Picture it—you’re ready to leave the house to get to an important appointment, and you can’t find your keys. Immediately, you think, “This is it. I’m developing dementia.” Because that’s what happens when we get older, right? Wrong! We don’t all get dementia. In fact, the numbers are much lower than you may realize. Estimates are that approximately 10%-12% of adults over the age of 60 will develop Alzheimer’s disease (the most common type of dementia). This is far from the universality we assume to be true. However, with the difficulty, strain, and fear we have around losing our mental faculties is real and it is intense. And understandably so. But rest assured that dementia is not an inevitable part of aging, nor is losing memory.
Here is what we do know about memory changes in older adulthood:
First, there is a bit of slowing. This slowing is natural, and not indicative of disease. Rather, it allows for more deliberate thought and decision making. It’s like trading off speed for accuracy. We’d all rather be precise and accurate than be fast.
Second, we may see some loss of some details about an event. We might forget the color or size of the dance floor at our niece’s wedding. But we will remember the wedding. Our memory system simply becomes more efficient with time and experience. So, we remember the important things and not the less important. By the time we’re older, we know what we need and what we don’t.
Third, we may have difficulties remembering the source of information. In most instances, we don’t need to know where we learned the information: the local newspaper or Time magazine? Probably not super important. The trouble might come in if we can’t remember if we took our medicine or if we’re remembering the mental image of us taking it when we think about doing it. What is the source? But this is easily fixable with the use of a pillbox. We can simply look in the box for the day we’re on and see if we have taken it or not. Easy peasy.
And finally, we may see decline in our prospective memory. This is when we need to remember to do something later, like stop at the grocery store for milk on our way home. However, this is not only a problem in older adulthood, but also a problem for those with busy lifestyles and the solution is simple: reminders. Sticky notes and phone alarms are wonderful tools that allow us to not forget the things we need to do later.
Notice how forgetting where we put our keys is not in the above descriptions. That’s because losing keys isn’t part of normative aging, nor is it part of dementia (a better indicator of dementia would be if you forgot the purpose of a key). Instead, forgetting where you put your keys is likely an attentional issue. You simply didn’t pay attention to where you put them when you put them there. If you don’t pay attention to it, you can’t remember it. It’s as simple as that.
So, next time you begin to panic that a small blip in memory function is the onset of dementia, remind yourself that it probably isn’t. Think about the other reasons you might have forgotten something, instead of jumping to the worst-case scenario.
Dr. Sara Margolin is a psychology and neuroscience professor at the State University of New York at Brockport. She has expertise in cognitive aging.
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