Can Memory Improve? Reversing Cognitive Decline

It’s been said that some things, like love, wisdom and wine, get better with age. But when it comes to memory, there’s a universal belief that decline is inevitable and a normal part of getting older.

However, recent research suggests that memory can improve with the right lifestyle, supplements and other techniques.

Is memory loss a normal part of aging?

The severe loss of memory that occurs in Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia is certainly not normal. Neither is the loss that occurs in mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia. It’s a general misperception that forgetting things more often and experiencing greater difficulty learning new things are to be expected as we grow older. These occurrences may be common, but they’re not “normal”.

What causes memory loss?

In addition to Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, other diseases and conditions can cause memory loss,¹ including stroke, Parkinson’s disease, HIV, syphilis, multiple sclerosis, head trauma, epilepsy, depression and chronic alcoholism. Less severe conditions, including menopausal hormone decline, mild concussions, insomnia, stress, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), dehydration, anxiety, multitasking, prescription drug side effects, vitamin B12 deficiency, exposure to toxins, and even high altitudes can impair memory, although this impairment is often reversible when the cause has been addressed.

In Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss is associated with the accumulation in the brain of proteins known as amyloid beta and tau. While amyloid beta is the better known of these proteins, attempts to treat Alzheimer’s disease by reducing the burden of amyloid beta in the brain have met with failure more often than success. Some researchers have turned to tau as a promising target in Alzheimer’s disease. Tau protein forms the neurofibrillary tangles commonly observed in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Yet, like amyloid beta, it is not yet known whether tau plays a causative role in Alzheimer’s disease.

Vascular dementia is caused by impaired blood flow to the brain. It can be the result of the same process (atherosclerosis) that occurs in the rest of the body of someone who has cardiovascular disease. Strokes and mini-strokes significantly increase the risk of vascular dementia.

Is cognitive decline reversible?

In a recently published interview, Dale E. Bredesen, MD, who is an expert in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and originator of The Bredesen Protocol™ for improving cognition, stated “Although the dogma has been that there is nothing that prevents, slows, or reverses the course of cognitive decline in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, there are clearly multiple studies now—in both anecdotal and controlled trials—that show examples in which there is indeed prevention and/or reversal of decline.”² 

What helps memory?

Regular sound sleep and exercise are very important for supporting memory. Other important factors are a healthy diet (which includes eating regularly to avoid episodes of low blood sugar), stress management, taking steps to reduce underlying diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, staying hydrated and addressing hormone imbalances. 

Which nutritional supplements help memory and concentration?

Quite a few supplements have been shown in experimental or clinical research to benefit memory and learning ability or slow their decline. These include choline, dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE), Ginkgo biloba, ashwagandha, Bacopa monnieri, Huperzine A, vinpocetine, phosphatidylserine, omega-3 fatty acids, lithium and others.^3-13 

How does exercise help memory?

Exercise promotes the formation of neurons in the brain, increases brain volume, boosts cognitive function and helps the brain maintain its ability to adapt to changes.¹⁴ It also improves circulation and the delivery of oxygen and supports vascular health. 

How can future technology improve memory?

While the loss of memory is a growing concern for an aging population worldwide, research in this area is also growing. Scientists are investigating such aids as brain implants and computer-brain interfaces that expand memory and improve other functions. Online brain training programs are available now that work like exercise in the brain to help improve memory and learning, while tracking progress over time.

Nootropic compounds that may enhance memory have been the subject of research during the past several decades. These so-called “smart-drugs” have the potential to benefit everyone from college students seeking to improve exam scores to elderly men and women suffering from cognitive decline. The future may see the development of more advanced compounds and the use of smart drugs by more people.

Memory is more likely to improve with the adoption of more than just one or two of the therapies discussed in this post. A multifaceted, personalized program such as that developed by Dr Bredesen will improve the odds of maintaining our memories and perhaps even reverse some aspects of memory loss. 

