While the scientists focus primarily on the troubles that these cluttered memories may pose, they also highlight a couple of situations in which these crowded memoryscapes may be useful. “Evidence recommends that older adults show maintained, and sometimes boosted, creativity as a function of enriched memories,” the researchers compose. They even more hypothesize that older grownups may be well served by their prior knowledge when it concerns decision-making, where they can pull on their built up knowledge.
With continued research study and increased understanding of how memory operates in older grownups, researchers are enthusiastic that they might have the ability to find new methods to help them. They write, “It is possible that the increased binding and richer encodings of older adults can even be leveraged to improve older adults knowing and memory.”
Reference: “Cluttered memory representations shape cognition in aging” by Amer, 11 February 2022, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.DOI: 10.1016/ j.tics.2021.12.002.
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
By Cell Press
February 11, 2022
When a person tries to access a memory, their brain rapidly sifts through everything stored in it to discover the pertinent info. As we age, many of us have difficulty retrieving memories. In a review publishing in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences today (February 11, 2022), scientists propose a description for why this may be happening: the brains of older adults assign more space to built up knowledge and have more product to navigate when attempting to access memories. While this wealth of anticipation can make memory retrieval difficult, the researchers state it has its benefits– this life experience can help with imagination and decision-making.
Scientist Tarek Amer of Columbia University and Harvard University, Jordana Wynn of Harvard University, and Lynn Hasher of the University of Toronto looked at numerous behavioral and neuroimaging studies, which show that older adults have problem suppressing information that is no longer relevant which when looking for a specific memory, they typically recover other, irrelevant memories in addition to it. The research studies likewise showed that when given a cognitive job, older adults rely more greatly on previous knowledge than younger grownups do.
