Researchers give new clues to preventing memory loss

[caption id="attachment_4309" align="alignleft" width="256" caption="Cerebral lobes of the brain"][/caption]

 Editor - Why do we forget things and how can our memory be improved? Recent research reported at the American Psychological Association,
gives clues.

Memory is multi-dimensional, researchers tell us.  It is more than just
glimpsing into the short or long-range past.  It is an interaction of a
number of things that also include sleep, aging and brain chemistry.

Researcher Sara C. Mednick, PhD, and her associates with our memory capacity.
REM, or rapid eye movement stage, is when dreams are most vivid and when
our memory systems are particularly responsive.

This new study looked at memory following different levels of sleep and
found the REM sleep group, the one that had good sleep in that stage,
had better recollection of events and memory activities than others in
the study.

Researchers have also found that memory aids creative problem-solving.

“REM sleep is important for pulling together all the information we process
on a daily basis and turning it into memories we can use later,” said
Mednick. “This helps us to understand more about the benefits of sleep
and to help people maximize their sleep schedules for optimal
productivity and memory retrieval.”

Memory also impacts people's visualization of the future and how they imagine
it could be according to  Daniel L. Schacter, PhD, a psychology
professor and  researcher at Harvard University. Schacter and his
colleagues have been doing brain imaging research.

What Schacter and his colleagues have found is that having a good memory also helps people to imagine their future.

“Memories of things that have already happened to us apparently support
the formation in our minds of future events by taking and recombining
stored information into an event we imagine will happen,” Schacter said
during a plenary address. “This can have far-reaching implications for
how we think about memory and its function.”

Some of this research is directed towards a better understanding of the
problems of Alzheimer's disease, the cognitive deficits and memory
loss.  “These people may offer the best opportunity for intervention to
treat symptoms and stem the tide of the disease,” said Michela
Gallagher, PhD, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University.

Gallagher's research looked at the brain through imaging.  She tells us,  "The
changes in this neural network that are seen both in older animals and
humans may shed light on a permissive condition in the aging brain that
confers risk for Alzheimer's disease and the special vulnerability of
memory in this most common form of dementia," said Gallagher, "and it is
giving us new ideas about how to treat progressive memory loss in older
adults."