Question

Post a brief description of symptoms of memory changes during the lifetime.

Then compare the implications of expected changes in aging such as declines in working memory capacity and speed of processing with pathological conditions such as anterograde amnesia and precipitous loss of semantic memory.

Answer 1

• Memory lapses can be frustrating, but most of the time they aren’t cause for concern. Age-related memory changes are not the same thing as dementia.
• The hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the formation and retrieval of memories, often deteriorates with age.
• Hormones and proteins that protect and repair brain cells and stimulate neural growth also decline with age.
• Older people often experience decreased blood flow to the brain, which can impair memory and lead to changes in cognitive skills.
  The brain's volume peaks in the early 20s and gradually declines for the rest of life. In the 40s, when many people start to notice subtle changes in their ability to remember new names or do more than one thing at a time, the cortex starts to shrink. Other key areas also show modest changes. Neurons (nerve cells) can shrink or atrophy, and there's a large reduction in the extensiveness of connections among neurons (dendritic loss). The normally aging brain has lower blood flow and gets less efficient at recruiting different areas into operations.
• As the brain changes, so does behavior. And so, given that blood flow drops the most in the frontal cortex, people most commonly experience declines in verbal fluency, or the ability to find the words they want. They also have to work harder at "executive function," planning and organizing their activities. The areas most affected after that include the parietal cortex, which affects construction and visuomotor performance, and the medial temporal area, which affects the ability to make new long-term memories and think flexibly.
• Episodic (what did I have for breakfast?), source (where did I learn about that new car?), and flashbulb (where where you on Sept. 11, 2001?) memory decline the most. Semantic (words, facts and concepts) and procedural ("it's like riding a bicycle - you never forget") memory decline the least. Storage capacity is not the issue; the brain is not an overloaded hard drive. Rather, the changes appear to come in how people encode and retrieve information.
• Interference, such as distraction, blocks encoding more and slower processing may hurt retrieval, such as being able to remember names and dates. Still, even with these subtle changes, most older adults still seem to efficiently acquire new information and park it in long-term memory. And implicit learning - learning without conscious effort - seems to more or less be spared into old age.
  
• The primary difference between age-related memory loss and dementia is that the former isn’t disabling. The memory lapses have little impact on your daily performance and ability to do what you want to do. Dementia, on the other hand, is marked by a persistent, disabling decline in two or more intellectual abilities such as memory, language, judgment, and abstract thinking.
• When memory loss becomes so pervasive and severe that it disrupts your work, hobbies, social activities, and family relationships, you may be experiencing the warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease, or another disorder that causes dementia, or a condition that mimics dementia.
• Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an intermediate stage between normal age-related cognitive changes and the more serious symptoms that indicate dementia. MCI can involve problems with memory, language, thinking, and judgment that are greater than normal age-related changes, but the line between MCI and normal memory problems is not always a clear one.
• The difference is often one of degrees. For example, it’s normal as you age to have some problems remembering the names of people. However, it’s not normal to forget the names of your close family and friends and then still be unable to recall them after a period of time.
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