People often forget as they get older due to the challenges in the neurological processes that retrieve memories. The brain of older adults saves more space for knowledge honed over their lifetime and clusters of memories impede how their minds navigate and access a specific memory.
Brain Retrieves Irrelevant Memories in Older Adults
A new study suggests that older people may experience difficulties suppressing irrelevant pieces when trying to access an exact memory.
Searching for a specific memory tends to be challenging as one age because the brain retrieves unimportant and unnecessary memories instead.
Scholars from Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Toronto joined together for the research. Part of the investigation included the analysis of several neuroimaging and behavioral data.
According to the authors, older adults have a greater knowledge of many aspects of the world. However, they have poorer performance in terms of episodic memory under controlled conditions compared to young adults.
The paper shows that there is a potential explanation behind this contradiction. According to a report by DailyMail, the problem could be categorized based on the cluttered/enriched memory representation in older adults.
The cluttered or rich representations of the age group are most likely the factors that push them to activate an excessive amount of information.
Memory Retrieval Harder as People Gets Old
The hindrance of the collective memories could slow down and make it harder for the brain to get targetted information. It may also impact episodic as well as working tasks negatively.
The neurological aspect can often make older adults struggle during memory retrieval. However, the authors mentioned that the challenge could also benefit their decision-making and creativity. Older adults show a more preserved and enhanced creativity as a function of enriched memory.
Prior knowledge can also be credited as an advantage to carry out decision-making, in which they often get their accumulated wisdom.
Further research is needed for a more accurate perspective of the findings. In the future, scientists will aim at how exactly memory works in the brains of older adults. The authors hope to find novel approaches to support the age group who experiences crowded memory scapes using the collected information from their study.
The experts noted that increased binding and encodings in the neurological functions in older adults could possibly work to improve their memory and learning.
Corresponding investigations in the future could also identify how positive and negative outcomes of cluttered/enriched memory representation work together to impact the functional behavior of older adults in their everyday life.
The study was published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, titled "Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in old age."
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