References

1. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/in-depth/memory-loss/art-20046326
2. Gustafson C. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2015 Oct; 14(5): 26–29.
3. Malanga G et al. Drug Metab Lett. 2012 Mar;6(1):54-9.
4. McDaniel MA et al. Nutrition. 2003 Nov-Dec;19(11-12):957-75.
5. Kaschel R. Phytomedicine. 2011 Nov 15;18(14):1202-7.
6. Choudhary D et al. J Diet Suppl. 2017 Nov 2;14(6):599-612.
7. Morgan A et al. J Altern Complement Med. 2010 Jul;16(7):753-9.
8. Xu SS et al. Zhongguo Yao Li Xue Bao. 1995 Sep;16(5):391-5.
9. Subhan Z et al. Eur J Clin Pharmacol. 1985;28(5):567-71.
10.Montgomery SA et al. Int Clin Psychopharmacol. 2003 Mar;18(2):61-71.
11. Zhang YY et al. Genet Mol Res. 2015 Aug 10;14(3):9325-33.
12. Külzow N et al. J Alzheimers Dis. 2016;51(3):713-25.
13. Nunes MA et al. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2013 Jan;10(1):104-7.
14. Marks BL et al. Phys Sportsmed. 2009 Apr;37(1):119-25.

https://blog.lifeextension.com/2019/02/can-memory-improve-reversing-cognitive.html

Not getting enough sleep? Here's why it could be affecting your memory

Researchers are discovering fascinating things about the links between sleep, how we remember things

Duncan McCue · CBC News · Posted: Jan 22, 2019 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

A project at the Royal Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research aims to uncover exactly how our brains process and synthesize memories. It also aims to shed light on how sleep deprivation may contribute to dementia. (Diane Grant/CBC)

It's time for bed, and in addition to my cosy red pyjamas decorated with hockey sticks, I'm wearing electrodes all over my body.

With wires sprouting from my scalp, chest and legs, I feel more like Frankenstein than Sleeping Beauty.

"Have a good night," sings out Stuart Fogel, as he shuts off the light in my austere bedroom at the Royal Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research.

Then he's off to the laboratory — where my brain waves will be documented for the next eight hours — to search for clues about how memory works.

"It's hard to communicate the benefit that you can get from sleep, and the importance of sleep, when so many other things seem to be of greater importance in our daily lives," Fogel says.

CBC correspondent Duncan McCue had his brain waves documented as part of a study on sleep and memory. He slept overnight at the Royal Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research. (Diane Grant/CBC)

Researchers have known for a while that sleep is essential to how we form memories. But Fogel, a professor at the University of Ottawa's Sleep Research Laboratory, is keen to uncover exactly how our brains process and synthesize those memories.

His research comes at a time when about a third of Canadian adults get less than seven hours of sleep a night on average, according to Statistics Canada.

And the consequences of sleep deprivation are far more serious than feeling dozy and worn out.

• WATCH: Duncan McCue's story on sleep and memory from The National

"What's intriguing is that sleep loss will have an impact on your ability to retain anything that you learn that's new," Fogel says.

The research also aims to shed light on how sleep deprivation may contribute to a condition that's on the rise in Western societies: dementia.

Sleep spindles

Generally, adults spend one-third of their lives sleeping. It's only in the past few decades that scientists have begun to understand some of the reasons why.

"The more we study this, the more we find how there's just so many aspects of sleep that are involved in memory processing," Fogel says.

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Fogel has spent several years examining the relationship between memory and "sleep spindles," the brief bursts of brain activity which occur during deep sleep. These one- to two-second electrical pulses happen up to 1,000 times a night, and can be measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG).

Stuart Fogel is studying healthy adults for insights into how sleep affects motor memory skills. He hopes to determine if sleep therapy could help slow the onset of dementia. (Christian Patry/CBC)

Researchers believe these spindles show our brain taking what we learn each day and shifting it from the hippocampus, a limited space where we store recent memories, to the prefrontal cortex. That's the brain's "hard drive," where we store important memories for future reference — whether that's tomorrow, next week, or next year.

Sleep effectively cleans up the hippocampus, leaving us ready to take in fresh data.

"Memory centres that are recruited during learning are reactivated during sleep ... that's actually enhancing that memory trace and strengthening it, so that the next day we're better at the task," Fogel says.

What does that mean for a teenager who's up all night texting, or an adult working into the wee hours?

You may not learn as much.

