A pilot study of older persons suggests that the nicotine patch may counteract memory loss.

The study was conducted by Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. It involved 74 non-smokers with an average age of 76 years who were diagnosed with Minimal Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Half received the nicotine patch @ 15 mg of nictoine per day a day for six months. The other half received a placebo patch. Participants were tested on a battery of memory and cognitive tests before and after receiving the patch. There were very modest memory benefits among those receiving the active nicotine patch versus the placebo group.

The article suggests that nicotine may boost memory by upregulating nicotinic receptors associated with short-term memory consolidation.

Reference: Newhouse P, Kellar K, Aisen P, et al. Nicotine treatment of mild cognitive impairment: A 6-month double-blind pilot clinical trial, Neurology, 2012; 78:91-101.

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Meditating in Later Life

A report in the journal Psychological Science suggests enhanced brain function through meditating.

Meditation can help sustain attention.

Buddhist monks who regularly meditated perform better than most of us on concentration tests.

In the past five years, other studies have produced evidence that meditation also yields gains in concentration for laypeople who take up the practice and this effect may be magnified in later life.

Strategies to start simple meditation:
1. Find a quiet place.
2. Get in a comfortable position.
2. Empty your mind.
3. Focus on a single thought a word or an idea.
4. Sustain that focus through practice.
5. Return to the same spot, same position, daily for one week.
6. Assess its value afte one week on your level of concentration.

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Music training may be related to lifespan memory maintenance

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Will memorizing lists and speeches improve my memory?

No. If it’s rote repetition, this does nothing, because memory is not a muscle. If you’re using a memory strategy, then practice will improve your strategy skill. If you spend an hour every day on memorizing using mnemonic (method of loci, or pegword strategy), you will indeed become better. In fact, it takes practice before you can effectively use these strategies.

What practice does, is make you better at the memory strategy you practice.

References

Herrmann, D.J. & Searleman, A. 1990. The new multimodal approach to memory improvement. In G. Bower (ed.) Advances in Learning and Motivation, New York: Academic Press.

1. Higbee, Kenneth L. Your memory. How it works and how to improve it. NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1988.

I’ve read that people only use 10% of their brain. Is this true?

This is repeated in many popular books about the brain and memory. It is not clear what evidence exists for such a statement.

Brain activity comes from connections between those billions of neurons. Memory and thought are contained in patterns of activation, not in single neurons. The essence of how the brain works is that the neurons are all connected. The brain is a network. How can a network function if significant portions of it are in disuse?

I have more trouble remembering words and names. Is this Alzheimer’s?

As we get older, it is normal to experience more  memory blocks for names of objects and people.Not, interestingly enough, for abstract words.

When you were in your twenties, you had many memory blocks — occasions when something is ‘on the tip of my tongue’. But this is not because you had Alzheimer’s. It is because memory blocks occur for everyone. They become more noticeable in old age because you worry about them more.

Why do I have trouble remembering people’s names?

The principal reason for the common tendency to forget people’s names is simple – we don’t pay enough attention when we hear them. But why are names so much harder than other things to remember? It’s because we feel so bad when we forget a name?

The main tenet of memory is that well-connected information is easy to remember. The more connections a piece of information has, the more likely you are to recall it. But what connections does a name have with a person?  Names are arbitrary. You have to make a special effort to create a meaningful connection for it.

Does playing tapes while you’re asleep help you learn?

Not really.

There are circumstances in which learning can occur while you’re asleep. Here are some fact:

• The information to be learned cannot require understanding – it is thus useful for memorizing rather than true learning.
• You must be in the right stage of sleep – a light, drowsy state.
• The ‘sleep learning’ must augment ordinary learning, it can’t take the place of it.

References

Baddeley, Alan.Your memory: A user’s guide. (2nd ed.) London: Penguin Books, 1994.

Higbee, Kenneth L. Your memory. How it works and how to improve it. NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1988.

Do mnemonic strategies really work?

Certainly. Mnemonic strategies work. However, for the most part they are strategies that require practice to master. For example, to use the method of loci requires at least half an hour of pratice.  If you have a specific need to remember lots of names, mastering the face-name association strategy is probably worth it.

Is everything we ever experienced recorded somewhere in our brain?

No.The origin of this belief seems to lie in the work done by a Canadian surgeon, Wilder Penfield, in the 1950s.  The brain itself has no sensors for pain, Penfield (with the patients’ consent) used operations on the brain to investigate the storage of memory. While the brain was exposed, and the patients fully conscious, Penfield stimulated different parts of the cortex electrically. In most cases, the patients had no sensation or experience to report, but occasionally they would claim to re-experience very vivid scenes from their past.

