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Archive for the ‘history of memory’ Category

I just read a fascinating article called “Brain Gain” in the most recent New Yorker.  At first blush, one might not connect the stories of college students (or professional poker-players) taking “neuro-enhancers” like Adderall for a cognitive boost with concerns over memory loss.  But raising for bar for “normal” cognition creates greater pressure and worry over “normal” age-related memory loss.  Peter Whitehouse has been talking about this link for years, particularly in his critique of the pharmaceutical industry.  And Carol Elliott’s Better than Well makes a similar point – that we find ourselves where people feel cheated if they are just “normal.”

“Brain Gain” author Margaret Talbot makes an explicit link to aging and memory function – deep in the article she mentions a 30-year old man who takes neuro-enhancers because he worried “he ‘didn’t have the mental energy, the endurance, the–I don’t know what to properly call this–the sponginess that I seem to recall having when I was younger.’”

He later makes the link directly when he talks about his wife, who is 9 years younger – “‘She’s twenty-one, and I want to stay young and vigorous and don’t want to be a burden on her later in life.’ He didn’t worry about visible signs of aging, but he wanted to keep his mind nimble and healthy for as long as possible.’” (41)

Will we soon all be taking Adderall?  Will this become such a universally accepted right (to be alert and cognitively focused) that neuro-enhancers will go over-the-counter?  Their common use in a generation defined with the label ADHD might point to a new normal of enhanced cognitive expectations just when the boomers head into normal, age-related memory loss.

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Today’s NYT’s article on the memory research at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn is the stuff of sci-fi-esque movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Looks like they can block some unpleasant memories in mice – like the memory of a particularly disgusting taste (wonder how they simulated that…) – some three months after it occured.  The concepts hold promise for better understanding how memories are formed and, hopefully, unformed, as in dementia. They remind us of the ethical issues at play in blocking memories.  But anyone suffering from PTSD will probably cheer at the possibility.

The odd thing about the article is that it is framed as a contest between artists and writers and scientists to find the meaning in human identity through memory.  At the start, the writer says that the artists and writers have been talking about this for centuries.  At the end, it seems, the scientists are poised to surge ahead.  It’s great to have the work of artists and writers identified – but really unneccessary to pit the two against each other…we continue to work hand in hand.  Or rather molecule in molecule.

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Jesse Ballenger has a fantastic article in Newsday today, which contextualizes the lived cultural experience of people with Alzheimer’s, and inviting more activism to insist on creating a valued place in culture for people with dementia.  Ballenger is the author of the incredibly detailed and rich history of senility in modern America, Self, Senility, and Alzheimer’s Disease in Modern America.

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I would love to read a good history of pharmaceuticals in this country. Just when did we become convinced that it is cheaper to medicate than to provide actual care or change behaviors? How is it that we arrive at the numbers that tell us this is so? And why do we believe them?

There’s a great article in today’s NYT’s Science section about the over-prescribing of anti-psychotic medications for people with dementia. The article mentions a tripling of the sales of the drugs, up to $12 billion in sales from 4 billion in 2000.  Sometimes, the anti-psychotics are the only thing that can relieve tremendous suffering.  But too often, they are prescribed to control behaviors that might be changed with improvements in care.  The author points out that just paying attention to people with dementia can improve their quality of life and behaviors.  Yet the suggestion is that improving care practices is too expensive. Would it really be more than 12 billion?

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The NYT’s Science Section featured an interesting article today about how memory loss associated with aging might actually be recast as a widening of the attention/focus to better synthesize information rather than focus on details. This, the article tells us, is another way to define wisdom.

Might this also be true of other “losses” associated with age? Of mobility? Of vision? Of hearing? Of visual “sex” appeal? Those are rhetorical questions…

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As the population ages, the marker of “normal” in memory loss will continue to shift. There are several books out now that address the worry over memory loss in all its manifestations – from seemingly benign to the significant losses in the dementia experience. The latest entry is coming out this month from Harmony Books, a division of Random House. Sue Halpern’s Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Frontlines of Memory Research is a personal journey through memory research. I’ll write more after I have a chance to read it, but for now, check out reviews and ordering info here.

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As I was strolling through old emails this afternoon, I came across this article that my husband sent to me…and that I forgot about…

We tend to think of memory as an etching on our brains, but this article steers us toward a much more fluid, living sense of memory.  Food for thought.

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“What is memory? Memory is a glorious and admirable gift of nature, by means of which we recall past things, embrace present things, and contemplate future things, thanks to their resemblance with past things.”

Boncompagno da Signa, in Rhetorica novissima (in Jacques Le Goff’s History and Memory, 1994)

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