More specifically, if you sleep six hours or less you'll have fewer spindles — and that means you may not permanently retain as much of what what you experienced that day.

Early warning signs

Fogel's current research focuses on how sleep affects newly formed motor skills, such as learning to play a musical instrument or taking a slapshot.

Which explains why I'm lying in a massive MRI scanner before bedtime, madly tapping my fingers on buttons that move brightly-coloured blocks from one side of a screen to another.

To demonstrate his current research, Fogel has invited me to sleep overnight at the Royal Ottawa, along with two other test subjects —  Nick Vanderberg, 23, and Tom Patterson, 60.

Patterson is what Fogel describes as an "optimum aging adult," a person with a good diet and no major health issues. During his working years, though, Patterson says he didn't sleep so well.

Since retiring, he's rediscovered the gym, which has improved his rest. But he also finds himself forgetting stuff.



Tom Patterson, 60, is what scientists describe as an 'optimum aging adult,' a person with a good diet and no major health issues. However, he worries about his memory. (Christian Patry/CBC)


"I talk about it a lot [with people my age]. Going into a room and saying, 'Hey, why did I come into this room again? What am I looking for?' That happens. It really does happen," Patterson says.

Fogel is studying healthy adults for insights into how sleep affects their motor memory skills. He hopes to determine if sleep therapy could help slow the onset of dementia.

"What we're hoping is that's going to give us a good sense of some important bio-markers for the early warning signs … that could be possible ways of staving off dementia, or mitigating the consequences, or perhaps finding novel treatments," Fogel says.

He enlisted Vanderberg, a doctoral student, to show how differently a young brain deals with memory and sleep.



Nick Vanderberg, a 23-year-old doctoral student, was part of the test to show how differently a young brain deals with memory and sleep. (Diane Grant/CBC)

In addition to the MRI scan, which allows his team to take pictures of brain activity, Fogel explains that the three of us will take a motor-skills test that involves repeatedly finger-tapping a specific sequence of numbers into a small keypad.

He asks us to enter the numbers – 4 1 3 2 4 – over and over, as quickly as we can. The computer measures our speed and accuracy as we tap furiously for 10 minutes.

"When you really accelerate your performance is when you actually start to chunk the numbers to make the execution of the sequence more efficient," Fogel tells us.

I feel as if I'm getting faster until, by the end, my fingers are numb.

Once all three of us brush our teeth and head to separate bedrooms, research assistants glue electrodes to specific spots on our bodies.

The novel part of Fogel's research is the combined use of the Royal's state-of-the-art MRI and the EEG. The electrodes, along with other equipment, measure our brain traces, eye movements, muscle activity, heart rate, leg movements and breathing.

After making sure the electrodes are on tight, it's time for us to nod off – and for Fogel to discover whether his lab rats learned anything.

WATCH | A neurologist explains the impact of a good sleep on the body:

The sleep boost

Fogel bursts into my room at 6:30 a.m.

"Good morning! Ready for your test?"

I rub my eyes. I slept about eight hours, waking once to use the washroom. I recall it took a while to doze off again.

I groggily sit down at the computer. I hear Patterson and Vanderberg do the same in their bedrooms.

I clutch the keypad, tapping the sequence from the night before – 4 1 3 2 4. I feel faster, but I'm relieved when the student assistant tells me to stop so she can calculate our results.

These scans show brain areas that are activated when learning a new task. The warmer the colour, the stronger the activation. Ottawa researchers are exploring how reduced activation in older adults might explain age-related cognitive deficits. (Royal Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research)

As we wait, Fogel shows me what the EEG measured during my sleep.

"Your brain was probably pretty tired, I would say," he laughs.

He traces his finger along the squiggly lines that represent my brain waves. Within minutes of hitting the pillow, I was in Stage Two, a light sleep where spindles start to occur.

"You've got really nice, big spindles here ... these big bursts of activity," Fogel says, which sounds encouraging.

"That indicates you're probably reprocessing that information, reactivating those memory traces, integrating them into long-term memory stores."

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We convene in the lab to hear the results. Patterson, the senior of the group, had a "broken and interrupted sleep." Vanderberg, the youngster, slept like a rock.