This was taken by many at the time to demonstrate that memory works like a camera – that every detail is experienced, and is recorded in the brain, and nothing is truly lost. However, it now seems clear that the interpretation of these results was over simplistic.

References

Greenfield, Susan. The human brain: A guided tour. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.

Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. NY: Basic Books, 1996.

Why do we forget?

Forgetting, it can be argued, is adaptive. The ability to abstract general rules from specific instances is far more useful than the ability to remember every specific detail, and the one seems to preclude the other₁.

There is no evidence that information stored in memory can actually disappear (except of course when the brain is physically damaged). However, when information is reaches long-term memory store, it passes through “working memory”. Information can be lost in working memory. If the information doesn’t make it through the encoding process (when it is “in” working memory), then it will not enter exist in long-term memory. You may have a vague feeling that such information exists but you won’t be able to recall details.

Forgetting occurs because:

• information was never properly encoded in the first place, or
• you can’t find it

1. Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. NY: Basic Books, 1996.

Am I too old to learn?

No.

It is true that memory performance begins to decline after the mid-forties, but the effects of age on memory are complex, as memory itself is complex. It is not true that a particular seventy-year-old necessarily has a ‘worse’ memory than his thirty-year-old grandson. It is probably true that the grandson remembers most information with less effort than his grandfather. It is not true that the grandfather can’t match his grandson’s performance with more effort – or more cunning. If one is skilled at specific memory strategies, and the other isn’t, this can be more important than any age differences.

Older adults have a big advantage to offset the slowness that comes with increasing age. Experience. A good memory is an organized memory, is a richly connected memory. With a wealth of experience, an older person has the potential for many connections. With the right strategies, such rich connectivity can make remembering very efficient.

References

Baddeley, Alan.Your memory: A user’s guide. (2nd ed.) London: Penguin Books, 1994.

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Preventing memory loss

(This article is excerpted from the Harvard Health Publications Special Health Report “Improving Memory: Understanding and Preventing Age-Related Memory Loss”. For more information or to order, please go to http://health.harvard.edu/IM.)

No matter what your age, it’s not too late to take steps to prevent memory loss. A good place to start is with the strategies for improving your memory described in this report.

Preventive steps

Research shows that the following strategies may help preserve your memory.

Exercise

Physical fitness and mental fitness go together. People who get regular vigorous exercise also tend to stay mentally sharp in their 70s and 80s. There are several ways in which exercise might benefit your memory.

First, it’s good for the lungs, and people whose memories and mental acuity remain strong in old age characteristically have good lung function.

Second, exercise helps reduce the risk for diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and stroke – illnesses that can lead to memory loss.

Third, animal research has shown that exercise increases the level of neurotrophins, substances that nourish brain cells and help protect them against damage from stroke and other injuries.

The people in the MacArthur study whose mental functions remained strong were active almost daily. A study from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine concluded that individuals who exercised – by walking or by engaging in physically active hobbies, such as gardening – had a lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease. So experts recommend that you build physical activity into your daily routine. Here are some examples:

• When possible, walk instead of driving or riding.
• Set aside time each day for exercise.
• Use the stairs instead of elevators.
• Exercise at home, possibly with an exercise video.
• Plant a garden.
• Take an exercise class or join a health club.
• Swim regularly, if you have access to a pool or beach.
• Learn a sport that requires modest physical exertion, such as tennis.

Physical activity keeps both your body and your mind in shape.

Keep learning

In the MacArthur study, the characteristic that correlated most strongly with good mental functioning in old age was a person’s level of education. Experts think that advanced education may help keep memory strong by getting people into the habit of being mentally active.

Some people continue their education with adult education classes or advanced degrees even in late adulthood.

Reading regularly, keeping up with current affairs, learning a new hobby, and playing challenging games all exercise your mind.

Don’t smoke

Studies show that smokers don’t remember people’s names and faces as well as nonsmokers do. No one knows whether smoking directly impairs memory or is merely associated with memory loss because it causes illnesses that contribute to memory loss. Smoking is especially common among people who are depressed, and depression weakens the memory. In addition, smoking increases the risk for stroke and hypertension, two other causes of memory impairment.

Maintain a healthy diet

A healthful diet rich in fruits and vegetables as well as healthy fats from fish, nuts, and whole grains is vital in maintaining the health not just of your body but of your brain as well.

