Mark Gluck can remember the sounds of monkey chatter and bird calls from his trip along the Amazon River 20 years ago, but watch what happens when you take him to a party and introduce him around. After a while, he’ll be reintroducing himself to the same people.
“It’s very embarrassing,” Gluck says. “It’s even more embarrassing for me when I have to tell them that I study memory for a living.”
Gluck, 36, director of the Memory Disorders Project at Rutgers University’s Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, suffers from the same problem many other adults older than 30 worry about.
He forgets things.
Since he knows what he knows, he worries it could be a sign of something bad.
Not likely, most experts say.
The majority of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-draining disorders are 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
The key to remembering is paying attention, says Cynthia Green, director of the memory assessment and enhancement program at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. “The key to paying attention is awareness.”
Green spins a scenario: At breakfast, you’re feeding the baby and eating your own breakfast, watching the talk shows and reading the paper in between talking with your spouse. That evening your wife wonders what to serve to friends coming for dinner tomorrow and you say, “What?” She looks at you in frustration and says, “I told you this morning.”
“If you don’t pay attention to something, you can’t get it. And if you don’t get something, it’s not a memory problem. It’s an attention problem.”
That’s when a stop-look-listen-repeat drill can work. Accept the interruption and stop what you’re doing. Look at the speaker, listen to his or her message, then ask questions or repeat the information.