The graph shows all three of us improved our finger speed when our brains began to first process the new task, but our sleep gains were a different story.

The 23-year-old's fingers were even faster in the morning. Mine, too. But, as expected, the 60-year-old was tapping at the same rate as the night before.

Fogel goes over the test results with McCue, Patterson and Vanderberg. Patterson performed slower on the test and did not get a boost from sleep, showing how brain function naturally changes as people age. (Diane Grant/CBC)

As we age, Fogel explains, we don't get the same brain boost from sleep as when we were younger. That's because sleep spindles decrease in both magnitude and frequency.

"That's what we think is the important ingredient … the age-related changes in sleep are actually not allowing that reactivation and strengthening of the memory traces to take place in the same way as when you're younger," Fogel says.

While much remains to be learned about how sleep could be related to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, Fogel says it's important to emphasize what scientists do know: sleep is critical for everyone to improve their intellectual and physical performance.

Right now, that's a problem – Canadian adults are getting about an hour less sleep on average than in 2005, according to Statistics Canada.

"Our lives are being filled with more and more information, more and more activities," Fogel says.

"We really need less and less of that, in order to not compete with our time to get the sleep that we need."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/national-sleep-memory-deprivation-dementia-1.4929843

An effortless way to improve your memory

A surprisingly potent technique can boost your short and long-term recall – and it appears to help everyone from students to Alzheimer's patients.

• By David Robson

12 February 2018

When trying to memorise new material, it’s easy to assume that the more work you put in, the better you will perform. Yet taking the occasional down time – to do literally nothing – may be exactly what you need. Just dim the lights, sit back, and enjoy 10-15 minutes of quiet contemplation, and you’ll find that your memory of the facts you have just learnt is far better than if you had attempted to use that moment more productively.

Although it’s already well known that we should pace our studies, new research suggests that we should aim for “minimal interference” during these breaks – deliberately avoiding any activity that could tamper with the delicate task of memory formation. So no running errands, checking your emails, or surfing the web on your smartphone. You really need to give your brain the chance for a complete recharge with no distractions.

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An excuse to do nothing may seem like a perfect mnemonic technique for the lazy student, but this discovery may also offer some relief for people with amnesia and some forms of dementia, suggesting new ways to release a latent, previously unrecognised, capacity to learn and remember.

A simple technique could boost our short and long-term memory (Credit: Getty Images)

The remarkable memory-boosting benefits of undisturbed rest were first documented in 1900 by the German psychologist Georg Elias Muller and his student Alfons Pilzecker. In one of their many experiments on memory consolidation, Muller and Pilzecker first asked their participants to learn a list of meaningless syllables. Following a short study period, half the group were immediately given a second list to learn – while the rest were given a six-minute break before continuing.

When tested one-and-a-half-hours later, the two groups showed strikingly different patterns of recall. The participants given the break remembered nearly 50% of their list, compared to an average of 28% for the group who had been given no time to recharge their mental batteries. The finding suggested that our memory for new information is especially fragile just after it has first been encoded, making it more susceptible to interference from new information.

Although a handful of other psychologists occasionally returned to the finding, it was only in the early 2000s that the broader implications of it started to become known, with a pioneering study by Sergio Della Sala at the University of Edinburgh and Nelson Cowan at the University of Missouri.

We could all do with fewer distractions in our lives (Credit: Getty Images)

The team was interested in discovering whether reduced interference might improve the memories of people who had suffered a neurological injury, such as a stroke. Using a similar set-up to Muller and Pilzecker’s original study, they presented their participants with lists of 15 words and tested them 10 minutes later. In some trials, the participants remained busy with some standard cognitive tests; in others, they were asked to lie in a darkened room and avoid falling asleep.

It seems to benefit young and old people alike 

The impact of the small intervention was more profound than anyone might have believed. Although the two most severely amnesic patients showed no benefit, the others tripled the number of words they could remember – from 14% to 49%, placing them almost within the range of healthy people with no neurological damage.

The next results were even more impressive. The participants were asked to listen to some stories and answer questions an hour later. Without the chance to rest, they could recall just 7% of the facts in the story; with the rest, this jumped to 79% – an astronomical 11-fold increase in the information they retained. The researchers also found a similar, though less pronounced, benefit for healthy participants in each case, boosting recall between 10 and 30%.

