Memory loss will surely happen as one gets old
When speaking of very old people, we often hear anecdotes
of how fuzzy someone’s great grandmother’s memory has become. To explain the scenario, we say something like. She gotten so old she can’t remember much of anything. Without question, we equate senility with old age. We even come to accept with resignation that we, ourselves, will eventually lose our memories.
Science disproves this notion. Memory loss is not normal condition even in old age. However, there are noticeable changes in how brains process information as we grow older. A paper on aging published by the Oregon State University in the United States claims that our ability to recall recent information is affected as we age. It made this analogy: The brain is like a library. A younger library has fewer books and it is easy to locate one particular book in it. An older library, on the other hand, has a much larger collection and it will just take more time to do the same task.
However, when a book that supposed to be there cannot be located anymore, the condition becomes abnormal and is called
dementia. Aging does not cause dementia but the following does: brain injuries, diseases (Alzheimer’s, multi-infarct dementia, etc.), alcohol abuse, poor nutrition, high fever, anxiety, stress, and grief. Some causes of dementia are reversible, and memory can often be enhanced with various medical techniques.