Causes of memory impairment after 40 years. Bad memory

Smirnova Olga Leonidovna

Neurologist, education: First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov. Work experience 20 years.

Articles written

Memory problems in young people have different causes. The process of deterioration in the ability to remember develops gradually. Therefore, if a violation is detected in time, further development of the pathology can be avoided.

Thanks to memory, a person accumulates and stores his life experience. It happens. In the first case, a person quickly assimilates information, but retains it for a short period. With long-term memory, remembering material is not easy, but the data remains in memory for many years. People use different types of memory. Each person has a different memory threshold. Therefore, it is impossible to clearly define the norms in order to understand whether memory has deteriorated or not.

Why is it getting worse?

Most often the problem is related to:

1. Stress, depression, anxiety. If a person is overexcited or melancholic, he does not pay attention to the world around him. He is only concerned with those stimuli that put him in such a state. Therefore, forgetfulness is a common phenomenon in such cases.
2. Lack of sleep, chronic fatigue. In order for the brain to remember information better and longer, it needs sleep. Lack of sleep negatively affects the functioning of the organ. People suffering from chronic fatigue have difficulty concentrating on individual details.
3. Bad habits. At a young age, many drink alcohol, take drugs, and start smoking. All this negatively affects memory.
4. Disadvantage. This problem is especially observed in the winter season, when there is a shortage of fruits and vegetables. This impairs memory. Therefore, you should resort to vitamin complexes in case of vitamin deficiency, and also adjust your diet.
5. Information overload. This is a current phenomenon. The Internet, radio and television provide people with new information constantly. If you reduce or filter the facts entering your brain, you can reduce the load and avoid memory problems.
6. Lack of oxygen. The brain needs walks in the fresh air. Therefore, people who live in big cities are recommended to periodically go out into nature.

Often, in order to normalize memory, it is enough to eliminate the influence of these factors. It is useful to perform exercises for its development.

According to research, everyday episodes of forgetfulness are common among people between 18 and 35 years old. Most often this is due to an unhealthy lifestyle.

If forgetfulness is observed, it is important to pay attention to your lifestyle and determine what factors caused the disturbance. With a sedentary lifestyle, insufficient brain activity, chronic lack of sleep and poor diet, brain function worsens.

Memory problems in young people also arise due to various diseases. There are several hundred pathologies that have similar manifestations. This symptom is observed in schizophrenia, bipolar personality disorder, depression and anxiety.

Memory deteriorates:

• in the presence of malignant tumors;
• with multiple sclerosis;
• with pathologies of the thyroid gland;
• for tuberculosis;
• with Lyme disease;
• if there is not enough fluid in the body;
• with prolonged stress and depression;
• during infectious processes in the brain.

In order to detect these diseases in time and carry out treatment, it is necessary to visit a doctor at the first manifestations of the disease, especially if memory is increasingly deteriorating and the condition does not normalize.

What to do

If memory problems appear at a young age, then the first step is to determine the cause of this condition. Appropriate treatment will be needed, since as the disease progresses, a person will cease to be a full-fledged member of society. But you cannot choose your own medicine, since all drugs have contraindications. The type of medication, dosage and course duration should be determined by the doctor.

They continue to develop and implement new methods to combat poor memory.

If the patient does not remember and reproduces the phrases out loud, then the doctor teaches him to mentally imagine images of the phrases and memorize the text material. This is a long and difficult version of working on yourself, but it gives good results.

To support memory in the initial stages of development of disorders, they resort to. They contain components that affect the brain, improving the ability to concentrate and restoring memory. Such drugs are used to dilate blood vessels in the brain for all types of memory disorders.

If, after determining why memory deteriorates at a young age, no significant health problems were found, then forgetfulness will be easy to deal with.

Observations show that those people who often suffer from a bad mood experience memory deterioration faster, so doctors advise remaining optimistic.

An excellent option for improving blood flow in the vessels of the brain is physical activity. Thanks to sports, you get rid of tension and normalize cell nutrition.

When eating meat, it is better to give preference to beef, turkey, and offal. They contain a large amount of iron. This element is found in vegetables, fruits and seafood. Therefore, if you consume them in reasonable doses, many health problems will not arise. Sea fish and natural oils must be present in the diet. But there are some carbohydrates to watch out for. Thanks to potatoes, black bread, durum pasta, the brain is saturated with energy. But with the help of cakes, white pastries and sweets, memory cannot be improved.

It is important that groups B enter the body.

