Stress and Memory
Don't "stress out" about it, but stress can cause memory loss. A recent study, by Dr. Sonia Lupien at McGill University, showed that children living under stressfull conditions did not perform as well as children in less stressfull situations. Similar findings showed that people of all ages are sensitive to stress and it shows up most dramatically in memory performance.
The culprit is cortisol, a steroid produced by the adrenal glands. Under stress, it causes blood sugar to rise so the brain has more energy-giving glucose. It also regulates blood pressure, cardiovascular function, and the processing of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. This is good for dealing with genuine danger. But chronic stress can cause a continual release of cortisol damaging brain function. In older adults it can actually result in a shrunken hippocampus which is the part of the brain that remembers.
So relax and live longer and better.
I can offer some advice on how to do that in another article but the short answer is to keep a sense of humor.
Memory Testing with Words
The following article is Just a reminder of how simple this process really is. I am sure the 15 word test works pretty well. But for general use I have a few problems with it. First of all, verbal recall varies tremendously with different people and with different degrees of ability in the selected language. But the real issue I have is in the way these tests have to be administered, The average person simply does not like being asked to remember 15 words and having someone else write down the results. A visit to the doctor tends to be stressful anyway.
Computer based tests (such as ours:
MemoryMigrations) can be done in privacy when you are relaxed. The results are more accurate and more consistent.
But here is the article:
Memory test may predict Alzheimer's
It might indicate likelihood of disease a decade in advance
By OLIVER MOORE
THE (TORONTO) GLOBE AND MAIL
Simple memory tests can indicate up to a decade in advance which seniors are likely to get Alzheimer's disease, researchers have found.
Performance on one of these tests -- which involved trying to memorize a list of 15 words and repeat back as many as possible after a short delay -- was found to be closely linked to later incidence of the brain-destroying disease.
A normal recall for those ages 60 to 75 would be 10 or 11 words, said Mary Tierney, director of geriatric research at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Center and lead researcher of the study. Acceptable recall for those over 75 might be in the range of eight or nine words.
Since age and education are factored into the equation, Tierney could not give a precise point at which the numbers become worrisome. But she said much lower results, in the range of four words, could be a sign of problems to come.
Keeping Track
I am very interested in seeing how I score on a test in comparison to some other person. And I am a bit disappointed to find I have not done as well, as happens often. People are like this. It's part of living in a competitive world. Or is it just me?
We do offer a gauge on the site to show relative levels of performance so users can get some indication of their relative performance. But, performance relative to others is less important than performance relative to our own previous performance. The idea of long term memory testing is to develop a baseline for comparison with your own future tests.
This raises a number of much more interesting issues. The most immediate concerns the "baseline of performance". What if my scores vary from test to test by a significant margin, how can I find a baseline? Some of this variation comes from the learning effect. As you learn a given test your results tend to improve. But that’s just part of it. A good deal of the changes you see in performance comes from your own mental condition when you take the test. If you are tired or depressed, you do poorly, as do most people. The test measures this along with its target trait - memory.
Another source of variability has to do with the design of the tests. As you may have noticed, each time you take one of our tests, it is different - sometimes very different. This can have an effect on your score for better or worse. So why don't we just make all the tests exactly the same? Two reasons: 1. you would learn the test after a few repetitions and, 2. you would be horribly bored. If you are bored, you lose motivation and that, in itself, can lead to variation in results.
We have used scoring systems within each test that help to stabilize your results over time, particularly as you take the tests and learn how they work.
One final issue - really a topic for another entry - has to do with changing the tests. If we make a change to, say, Test 3, what happens to the test results from the previous version? A member might ask "How can I compare my results today with a previous version of the test, if you keep changing the test." Our response is quite simple: while we will make minor improvements to the tests, we will not change them. This is a long term committment to our members.
MemoryMigrations
