“Don’t worry,” the experts say, “memory loss is a normal part of the aging process.” I’m supposed to find that comforting? Isn’t dying also a normal part of the aging process?
It’s getting to the point where I forget the meanings of ordinary words and I have to look them up in the watchimacallit. And it’s even making it difficult to communicate socially.
Recently a friend asked if I had a favorite movie. “Yes, I do,” I replied. “I don’t remember the title but it was a detective movie with my favorite actor in the lead. You know, he was in a lot of other movies with what’s-her-name, the blond actress who married the Oscar-winning director of the World War I film, or was it the World War II film? Why are you shaking your head like that? I answered your question.”
“Transience” is what they call the process of old memories being jettisoned to make room for new ones. Like our computers, our brains have limited memory banks and every little item has to be given a priority number. We probably remember the Mets’ first World Series win in 1969, but “What the heck is that spice my wife told me to buy at the supermarket today?”
There has been a possible breakthrough in this area of cognitive psychology called “Doorway Amnesia”. Notre Dame scientists have given it a more exact definition. We used to think when we left the living room to get something in the kitchen and forgot what it was when we got there, it was merely a matter of short term absentmindedness.
Notre Dame researchers think the doorway itself might be the culprit since it’s the entrance to another venue which tends to delete older information in our brains to make room for what happens in this new place. Subjects in their experiments tended to remember missions after walking the measured distance unless they passed through a doorway on the way.
Should we start eliminating doorways in our homes? And what about in the Pentagon, the Capitol, the Whitehouse ?
Imagine That 