If you are concerned about very poor memory at 30 years of age or younger, then it is useful:

1. When receiving new information, you should delve deeply into it so that it is better imprinted in your memory.
2. Connect the received data with known images, events, objects. It is useful to put information into the form of a poem. While searching for a rhyme, the brain will be trained.
3. When going to bed, carefully analyze every detail of the past day.

Gradually, such training will bring good results.

If the first manifestations of memory deterioration appear, then you need to visit a neurologist, neuropsychologist or psychotherapist. They will conduct an inspection and prescribe appropriate tests to determine the cause of the violations.

You can also take action yourself. It is known that problems with memorization are observed if a person does not pay due attention to the information being conveyed, remembers it fleetingly or does not take it seriously. To eliminate this syndrome, you need to constantly work on yourself and train your brain, concentrate on certain details, write down events, keep a diary and do mental calculations.

If the examination shows the presence of pathological processes, then therapy is carried out in accordance with the diagnosis. The prognosis is made depending on the stage of development of the disease and the characteristics of the body.

Prevention measures

To avoid problems in youth, you should:

• give up alcoholic beverages, drugs and smoking;
• create a balanced diet;
• get enough sleep;
• control the level of physical activity;
• develop your brain through various exercises.

Hello, dear friends! Lately, I often hear different people complaining about bad memory, so I propose today to talk about memory problems, especially since forgetfulness and absent-mindedness visit each of us from time to time.

I am sure that there is not a single person who has not forgotten something at least once in his life, be it taking the keys to the house or buying the necessary products in the supermarket. How many times have you rummaged around looking for an object that was actually lying in plain sight? It would seem that these are all little things unworthy of attention, but in some situations, memory impairment can warn of emerging health problems.

The simplest causes of poor memory, which are easy to get rid of, are spring vitamin deficiency and fatigue from lack of sleep. We took a vitamin complex, got a good night's sleep and my memory noticeably improves. It is much more dangerous when this symptom indicates serious diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis or even a brain tumor. Of course, poor memory is not the only symptom of such diseases; all symptoms must be considered together. Having identified the problem, it is much easier to take preventive measures. So:

1. Stress and vitamin deficiency. Along with absent-mindedness, you experience a feeling, your performance decreases and problems with sleep appear, your vision deteriorates, your hair becomes dry, and your skin becomes problematic. All these symptoms indicate a lack of vitamins or stress. In this case, memory deteriorates slightly due to increased stress or vitamin deficiency.

You might be surprised, even dieting can worsen your memory! An unbalanced diet leads to disruption of the supply of nutrients to the body, especially carbohydrates. It is the deficiency of carbohydrates that leads to memory problems.

What to do? If you are experiencing increased stress, make sure that your nutrition is correct and your rest is adequate. Take a break from what you're doing and start taking care of your health. Take a fasting day for yourself - mentally and physically, change the environment.

Take vitamins, it is especially important to do this in the spring and during times of increased mental stress. Vitamins B6 and B12, as well as E and C are very important for brain function. It is also worth adding (vitamin B9), nicotinic acid (vitamin B3 or PP) and iron. An excellent solution would be to take a complex containing all these substances in the right proportion.

1. Reasons for memory impairment include: injuries. In almost all cases of traumatic brain injury, memory problems occur. Moreover, a person can forget not only the moment when and how the injury occurred, but also everything that preceded it, as well as the events after it. In addition to such amnesia, hallucinations may appear, as well as memories that are created by the person himself. That is, a person remembers events and actions that actually did not happen.

1. It is also worth mentioning that memory deterioration occurs in everyone who abuses alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and is also addicted to medications (especially sedatives and tranquilizers).

1. Circulatory disorders. If your forgetfulness is accompanied by pain in the eyes, swelling of the legs, frequent headaches, numbness in the limbs, dizziness and nausea, then you have problems with blood circulation. The brain receives insufficient oxygen, which leads to deterioration in the functioning of blood vessels and organs; some parts of them may simply stop functioning. The most dangerous changes occur during a stroke.

What to do? If you have several of the described symptoms at once, it is time to consult with doctors such as a neurologist and cardiologist. If everything is not so serious, you can improve your blood circulation on your own by adding vegetables and grains to your diet (they are rich in fiber), increasing physical activity (swimming and walking in the fresh air are especially good, daily morning exercises are also an excellent habit) , vitamins C and E and regular massage will also help you.

1. Thyroid problems. Often, with diseases of the thyroid gland, in addition to absent-mindedness and poor memory, drowsiness, a feeling of constant fatigue and muscle weakness, swelling, as well as constant changes in mood from irritability to depression are added. In addition to all this, eyebrows may thin, nails become brittle, and the skin becomes pale and dry. And in addition to the malfunction of the thyroid gland, you may be told by a loss of appetite when you gain extra pounds.

