Forgetfulness can arise from stress, depression, lack of sleep or thyroid problems. Other causes include side effects from certain medicines, an unhealthy diet or not having enough fluids in your body (dehydration). Taking care of these underlying causes may help resolve your memory problems.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia and accounts for two thirds of dementia syndromes in people older than 65 years. Memory impairment, especially impairment of episodic memory, is one of the first symptoms of AD.
Memory and other thinking problems have many possible causes, including depression, an infection, or medication side effects. Sometimes, the problem can be treated, and cognition improves. Other times, the problem is a brain disorder, such as Alzheimer's disease, which cannot be reversed.
Difficulty in completing familiar tasks (e.g., cooking, cleaning, laundry, bill paying) Confusion with time or place (e.g., repeatedly forgetting where one lives (address, city, state), the date (year, month, day of week) Difficulty understanding visual images and spatial relationships.
What are the four types of forgetting? According to these psychological theories, the four types of forgetting are interference, decay, retrieval failure, and cue dependence.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Administration: The examiner reads a list of 5 words at a rate of one per second, giving the following instructions: “This is a memory test. I am going to read a list of words that you will have to remember now and later on. Listen carefully. When I am through, tell me as many words as you can remember.
The commonest type of forgetfulness occurs in the matter of posting letters. The author himself has forgotten to post his own letters many times.
1. Transience. This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten.
Forgetting a person's name or movie title
This is one of the most common experiences of memory retrieval failure. You're trying to come up with a word and most often a proper noun, such as a person's name or a movie title. You know you know this word, but you cannot retrieve it on demand.
Researchers have studied people being assessed for problems with their thinking and memory. Recent figures suggest that, of people going to a memory clinic with such symptoms, as many as one in four don't have dementia.
Common causes
“Stress and mood disturbances can act as a distraction and make it difficult to focus, which can lead to memory problems.” Medications – These can include but aren't limited to over-the-counter sleep aids, allergy medications, overactive bladder medications and pain medications (specifically narcotics).
Memory loss that disrupts daily life may be a symptom of Alzheimer's or other dementia. Alzheimer's is a brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills. There are 10 warning signs and symptoms. If you notice any of them, don't ignore them.
You have trouble following a conversation. You find it hard to make decisions, finish a task or follow instructions. You start to have trouble finding your way around places you know well. You begin to have poor judgment.
Age-related memory loss and dementia are very different conditions, though they may share some overlap in symptoms. However, normal forgetfulness is often caused by lack of focus and it never progresses into serious territory. Dementia, on the other hand, will get worse over time.
The five-minute cognitive test (FCT) was designed to capture deficits in five domains of cognitive abilities, including episodic memory, language fluency, time orientation, visuospatial function, and executive function.
Some of the more common triggers for dementia like a change in environment, having personal space invaded, or being emotionally overwhelmed may be easier to handle if you mentally practice your response before you react.
The Mini-Cog© is a fast and simple screening test to help detect dementia in its early stages. In just 3 minutes, Mini-Cog© can help doctors and other professional care providers identify possible cognitive impairment in older patients.