Avoiding saturated fats (in meat and dairy) and trans fats (in commercial products with partially hydrogenated oils) will help keep your arteries clear and cholesterol levels healthy, and that in turn will decrease your chances of stroke, including the small undetectable ones that can damage brain function.

Avoid excess calories to maintain a normal weight; this lowers your risk for illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension, which can impair your memory.

Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables can be especially beneficial because many are good sources of antioxidants, nutrients that may protect against diseases and age-related deterioration throughout the body.

Nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts are essential for keepking your brain healthy.

Get a good night’s sleep

Sleep is essential for memory consolidation as well as overall health. Although people vary widely in their individual sleep needs, research suggests that six to eight hours of sleep a night is ideal.

People with breathing problems during sleep, such as obstructive sleep apnea, can sleep for 10 hours per night but never feel refreshed in the morning. Of course, for some people, getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done, especially becaus e insomnia becomes more common with age.

Try the following:

• Establish and maintain a consistent sleep schedule and routine. Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning.
• Plan to do your most vigorous exercise early in the day. Exercising in the hours immediately before bedtime causes physiological changes that interfere with sleep. Exercising in the morning, on the other hand, enhances your alertness when you need it most – at the beginning of the day.
• Avoid coffee and other sources of caffeine after midmorning, because caffeine is a stimulant that can keep you awake for hours afterward.
• Avoid napping during the daytime. Napping can disrupt your natural sleep cycle and prevent you from feeling tired enough to fall asleep at night.
• Don’t take sleeping pills unless nothing else works. Like sleep deprivation, sleeping pills can cause memory loss.
• Try drinking warm milk before bedtime. Some people find that it helps them feel sleepy. Milk contains tryptophan, a chemical that may help you relax.
• If you’re still awake after about 20 minutes in bed, get up and read awhile to help yourself relax.

Cultivate social support

The MacArthur researchers described a study in a nursing home in which residents were asked to do a simple jigsaw puzzle. During a practice session:

One group was given verbal encouragement by one of the experimenters as they practiced doing the jigsaw puzzle.

The second group was told how to do the jigsaw puzzle.

The third group got no social support or how-to advice.

Later, those in the group given encouragement did better than they had during the practice session. The people who had been told what to do had more trouble during the test than they’d had in the practice session. And those who had received neither encouragement nor advice did neither better nor worse.

Being too quick to show a person what to do can lower that person’s self-confidence and motivation to figure things out. In other words, it can instill a sense of helplessness.

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Gary E. Swan & Dorit Carmelli (SRI International)

Previous research suggests that curiosity in older people is associated with the maintenance of health of the aging central nervous system. The present investigation examined the relationship of curiosity in 1,118 community-dwelling older men and survival over a 5-year follow-up. Curiosity was measured when the subjects were an average age of 70.6 years. Levels of trait and state curiosity at initial examination were higher in survivors than in those who subsequently died. After adjustment for other risk factors, the state curiosity-mortality association remained significant  The present study is the first to identify a predictive role for curiosity in the longevity of older adults.

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Tips for Mind-Stimulating Fun

If you’re still not sure how you add mind-stimulating activities into your dailey routine, consider the following:

Video action. Interactive video games are popular with people of all ages. Some games, such as Nintendo’s Brain Age, and the new Wii home video game are specifically for seniors.

Computer savvy not needed. You can play online and other computer games with little or no experience. Games like nintendo do not look or feel like computers and the games themselves have step-by-step guides to help get started. Remember, they want you to buy their products and this means that they need to teach you how to play. Playing simple games like solitaire are effortless. Other games involve a few steps and some gadgets (like a wand or a headset or a controller), but it is important to note that these kinds of things are part of the history of games, for example, even the Las Vegas slot machines have a bar or a button or a handle. In fact a simple trip to a casino will teach you that videogames are everywhere.

Organize a video game night. Board or card games offer a great avenue for mind stimulation. Encourage get a friend or two to join in the fun. You can play games at home, in coffee shops, in the library, anywhere a hook-up is available.

Video tournament fun. Bridge and Scrabble tournaments for seniors are springing up around the country. and some, like on seniornet.com are online. Find out through your senior center about online game clubs.

Think “Kindle”. Crossword, large-piece jigsaw and Sudoku puzzles are great pastimes and they are now on separate devices or on computer. For example Kindle has versions of solitair, minesweep, scrabble, and other games. Buying a Kindle or another type of e-book can be a great resource to online mind-stimulating activities

Out and about through Podcasts. Most communities have concerts, lectures and other pursuits that interest seniors and their families. Many of these are rebroadcast on “podcasts”. Podcasts are no more than video recording or audio recordings of events. You can listen to these on your I-pod. And, many are downloadable on I-tunes. Go to an Apple Store in your neighborhood and get them to help you get started using an I-pod. They will show you how to find and download pod-casts. These are easier than you think.