Most often, hormonal problems occur in women after 50 years of age. You should not be careless about endocrine diseases and let them take their course; they can cause serious disruption in the functioning of the entire body.

What to do? It is quite difficult to prevent failure of the hormonal system, but it is necessary to treat such problems, whether it is an excess of hormone production or, conversely, a decrease. First of all, adjust your diet and pay more attention to foods containing iodine: seafood (fish and seaweed), nuts, persimmons, hard cheese, dairy products. And if you suspect a malfunction of the thyroid gland, you need to contact a specialist such as an endocrinologist. The treatment that is recommended for you will depend on the nature of your specific problem.

1. Multiple sclerosis– this disease is a more serious problem in which there is a symptom of memory impairment. At the initial stage of the disease, emotional problems occur, which include apathy and depression. Other symptoms of sclerosis:

• vision problems (beginning to double vision, blurred vision or loss of color),
• appear at night,
• problems arise with coordination of movements (balance is lost, handwriting changes, dizziness begins),
• problems with urination are common,
• Sensitivity is impaired (goosebumps appear on the skin or a feeling of “cotton” legs appears, the skin tightens, itching or burning appears on it, a tingling and numbness sensation is possible).

The problem is that when the disease is at an early stage, the symptoms will not be obvious and can be mistaken for other diseases. In addition to this, such signs “flicker” - they either disappear or reappear.

In everyday life, sclerosis is often associated with simple forgetfulness, but this disease is much more serious. It leads to the death of nerves, and serious changes occur in the body that can lead to disability.

What to do? It is important to notice the problem while it is in the early stages, which will prevent it from progressing. It is worth paying more attention to the appearance of the described symptoms, especially if they were preceded by memory deterioration. A timely visit to a neurologist will help stop the progression of the disease.

1. Age-related changes. Older people often complain of loss of short-term memory: they perfectly remember events that happened many years ago, but forget what they just heard. In addition to this symptom, there are other symptoms characteristic of older people, as well as patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease:

• apathy,
• feeling of lethargy
• the person becomes impulsive, demanding, picky and selfish,
• his circle of interests is narrowed and there is no self-criticism,
• orientation in the surrounding space and time is lost,
• The ability for self-care is lost, the person perceives himself as a small child.

As you understand, if this disease is not treated, a person can lose a sense of reality and become completely helpless.

What to do? It is in your best interest to do everything you can to prevent age-related memory loss and dementia. You need to train your brain, learn and master something new all the time: start learning a foreign language, count in your head, do crosswords, put together puzzles or solve riddles.

Train your memory. In addition to the actions that I have already recommended to you, you can try a selection of things that will also help improve and strengthen your memory:

• perform your usual actions only with your eyes closed, or, if you are right-handed, try to do everything with your left hand, at least simple actions: combing your hair, brushing your teeth;
• start being interested in things you weren’t interested in before - read articles on topics that are new to you;
• take up handicrafts or master a new type of handicraft;
• when working at a computer, learn to type text “touch” and with ten fingers;
• visit new places, meet new people.

If you notice memory deterioration, this is an alarming symptom, do not brush it off. It is worth contacting a specialist to detect emerging problems in the early stages. In this case, you will be able to not only preserve a good memory, but also your health for many years.

The idea that poor memory is the lot of older people is nothing more than a myth. It turns out that forgetfulness is justified at both 25 and 40 years old. What are the causes of absent-mindedness? How to develop the ability to store information? We'll tell you why we forget keys in doors and give 6 tips on how to boost your memory.

Poor memory is not always bad

American scientists Paul Frankland and Blake Richards Ravel, studying the memory of animals and people, came to an interesting discovery. It turns out that the better a person’s memory is developed, the harder it is for him to make decisions and give unambiguous answers. The fact is that such people remember all the pros and cons and are constantly weighing little things and comparing facts.

Scientists summed up: it’s good when the brain forgets unnecessary information and focuses on important things. As it turned out, it is better to store “technical” information in gadgets, and leave room in your head for pleasant memories.

Accordingly, those who forget unnecessary details find it easier to adapt to a new environment and adapt to unexpected conditions.

Bad memory: what to do

Find out the reasons

There are several reasons for forgetfulness. It is advisable to find “yours,” the one that interferes with organization, and eliminate it.

• Rush. If we don’t have time to somewhere, the brain works in the “faster, faster” mode. The turmoil leads to the fact that the wallet is left at home, the keys are in the door, and yesterday’s task from the boss is unfulfilled. What to do in such a situation? Never rush, concentrate on what is most important.

