Page 101 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

Develop a Brawny Brain • 85

8. What do you need from the hardware store? ________
________________________________________________
9. Do you need to drop off the shoes at the shoe repair?
________________________________________________
10. What do you need at the drugstore?________________
________________________________________________

After you complete the questionnaire, check your an-
swers at the end of this chapter in “Solutions to Exercises
and Games.”

This is a very difficult exercise. Don’t be discouraged if
you couldn’t answer every question. In the following sec-
tions, you will learn techniques for improving your ability
to work with exercises similar to these. Move ahead with the
notion that you are collecting new tools, looking for new
ways to a solution, and listening for new tips.

DISTRACTIONS AND ATTENTION

It is vitally important to the learning process that we pay at-
tention and do not allow ourselves to be distracted from the
information we are trying to process. We are trying to get this
information from short-term memory (STM) to long-term mem-
ory (LTM), and this requires the brain to restructure. (See
Chapter 2 for details.)
Let’s take, for example, the seemingly simple but amaz-
ingly complex task of learning another person’s name as we
are introduced. Many people are quite eager (and seemingly
proud) to announce that they cannot remember people’s
names even if they have just been introduced. They can ac-
knowledge that an introduction has taken place, but they
have no recollection of the name of the person. Often, the
problem is easy to diagnose. At the instant of an introduc-
tion, the person’s name is in the sensory store. We should be
making efforts to pass the person’s name to STM and on to
LTM. And indeed we are concentrating, but not necessarily