Make you own Videos and upload them. Seniors can be found all over youtube making videos of themselves, their activities, and their ideas. These can be for family, friends or the general public. You don’t have to be famous to provide your own brand of wisdom.

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What else do we know about longevity?

According to Walker, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, changes brought about by sleep resulted in improvements in the subjects’ motor skill performance. “The cerebellum, which functions as one of the brain’s motor centers controlling speed and accuracy, was clearly more active when the subjects had had a night of sleep,” he explains. “When you’re asleep, it seems as though you are shifting memory to more efficient storage regions within the brain. Consequently, when you awaken, memory tasks can be performed both more quickly and accurately and with less stress and anxiety.” The end result is that procedural skills — for example, learning to talk, to coordinate limbs, musicianship, sports, even using and interpreting sensory and perceptual information from the surrounding world — become more automatic and require the use of fewer conscious brain regions to be accomplished.

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/video/sleep07_stickgold_learning

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• Aging and Sleep Patterns

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111415462

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Older women with memory problems are more likely to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep than those without memory loss, a U.S. study finds. The study included almost 2,500 women, average age 69, with no signs of memory problems at the start of the study. They underwent cognitive tests over a period of 15 years and, at the end of the study, were assessed for sleep problems.

Women who showed signs of mental decline on the tests “were nearly twice as likely to have difficulty staying asleep and one-and-a-half times as likely to have problems falling asleep and being awake for more than 90 minutes during their sleep cycle,” study author Dr. Kristine Yaffe, of the University of California, San Francisco, said in a prepared statement.

“Women who declined on one of the tests were also nearly twice as likely to nap more than two hours a day,” Yaffe said. the study, which is published in the July 17 issue of the journal Neurology.

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SOME HELP:

• Be Consistent: The best thing you can do to ensure you are sleeping as well as possible is to sleep during the night. Your body has a natural rhythm like a clock that knows when it is night, and it is programmed to be asleep when it is dark. If you make sure to go bed at the same time each night and awake at the same time each morning when it is bright outside, your circadian rhythm will be regular.

• Get Comfortable: Make sure the place you are sleeping has the most comfortable conditions possible. Change as many factors in your bedroom as you can so that the environment is ideal for sleeping. Make sure the room is dark, a comfortable temperature and quiet.

• Relax Before Bed: Before bed, avoid things that will make you tense or anxious. Many people find it soothing to shower, read a book, write in a journal or listen to calming music before they try to go to sleep.

• Light Eating: Give yourself time to digest foods and get liquids out of your system before you turn in. Don’t go to bed on a totally empty stomach It will be easier for you to fall asleep if you are comfortable. Light eating, milk or yogurt will be easier for you to digest and maintain comfort to stay asleep if.

• No Stimulants: Many drinks, such as coffees and energy drinks, contain caffeine and other stimulants that will make you feel more awake and energized. Stay aware from these before sleep

• Exercise: Regular exercise will improve your ability to fall asleep. Exercise in the morning or afternoon.

• Don’t Work or Watch TV in Bed: Make sure your bedroom is a place you associate with relaxation. If you want to watch a movie, watch it from a couch in another room.

• Suspend your Worries: When people have a lot on their minds, they lie awake at night worrying and lose sleep. You can deal with your stressors so that they are not on your mind as you are falling asleep. A simple strategy is to realize that most “worries” cannot be dealt with when you are in bed, so make a plan to get up half an hour earlier and spend that extra half hour working on your worries. Make this contract with yourself and then fulfill it by suspending your worries while you are in bed.

• Get Up if you Can’t Sleep: If you lie in bed and unsuccessfully try to fall asleep for more than 20 minutes, do not continue to lie in bed and stress over it. Get out of bed. Go do something that relaxes you.

Less Sleep Part of Healthy Aging

Published in Sleep, a recent study involved 110 healthy adults without sleep complaints who were studied for one normal eight-hour sleep night followed by two nights with or without sleep disruption followed by one recovery night.

Among the participants, 44 were young (20 to 30 years old), 35 were middle-aged (40 to 55) and 31 were older adults (66 to 83). Their sleep was evaluated by polysomnography and monitored by researchers throughout the experiment.

During the first normal sleep session, young adults slept an average of 433.5 minutes, middle-aged adults slept 410 minutes, and older adults slept 390 minutes. Number of minutes spent in deep, slow-wave sleep decreased with age.