• Chronic lack of sleep, overwork. Many people live in work mode 24/7. I want to be successful, develop, meet friends, do everything. And, as always, there is not enough time... Then we steal several hours of the night. This is fundamentally wrong, because at night the body must rest and recover. If you only managed to take a nap for a couple of hours, you shouldn’t hope that the report will be read successfully without a sheet of paper.

• Bad habits. Smoking, alcohol abuse and other bad habits affect short-term memory. So, leaving the hotel and lighting a cigarette, the likelihood of forgetting the way to a new place to stay for the night increases.

• Stress and anxiety. A tense mental state is characterized by a certain fixation. A person wants to remember, but cannot, because all the body’s energy is spent on experiencing negative emotions, fighting depression or conflicts.

Consult a doctor

It is advisable to talk to your doctor about any deterioration in your health. Subspecialty specialists will give specific recommendations and offer various types of examinations to determine whether a person needs drug intervention or not. It is not advisable to buy vitamins or other dietary supplements on your own.

Use folk remedies

It is difficult to say whether it is possible to solve memory problems using traditional methods. But some will definitely not get worse. An exhausted body always needs recharging. Herbalists advise drinking an infusion of sage or mint leaves, apple and freshly squeezed grapefruit juices. Healing properties are attributed to blueberries, recommending consuming the berry in any form. It also improves vision.

Be positive

If you realize that you have memory problems, you should not be upset under any circumstances. In fact, everyone has them. But only those who have a positive attitude, allow self-irony, and are ready to work on themselves can overcome their shortcomings.

Take a comprehensive approach to the solution

To overcome forgetfulness, exercise is not enough. If the diet does not contain the necessary microelements, sleep does not exceed five hours a day, and there is no routine, it will be difficult to change anything.

When the brain is under constant stress, it is not ready to perceive information. Its activities can be adjusted only in a calm and measured rhythm of life. You also need to eliminate smoking, alcohol and other bad habits.

Engage in memory restoration

There are many programs, techniques and techniques to improve your memory skills. Of course, you won’t be able to acquire phenomenal abilities, but you can achieve results. You should choose exercises based on individual perception characteristics - visual, auditory, sensory, and so on. That is, for some it is easier to record data by linking them associatively, for others it is necessary to write it down, for others it is necessary to speak it out.

A gadget can also help - there are many interesting programs specifically designed for those who want to improve attention by eliminating memory problems.

Memory problems at different ages: what they owe

20 years

By the age of 25, our brain works at its most productive. Its weight reaches a maximum of about 1.4 kg.

It’s easier for twenty-five-year-olds to remember and then retain names, phone numbers, and complex formulas in their heads. Statistics say that one in seven young people complains of poor memory. Psychologists name the reasons: the desire to do everything at once, the simultaneous use of several gadgets - the hippocampus, the brain region in which fresh memories are formed, “does not turn on.” Using a tablet, computer and phone at the same time leads us to distraction.

30 years

At this age, the cause of poor memory is the loss of synoptic connections between neurons. Every 10 years our brain decreases in size by 2%. Now it will take longer to learn a foreign language or master a new craft.

Many thirty-year-old women become mothers and experience the effect of the phenomenon of “pregnant encephalopathy.” Its essence lies in the sharp “stupidity” of an active modern woman. The phenomenon is temporary, as it is based on a hormonal storm. Bratford scientists compared how pregnant women and women in normal conditions remember. The first ones showed obvious memory problems. They continued for another 3 months after birth, and then went away on their own.

40 years

If we forget our credit card PIN code at the age of 40, we shouldn’t be upset – this is normal.

An interesting study was conducted at the Mayo Clinic in America. About 1,200 participants aged from 30 to 95 took it. It turns out that memory begins to weaken at the age of forty. If you do not train your ability to remember, neural connections will actively weaken until the age of 65, and after that it will become even more difficult to retrieve information.

50 years

By the age of fifty, the prefrontal cortex, where the necessary information is stored, changes. As a result, the person does not remember why he went to the kitchen or when his youngest grandson’s birthday is. At the same time, he can participate in intellectual competitions, remember quotes, interesting facts.

It has been proven that men reach their peak ability to retrieve information from memory by age 55. Women - by 60, which is associated with menopause.

60 years

Now it becomes difficult to remember the right name or restore the chronological sequence of events in your own life. The reason for absent-mindedness lies in the loss of communication between different areas of the brain. The information remains, but finding it and connecting it is becoming more difficult.

Don't worry, poor memory at 60 is not a deviation, but rather a pattern. The main thing is that the interlocutors do not interrupt. The more we are distracted, the harder it is to remember anything.

