For all the students cramming for big tests, for all the Baby Boomers who stop in blank embarrassment trying to recall whether they’re headed for the coffee pot or the potty, for all of us who can’t conjure up the names of people we know we know, new help is here — and it has gone high-tech.
Anxiety about forgetfulness has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry of memory aids, consisting of books, playing cards, board games, videos, manuals and dietary supplements.
And in cyberspace, dozens of online sites are jockeying to help remind customers of important dates through e-mail — much less Luddite than a string on the finger. The Internet has also spawned cyberspace “brain gyms” that claim they can make your mind stronger by offering a dizzying array of mental calisthenics.
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Robert Thompson, an expert on popular culture at Syracuse University, says interest in memory is rising because almost everyone has so much more to forget: passwords, appointments, cell phone numbers.
“We’re all overwhelmed with information,” he says. “When you have a culture that is packaging all this [data], inevitably you’re going to have another culture based on how you’re going to retrieve all this stuff you cram into your head.”
Paula McLaughlin, 53, signed up recently as a client of MemoryConcepts.com, a new New York-based company that offers a slew of mind-bending online interactive exercises.
“I’m always writing notes to myself, and then I forget the notes,” she says. “I came home one night, and my girlfriend down the road was having a party. . . . I’d completely forgotten, even though she had reminded me three times that day. I think it’s overload.”
Everything we experience and feel is processed by the brain and then stored in the temporal lobe, specifically the hippocampus, says Dr. Allan Levey, chairman of neurology at Emory University.
But much of how memory stores and retrieves information remains a mystery.
“We know an awful lot about how the brain works, but we have a long way to go,” he says. “We know about the circuits in the brain that are necessary for memory, and we even know some of the molecular basis for connections between neurons, which underlie memory.”
But no one is really clear why memory starts to fade during early middle age, he says. “There are probably many factors that contribute to decline, which vary in different people.”
Some people start losing memory about age 25, and by 40, almost everybody starts fading, he says. But unless they impede daily functions, moments of forgetfulness likely don’t mean much, if anything, Levey says.
Making lifestyle changes
However, a growing body of research suggests that a variety of lifestyle choices can sharpen people’s mental acuity. For example:
– California researchers reported at a conference last month that a diet rich in vitamins and antioxidants could slow down or reverse mental decline in old age.
– The journal Archives of Neurology reported that people who consume large quantities of saturated fats are twice as likely as those who don’t to have memory problems.
– A study in Neurology reported that formal education significantly diminished memory problems among people with Alzheimer’s.
– And finally, a study last year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that leisure activities such as chess, checkers, crossword puzzles, playing a musical instrument and ballroom dancing seem to stave off memory loss.
But many experts like Levey say it’s too early to take such studies to the brain bank.
It’s possible and even logical to think that mental workouts might tune up the brain, but to what extent, if any, hasn’t been shown conclusively.
Despite what researchers say, Americans are aggressively fighting forgetfulness — spending about $250 million a year on dietary supplements alone, not counting books and other tools.
Worried Baby Boomers
And it’s clear that as America’s 77 million Baby Boomers age, more companies will try to capitalize on people’s desperate search for the Fountain of Youth (or their car keys).
Already, thousands pop pills such as Ginkgo biloba or Focus Factor. Some regularly chew on ginseng root.
Others are flocking to their computers for help, setting them to instantly conjure up hundreds of thousands of birthdays, appointments and a host of important events, and then send reminders by e-mail, pager or cell phone.
But in cyberspace, it’s “brain gyms” that rule as the hottest memory trend.
MyBrainTrainer.com, the brainchild of Bruce Friedman, a 54-year-old Los Angeles entrepreneur, bills itself as the world’s first “virtual mental gymnasium” and offers nine types of brain-twisting exercises and all sorts of memory-improving tips.
MyBrainTrainer.com was endorsed last month by New York-based Kaplan Inc., the company that prepares students, from high schoolers to college grads, for standardized tests.
“Certainly, we think MyBrainTrainer offers a creative approach to promoting mental acuity,” says Kaplan spokeswoman Carina Wong. “As Kaplan serves individuals who seek higher achievement, we’re always interested in technologies that can potentially help our students.”
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Taking a measure
The cerebral exercises offered on the Internet through such “brain gyms” often measure reflexes, perception, mental-processing speed and agility, analytical skills, concentration, visual recognition, memory capacity and vocabulary.
“I’m not injecting Botox into anyone,” says Janet Walsh, 48, founder of MemoryConcepts. “What we offer is a non-toxic way to keep your mind sharp.”
But you don’t have to know the difference between RAM and sheep to practice brain benders. From crosswords to Scrabble to playing cards, there is a host of low-tech methods designed to do the same thing as the computer programs.
In Decatur, Ga., for example, a course called “Memory at Emory” offers such methods, like memory-honing playing cards and written exercises.
Gloria Stuchlik, 36, says the course helped her and that she practices mental exercises often. She took the course because she felt a stronger memory would make her better at remembering faces, important in her job as sales manager for the Emory Conference Center.
“I wanted to get better at that, and I have,” she says. “You have to concentrate. You have to work at it.”
Or you can forget all of this and just revert to the lowest rung of “remembering.” Put a rubber band around your wrist. Slap Post-it Notes around the house or e-mail your own to-do reminders from home to work and back again (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
And, most important, you can stick your scribbled to-do lists in your pockets.
After all, you’ll remember them — days later at the dry cleaner.