HALF-TRUTHS

WE MIGHT recall quite a few details about an event but, as the years pass, it is normal to get some bits wrong. This happens when there is a glitch in the hippocampus (the brain’s memory centre).

Normally your hippocampus integrates perceptions or impressions as they happen, evaluating whether they are worth remembering.

If you find some memories differ from the truth, it is likely your hippocampus has incorrectly recorded them. Alcohol might put a glitch in matters, for instance.

If you’ve drunk too much, the process in which events are encoded into long-term memory is less likely to work well. That is why, days later, you might have trouble recalling a story that was vivid when the memory was in shortterm storage. TRY THIS: To learn information so you can recall it, you must transfer it from shortterm to long-term memory. Repeating the information under your breath is a good way to make the switch.

MEMORIES FADE

OUR brains continually clean out older memories to make room for new ones — it stops us being overwhelmed.

Each time you recall a memory, you clear a path for its retrieval. However, memories that are not recalled often can fade if the route to retrieval is not continually reinforced.

This basic use-it-or-lose-it characteristic of memory is called transience, and it’s normal at all ages. TRY THIS: If there is a special memory you don’t want to lose, try to recall it regularly — dig deep and pull out the smells, sights, sounds and associated emotions.

STRUGGLING FOR RETRIEVAL

IT IS common to forget the name of someone you were introduced to seconds ago or the title of a film you saw last week. Ageing weakens the connections between neurons in the brain. The barrage of new information we receive will delete other items from your short-term memory unless that information is repeated again and again. TRY THIS: Avoid this glitch by paying special attention to someone’s name when you are introduced, and trying to associate it with something particular or familiar. So if the man is tall, say ‘Rob Long Legs’ in your head.