A study was conducted at the University of California, as a result of which a pattern was established: older people find it difficult not to react to distractions. Therefore, the logical chain of their narrative is often lost.

70 years old

Of the 10 words they just read, most 70-year-olds can only repeat half, while 25-year-olds usually reproduce 9.

According to London psychology professor Martin Conway, bad memory can be hidden by acquired experience or acquired knowledge. Only special tests can determine the level of forgetfulness. It has been proven that visual perception of reality deteriorates by 30%, so in a new area it is better to trust your navigator. Interestingly, at 70 years old it is much easier to remember the events of youth than what was eaten for breakfast yesterday.

80 years old

At this age, almost everyone has memory problems, but the Alzheimer's Society is reassuring - only one in 6 people suffer from dementia.

You rarely meet a person who does not claim that he has a bad memory. But not many people are ready to change their lifestyle in order to improve it. There are reasons for being absent-minded. If you're tired of forgetfulness, it's time to change your lifestyle and train your brain. And if not, reassure yourself with research results: memory problems are not always a bad thing.

Memory is one of the most important mental functions of a person, necessary for the accumulation, reproduction and use of received information in everyday activities. Memory loss or dysmnesia can occur under a variety of circumstances. More often, the disorder occurs in older people due to age-related changes and diseases, but it also manifests itself at a young age, usually in conjunction with a deterioration in concentration. Since such a condition significantly worsens the quality of life and interferes with a person’s normal adaptation in society, if you notice signs of a memory disorder, you must consult a doctor so that he can determine the exact cause of the disorders and prescribe appropriate treatment.

Provoking factors

Functional memory disorder and, as a consequence, deterioration in attention function can be caused by many unfavorable factors that at first glance seem insignificant. The most common causes of dysmnesia in elderly and young people are the following:

• age-related changes;
• damage to the brain and deterioration of blood circulation in it due to strokes, traumatic brain injuries, cancer, atherosclerosis;
• Alzheimer's disease;
• bacterial and viral damage to the brain (meningitis, encephalitis);
• diseases of other organs of the human body;
• inadequate use of sedative medications, drug addiction;
• unhealthy lifestyle in general with nicotine and alcohol addiction, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity;
• psychological reasons associated with stress, lack of sleep, mental fatigue;
• hormonal imbalance;
• diabetes mellitus, thyroid pathology.

Functional memory loss should not be confused with elementary forgetfulness, which can be characteristic of many absolutely healthy people. Drugs for the treatment of dysmnesia should be prescribed by a doctor based on the cause of the memory disorder.

A person has different forms of memory and a specific part of the brain is responsible for each of them. So, for example, the temporal lobes are responsible for auditory and speech perception, the left hemisphere for objects and letters, the right hemisphere for color, the occipital-parietal regions for spatial and visual, etc. Accordingly, if a specific part of the brain is damaged, one or another type of memory may suffer.

Signs

If a person has forgotten someone’s phone number or date of birth, this does not indicate pathology, since human memory is selective and some things are simply not remembered. From a medical point of view, pathological memory impairment is indicated by symptoms in which a person cannot remember very recent events,
but he talks in detail about what happened to him several months or years ago. Also alarming signs are that the individual cannot consolidate and reproduce the information that he receives at the current moment in time. In this case, a violation of concentration usually occurs.

In older people, a sharp deterioration in memory, accompanied by the loss of entire time periods, is also not normal. And although the ability to remember and reproduce information may decrease with age, sharp, progressive dysmnesia may indicate the onset of Alzheimer's disease, which usually has other characteristic symptoms. It is worth noting that modern pharmacological drugs can support the brain’s ability to remember information and reproduce it, but the disease itself, unfortunately, remains incurable.

Diagnostics

To identify the cause of memory and attention deterioration, you need to consult a doctor who will collect a detailed history and individually prescribe the necessary tests:

• magnetic resonance and computed tomography of the brain;
• study of cerebral vessels;
• ultrasound examination of internal organs;
• hormonal and biochemical blood tests;
• electrocardiogram;
• study of memory function using special tests and techniques to identify signs of its deterioration, etc.

Therapy

Treatment should begin with identifying and eliminating the factor contributing to memory loss. Any therapeutic methods and medications should be prescribed exclusively by the attending physician.

In addition to drug correction, dysmnesia is treated with physiotherapy, in particular electrophoresis or the administration of glutamic acid. Treatment is also carried out using specially developed psychological and pedagogical techniques. The specialist works with the patient, during which he learns to re-memorize incoming information using unaffected areas of the brain; a method can also be used in which the patient mentally reproduces images of heard phrases, remembering them. This technique, aimed at improving memory and attention, requires full commitment from the patient, but by bringing the process to automaticity, you can notice significant improvements.

