Memory and Aging: An Overview

Deepsha Rani^*
*Correspondence: Deepsha Rani, Department of Biotechnology, Khallikote University, Odisha, India, Email:

Commentary

Memory loss linked with kinds of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease is qualitatively distinct from age-related memory loss, which is frequently referred to as "normal ageing" (sometimes called "ageing" in British English). It is thought to be caused by a separate brain mechanism. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition that causes people to have greater memory problems than the normal person their age. These symptoms, on the other hand, do not prohibit patients from going about their daily lives and are not as severe as those associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Misplacing stuff, forgetting events or appointments, and having difficulties finding words are all common symptoms. MCI is thought to be a transitory state between normal ageing cognitive changes and Alzheimer's disease, according to new study. Several studies have found that people with MCI have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, ranging from one percent to twenty-five percent per year; in one study, twenty-four percent of MCI patients progressed to AD in two years and twenty percent more in three years, while in another study, MCI subjects progressed to AD at a rate of fifty-five percent in four and a half years.

Deterioration in diverse memory abilities in numerous cognitive tasks is connected with normal ageing; this phenomenon is known as age-related memory impairment (AMI) or age-associated memory impairment (AAMI). Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies demonstrate a decline in the ability to encode new memories of events or information, as well as working memory. Studies evaluating the effects of ageing on episodic memory, semantic memory, short-term memory, and priming have discovered that episodic memory is particularly harmed in normal ageing, as are several types of shortterm memory. Deficits in the ability to refresh recently processed information may be linked to the deficits.

One type of episodic memory that deteriorates with age is source information; this type of knowledge includes where and when the person obtained the information. Knowing the source and context of information is critical in daily decision-making; therefore memory loss can have a significant impact on the lives of the elderly. As a result, one way to use their knowledge of the sources when making judgments is to rely on political stereotypes, and the use of metacognitive knowledge becomes more important. This deficiency could be linked to a decrease in the ability to link information in memory during encoding and recall those connections later. Networks linking the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes promote episodic memory. While the effects of grey matter lesions have been thoroughly researched, less is known about the connective fiber tracts in the lobes, which are thought to enable diverse components of memory. Deterioration of white matter structure has emerged as a significant general component in ageing, drawing even more attention to the vital white matter connections.

Many people, young and old, are affected by exercise. If exercise is introduced to children at a young age, it can become a positive habit that can be carried over into adulthood. When the brain is exercised in the elderly, especially those with Alzheimer's or other memory-related conditions, the hippocampus is likely to preserve its size and improve memory. It's also likely that a person's years of education and the quantity of attention they received as a youngster is a factor in the aging-memory connection. There is a link between early childhood schooling and later-life memory gains. This effect is more pronounced in women.

Associative learning, which is another type of episodic memory, has been shown to be vulnerable to the effects of ageing across a variety of study settings. The Associative Deficit Hypothesis (ADH) explains this by stating that ageing is linked to a deficit in generating and recovering associations between single units of information. This can include information about the environment, events, or objects. The senior population's ability to connect bits of knowledge with their episodic context in a coherent whole has deteriorated. Furthermore, older persons' free recall performances featured temporal contiguity to a smaller amount than younger adults', showing that temporal contiguity relationships weaken with age.

There are several theories as to why older people use less effective encoding and retrieval processes as they get older. The first is the "disuse" viewpoint, which claims that as people age, they use less memory methods as they move away from the educational system. The second hypothesis is the "diminished attentional capacity" hypothesis, which states that due to lower attentional ability, older persons participate in less self-initiated encoding. The third factor is "memory self-efficacy," which implies that older persons lack confidence in their own memory abilities, resulting in poor outcomes. Those with Alzheimer's disease and patients with semantic dementia are both known to struggle with picture naming and category fluency tasks. Damage to their semantic network, which holds knowledge of meanings and understandings, is linked to this.

The majority of memory research on ageing has focused on how older adults perform worse on a specific memory task. However, researchers have observed that merely stating that older persons do the same thing as younger adults, but in smaller quantities, is not necessarily correct. In some circumstances, older persons appear to employ methods that are distinct from those employed by younger adults. For example, brain imaging studies have showed that older persons are more likely than younger adults to employ both hemispheres when performing memory tasks. Furthermore, when recalling information, older persons sometimes show a positive effect, which appears to be a function of the increased focus on emotion regulation that comes with age. Eye tracking, for example, revealed that older persons preferred to look at cheerful faces rather than sad faces [1-7].

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