Number of minutes spent awake after initially falling asleep increased from 21 for young adults to 50 for middle-aged adults and 71 for older adults.

Even though older adults got less total sleep  than their younger counterparts,  older adults displayed fewer symptoms of daytime sleepiness. Older adults took five-and-a-half minutes longer to fall asleep after lying down compared to younger adults.

The second part of the study disrupted the participants’ sleep and led to a similar response in the three age groups. They all showed more signs of daytime sleepiness, and deep, slow-wave sleep rebounded during the night of recovery sleep.

Healthy aging is associated with a natural reduction in sleep duration and depth needed to maintain daytime alertness.  The findings could have important implications for older adults complaining of insomnia who may not be aware of their reduced need for sleep: SOURCE: Dijk, D. Sleep, Feb. 1, 2010; vol 33: pp 211-223.

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Using your memory in old age

-Researchers have found in a number of studies that reading can improve a patient’s quality of life. The meanings of written sentences can be understood by — and prompt cogent responses from — even those who have difficulty handling verbal exchanges.

Caregivers may be surprised to learn that reading ability is not always destroyed by Alzheimer’s. “All of my research demonstrates that people who were literate maintain their ability to read until the end stages of dementia,” said Michelle S. Bourgeois, a professor of speech and hearing science at Ohio State University… – From NYTimes:  April 22, 2010, Many Alzheimer’s Patients Find Comfort in Books

WHEN YOU READ:

• pause, reflect, think
• engage actively
• use intellect and emotion together
• develop a longer attention span
• think critically about material
• Reading about a subject provides integrative information:
• You can skim over portions that interest you less
• Move backwards and forwards, re-read, reflect over material
• Challenge the validity of material
• Make notes, connect what you have learned to other information
• Read to appreciate
• Study the prose and writing content to improve you writing
• Join a book group or start one
• Listen to books or podcasts – contrast this to reading
• When grandchildren visit, read aloud to them.
• Write you own children’s book and read it aloud to test it

Can’t Decide What To Read?

• Rereading an old favorite
• Follow the writing of a certain author
• Ask friends/family for recommendations
• Check out book reviews in the local newspaper
• Submit a book review to one an internet book blog
• Write a short story or an op-ed piece for the newspaper
• Use reading to research a topic of interest

E-Reading

E-blogging and the Older Adult:

Could e-books someday be the new large “print” for older people in the U.S. and elsewhere?

As a reference librarian, I speak with many who must struggle with regular print books, magazines and newspapers. Consider the ironies. The eyes of millions of retirees are failing just when these seniors finally have the time for leisure reading.

Frustratingly, too, arthritis might prevent them from holding the heavier large-print editions. And those are far from the only problems here—the reason why e-books might be the solution in many cases with appropriate devices and titles available.

With the right e-book standard in use, moreover, just about every book could be the equivalent of a large-print book. Readers could easily adjust the font size.

Arthritis as a challenge

Yes, arthritis is a major challenge for the elderly and large-print books tend to be too heavy and unwieldy for many older people with arthritis to hold. E-readers might be one solution to the problem. These are light and easy to manipulate.

A shortage of large-print titles

I have just a limited selection of large-print titles that I could recommend to them even if they could hold the books.

Publishers say some baby boomers feel that large print is only for the very old. Publishing houses are responding to this by marketing books as “larger print” and highlighting their use by people who like to read while exercising on a treadmill.

How e-books could help

A small, lightweight e-book reader with large buttons would be easy for older adults to hold and manipulate. Ideally, such a reader would allow the reader to pick the most comfortable font size and be able to reflow the text for that font size. The screen of such a reader should provide a reading experience as close as possible to the clarity and the lack of glare found with print books.

Today most books exist as computer files anyway, and conversion houses are available, so the cost of digitizing new books is lower than before. The library market could help seed the commercial one and encourage interest in appropriate hardware, making mass-production more practical and driving down prices. Ultimately, even low-income elderly people could own their readers, which in some cases might also be used for other purposes such as Web surfing or e-mail.

Vast need for senior-friendly E

I have no doubt of the need for senior-friendly digital books and the right devices to read them with. According to Lighthouse International, “approximately three percent of individuals age 6 and older, representing 7.9 million people, have difficulty seeing words and letters in ordinary newspaper print even when wearing glasses or contact lenses. This number increases to 12 percent among persons age 65 and older (3.9 million)” (McNeil, 2001 as cited by Lighthouse International). There is a growing need for an e-book market tailored to the issues of the older reader.

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