Medication correction

Drug treatment for memory loss in old and young adults usually includes drugs that are aimed at improving thinking processes and concentration. As a rule, the doctor prescribes medications from the group of nootropics, containing amino acids necessary for a person, affecting neurons in the cerebral cortex, stimulating the restoration of memory and attention functions. Classic-type nootropics are usually prescribed to people after strokes and other cerebral circulatory disorders, as well as to those patients who experience physical and mental stress.

Also, during drug correction, energy metabolism substrate drugs can be prescribed, which provide nerve cells with the energy they need, and some herbal medicines that indirectly stimulate the metabolism of nerve cells.

Exercises

In addition to medication and physiotherapeutic treatment, experts recommend performing a special set of exercises to train memory and attention. This can be any board games, be it chess or checkers, memorizing poems and excerpts from various prose, solving scanword puzzles, crosswords, puzzles, learning foreign languages, reading articles and educational literature on previously uninteresting topics, etc. You can also try to perform your usual daily activities with your eyes closed as a training exercise.

There is also a special technique called mnemonics, aimed at facilitating the memorization of necessary information by the method of forming associative connections. Abstract concepts are replaced by those concepts that can be visualized or represented kinetically or auditorily.

Folk remedies

Since memory loss is often a consequence of circulatory problems in the brain, not only pharmacological drugs, but also some folk remedies can help improve the condition of blood vessels, which should also be used after consultation with your doctor.

Taking an infusion of alfalfa seeds can help restore memory. To prepare it, pour a teaspoon of raw material into 100 ml of warm water and drink it thirty minutes before meals three times a day for several months. An infusion of hawthorn and periwinkle leaves will also help improve the hemodynamics of the brain. A teaspoon of periwinkle is mixed with half a liter of water and brought to a boil over low heat, after which a tablespoon of hawthorn is added and left for several hours. Traditional healers advise taking half a glass of the drug about an hour before meals. Traditional treatment is recommended as a complement to the main therapy.

In addition to medicinal herbs, healthy, restful sleep is extremely important for memory restoration, which helps restore the body’s potential at the cellular level, regular physical activity, which ensures a normal supply of blood and oxygen to organs, as well as the production of hormones that stimulate memory. Fruitful brain function is impossible without proper balanced nutrition. In order for memory not to fail, food products must contain sufficient amounts of lipids, iron and other useful substances. But experts recommend limiting sweets, since sugar glucose can cause memory impairment.

Memory is a function of the central nervous system that ensures the storage and use of acquired knowledge. This complex of complex processes is united under the general term “mnestic activity.”

It is disrupted for many reasons: from fatigue and overwork to serious illnesses. Memory impairments should not be ignored, as they may indicate organic brain damage.

Show all

Causes of memory impairment

Memory impairment can result from many reasons.

Moreover, in patients of different age groups, a decrease in this function is caused by their own factors.

In children and adolescents

The following factors lead to memory impairment in childhood and adolescence:

• Hypovitaminosis.
• Anemia.
• Asthenic syndrome. Frequent incidence of viral infections.
• Injuries to the central nervous system.
• Stressful situations (including a dysfunctional family, despotism of parents, a problem in the team that the child or teenager attends). A special case of stress is adaptation to the start of school in children of 6-7 years old, the transition from junior to middle school at 10-11 years old.
• Visual impairment.
• Tumor processes affecting the brain.
• Mental disorders.
• Intoxication, including as a result of drinking alcohol or drugs.
• Congenital pathology characterized by mental retardation (for example, Down syndrome).
• The use of certain medications that affect metabolic processes.

Severe, persistent, and uncorrectable memory impairments are unusual in childhood. Pathologies caused by congenital characteristics and anomalies require treatment.

The memory of children and adolescents has its own characteristics that can sometimes be mistaken for disorders:

• the child forgets stressful situations faster;
• amnesia in children is manifested by the loss from memory of individual episodes that occurred during the period of clouding of consciousness associated with unpleasant events (intoxication, coma, severe trauma);
• with alcoholism, polympsest is noted even before the formation of addiction, in the first stages;
• retrograde amnesia usually affects a minimum period of time before a stressful situation and is less severe than in adults; in some cases in children it may go unnoticed.

Memory impairment in early and teenage years is characterized by a type of dysmnesia. Severe disorders of this type can negatively affect school performance and adaptation in the team.

