Page 92 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

76 • Chapter 3

After you identify a problem area, try to decide why
you’ve changed (unless you determine that you have al-
ways been forgetful!).

List some reasons why these areas you wrote about have be-
come a problem:

1. _________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________
3. _________________________________________________

If you’re worrying about becoming senile, ask others.
Ask your friends. Ask them whether you seem to be forget-
ting more often than before.
Here are some questions you can ask about remembering:

1. _____ Is the importance of remembering less acute?

2. _____ Has job pressure been reduced?
3. _____ Have I retired and am now “relaxing” too much?
4. _____ Did I pay enough attention to the information
when I encountered it?
5. _____ Am I grieving over the loss of a loved one?
6. _____ Do I miss lost friends due to a recent move?

Here are some explanations that might help you under-
stand some of the reasons you were forgetting things. Per-
haps you lost a spouse to death or divorce, and you were in
the habit of depending on that spouse to remember things
for you. Grief may cause you to become more easily dis-
tracted. Often, when you think you forgot something, or
you’re accused of forgetting something, you simply did not
pay enough attention to pass the information successfully to
long-term memory and then create an association to retrieve
it. Most information never makes it to long-term memory.
Not paying adequate attention accounts for approximately
50 percent of reported memory problems. However, not
only do you need to get the information successfully trans-
ferred to long-term memory, but you must be able to re-