In children attending kindergarten, these disorders manifest themselves in difficulties in memorizing poems and songs, as a result of which they are less likely to participate in holidays and matinees. In the case of a severe violation, the child, despite visiting the institution every day, cannot find his locker, has difficulty finding his things among others, forgets the names of those around him, and cannot talk about the events of the past day.



In adults

In adults, the causes of impaired memory function, as well as the occurrence of absent-mindedness and loss of the ability to concentrate for a long time are often pathological conditions acquired during life:

• Stressful situations, especially those that are repeated or prolonged.
• Chronic fatigue, both physical and psychological.
• Acute cerebrovascular accident (in patients over 40 years of age they occur more often than in young people).
• Atherosclerotic lesion of the vascular bed.
• Arterial hypertension (in some cases it also occurs at a young age).
• Encephalopathy.
• Osteochondrosis of the cervical spine and associated vertebrobasilar syndrome and insufficiency.
• Traumatic brain injuries.
• Metabolic disorders (for example, diabetes mellitus, hormonal disorders, pathology of the endocrine glands).
• Tumors of the central nervous system.
• Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative diseases (more common in older patients).
• Mental disorders (in particular, depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia and others).



Attention disorder

A decrease in the ability to concentrate negatively affects the process of memorizing information. The disorder may manifest itself in the form of the following disorders:

Attention disorder	Description
Attention instability	With this disorder, a person is constantly distracted and switches from one object to another. Instability of attention is characteristic of disinhibition syndrome in children, hypomanic states, hebephrenia
Rigidity	Characterized by slow switching between topics or objects of attention. This symptom occurs in epilepsy and other mental illnesses. The patient gets stuck on one topic, which makes dialogue difficult
Lack of concentration	Such people look very absent-minded. This disorder is often mistaken for a character or temperament trait.

The ability to concentrate is reduced by all somatic diseases that manifest symptoms that cause pain or discomfort.

Types of memory disorders

Experts identify the following types of disorders:

• dysmnesia - changes directly related to memory function;
• paramnesia - distortion of existing memories due to the influence of the patient’s fantasies on them.

Dysmnesia

There are the following types of this pathological condition:

• hypermnesia;
• hypomnesia;
• amnesia.

Hypermnesia

This condition is characterized by a person’s ability to quickly remember and perceive information, as well as reproduce information stored many years ago.

Patients often report that certain events pop up in their memory for no reason (“memories come flooding back”) and take them back to the past. In most cases, people say that they don’t know why this information is stored in their head and remembered right now. For example, an elderly person describes in detail individual lessons at school (down to the clothes of the teacher and classmates), and restores other details relating to his youth, professional activities or events in the family.

Hypermnesia itself, in the absence of other clinical manifestations, is not considered a disease. People who experience this phenomenon are able to remember and reproduce large amounts of information (numbers, sets of words not connected by meaning, lists of objects, musical notations).

But hypermnesia can be a symptom of pathological conditions:

• paroxysmal mental disorders (in particular in the structure of epilepsy);
• intoxication with psychotropic substances (both pharmacological agents and narcotic drugs);
• hypomanic states; Patients experience bursts of energy with increased vitality and ability to work (often accompanied by attacks of hypermnesia, combined with emotional instability, anxiety, and inability to concentrate).

Hypomnesia

This condition is usually described by the expression “poor memory”. Forgetfulness and absent-mindedness are part of the clinical picture of asthenic syndrome.

The following signs are characteristic of this disorder:

• Severe fatigue.
• Increased nervousness.
• Bad mood and irritability, including unmotivated ones.
• Headache.
• Meteor dependence.
• Sleep disturbance in the form of daytime fatigue and insomnia at night.
• Changes in blood pressure.
• Heart rhythm disturbance.
• Vegetative pathologies (including hot flashes in premenopausal and menopausal periods in women).
• Physical weakness, chronic fatigue.

Asthenic syndrome occurs in the structure of the following pathological conditions, in which memory deterioration is noted:

• Arterial hypertension.
• Recovery period after traumatic brain injury.
• Atherosclerotic lesion of cerebral vessels.
• The initial stage of schizophrenia.
• Recovery period after operations.
• Severe intoxication.
• Somatic diseases.
• Taking certain medications.
• Organic brain lesions (acute circulatory disorders, tumor processes).
• Menopausal syndrome with adaptation disorders.
• Depressive states.

Memory problems in these diseases are accompanied by characteristic symptoms.

Amnesia

With amnesia, the patient’s entire memory does not deteriorate, but the disappearance of its fragments is observed - certain periods of time, events, names, faces disappear.

Experts distinguish the following varieties:

Types of amnesia	Description
Dissociative amnesia	Events associated with psychological trauma disappear from memory. The mechanism of the phenomenon is due to the body’s protective reaction, which is caused by severe stress. As a result, the brain tries to get rid of a traumatic situation that is difficult for a person to survive. Such events can only be restored using special methods (hypnosis)
Retrograde amnesia	Most often occurs as a result of traumatic brain injury. In this case, the patient forgets what happened before her: she comes to her senses, but does not remember who he is, what happened to him
Anterograde amnesia	The “memory lapse” in this case refers to events that occurred after the trauma. A person remembers everything that happened before well
Fixation amnesia	This term refers to short-term memory disorders. The person has poor memory of current events. In such cases they say "short memory"
Total amnesia	In this disorder, the patient forgets all events, including information relating to his personality
Progressive amnesia	This disorder is characterized by the disappearance of events from memory, starting with the present, then recent, and then past. The cause of the pathology is the atrophic processes of the brain, which occur in degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer's disease or Pick's disease. Total amnesia also occurs in vascular dementia. Patients with this disorder forget the names of objects that they use constantly, or simply do not recognize the thing

Paramnesia

Paramnesia is a disorder that involves the distortion of memories and the addition of extraneous information to them. Experts distinguish the following varieties:

Type of disorder	Description
Confabulation	Fragments of your own memory disappear. In their place are stories and events invented by the patient himself. By retelling these false memories, a person believes what he is talking about. The plot of confabulations can be various events: exploits, achievements, crimes
Pseudo-reminiscence	Memories that have disappeared from memory are replaced by events that actually existed in the patient’s biography, but at a different time and under different circumstances (Korsakoff syndrome)
Cryptomnesia	Cryptomnesia is characterized by the fact that the patient passes off as his own memory and experience an event heard from other sources (films, documentary stories, people's stories). The disorder is characteristic of organic disorders in which delusional symptoms occur
Echomnesia	It seems to a person that this event has already happened to him, or he saw it in a dream. Similar situations occur in healthy people, but they quickly forget about it, while with pathological echonesia the patient attaches special significance to them and becomes fixated on them
Polympsest	In the clinic of paramnesia, two variants of this disorder are distinguished: 1. Short-term memory loss caused by pathological alcohol intoxication (episodes from the past day are confused with each other and with long-past events). 2. Combination of 2 situations of the same period of time - as a result, the patient himself does not know what happened in reality

Diagnostics

Often, the patient is advised by relatives and immediate circle to see a doctor in connection with memory disorders that should be treated. In this case, the specialist conducts an examination, specifying:

• What diseases does the patient suffer from? In the process of collecting anamnesis, in some cases it is possible to identify a connection between existing or previously suffered diseases and the deterioration of intellectual abilities, including memory problems.
• The presence or absence of pathology that is the direct cause: dementia, cerebrovascular insufficiency, traumatic brain injury, chronic alcoholism, drug intoxication, contributing to disorders in the mnestic sphere.
• What medications does the patient take during this period of time? Benzodiazepine derivatives can lead to similar disorders. If memory impairment is caused by medication, it is reversible.

The following studies help in diagnosis:

Diagnostic technique	Identifiable disorders that contribute to memory disorders
Blood chemistry	Disturbance of normal metabolism, deficiency of microelements and vitamins, failure of hormonal metabolism
Neuroimaging methods (computer, magnetic resonance imaging)	Brain neoplasms, hydrocephalus, vascular lesions, degenerative disorders. In a number of diseases, memory impairment remains the only symptom for a long time, so neuroimaging methods must be used without fail, as they will help identify serious pathology
EEG (electroencephalography)	Pathological bioelectrical activity of nerve cells, convulsive readiness. Identifying such disorders helps diagnose epilepsy

Particularly difficult to diagnose are depressive states accompanied by apathy syndrome. Sometimes it is necessary to prescribe a trial of depression treatment.

Treatment

In case of memory impairment as a result of the natural aging process, along with drug therapy, it is recommended that older people learn to remind themselves of current affairs. It is effective to perform special exercises, for example, memorizing a sequence of numbers that are not related to each other in terms of the meaning of words or objects.

Pharmacotherapy is based on the use of drugs that have a nootropic effect and agents that can improve blood supply to the brain. Medicines from these groups are used not only in patients suffering from age-related problems, but also in pediatric practice. Such drugs should be taken in courses, the duration and frequency of which are determined by the attending physician on an individual basis. When prescribing nootropic and vasoactive drugs, it is necessary to take into account age restrictions, contraindications and their ability to interact with other medications that the patient is already taking (this is especially true for older people with concomitant somatic pathologies).