Della Sala and Cowan’s former student, Michaela Dewar at Heriot-Watt University, has now led several follow-up studies, replicating the finding in many different contexts. In healthy participants, they have found that these short periods of rest can also improve our spatial memories, for instance – helping participants to recall the location of different landmarks in a virtual reality environment. Crucially, this advantage lingers a week after the original learning task, and it seems to benefit young and old people alike. And besides the stroke survivors, they have also found similar benefits for people in the earlier, milder stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Our memory for new information is especially fragile just after it has been encoded (Credit: Getty Images)

In each case, the researchers simply asked the participants to sit in a dim, quiet room, without their mobile phones or similar distractions. “We don’t give them any specific instructions with regards to what they should or shouldn’t do while resting,” Dewar says. “But questionnaires completed at the end of our experiments suggest that most people simply let their minds wander.”

Even then, we should be careful not to exert ourselves too hard as we daydream. In one study, for instance, participants were asked to imagine a past or future event during their break, which appeared to reduce their later recall of the newly learnt material. So it may be safest to avoid any concerted mental effort during our down time.

Towards total recall

If you are interested in further, low-effort ways to boost your recall, you may benefit from the following strategies:

• Test yourself. So-called “retrieval practice” – actively forcing yourself to remember information – is far more effective than passive reading.
• “Space” your studies, leaving a few weeks between the times you revisit material. Indeed, it’s often better to wait until you are on the cusp of forgetting the material to avoid “overlearning”.
• Talk to yourself. Simple describing an event cements it in your memory.
• Add variety. It can sometimes be beneficial to mix up and rotate the subjects you are studying, a process called “interleaving”, rather than studying each one in a single block.

The exact mechanism is still unknown, though some clues come from a growing understanding of memory formation. It is now well accepted that once memories are initially encoded, they pass through a period of consolidation that cements them in long-term storage. This was once thought to happen primarily during sleep, with heightened communication between the hippocampus – where memories are first formed – and the cortex, a process that may build and strengthen the new neural connections that are necessary for later recall.

The brain might use downtime to cement what it has recently learnt (Credit: Getty Images)

This heightened nocturnal activity may be the reason that we often learn things better just before bed. But in line with Dewar’s work, a 2010 study by Lila Davachi at New York University, found that it was not limited to sleep, and similar neural activity occurs during periods of wakeful rest, too. In the study, participants were first asked to memorise pairs of pictures – matching a face to an object or scene – and then allowed to lie back and let their minds wander for a short period. Sure enough, she found increased communication between the hippocampus and areas of the visual cortex during their rest. Crucially, people who showed a greater increase in connectivity between these areas were the ones who remembered more of the task, she says.

Perhaps the brain takes any potential down time to cement what it has recently learnt – and reducing extra stimulation at this time may ease that process. It would seem that neurological damage may render the brain especially vulnerable to that interference after learning a new memory, which is why the period of rest proved to be particularly potent for stroke survivors and people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Other psychologists are excited about the research. “The effect is quite consistent across studies now in a range of experiments and memory tasks,” says Aidan Horner at the University of York. “It’s fascinating.” Horner agrees that it could potentially offer new ways to help individuals with impairments to function.

Scheduling regular periods of rest could help us all hold onto new memories (Credit: Getty Images)

Practically speaking, he points out that it may be difficult to schedule enough periods of rest to increase their overall daily recall. But he thinks it could still be valuable to help a patient learn important new information – such as learning the name and face of a new carer. “Perhaps a short period of wakeful rest after that would increase the chances that they would remember that person, and therefore feel more comfortable with them later on.” Dewar tells me that she is aware of one patient who seems to have benefitted from using a short rest to learn the name of their grandchild, though she emphasises that it is only anecdotal evidence.

Thomas Baguley at Nottingham Trent University in the UK is also cautiously optimistic. He points out that some Alzheimer’s patients are already advised to engage in mindfulness techniques to alleviate stress and improve overall well-being. “Some [of these] interventions may also promote wakeful rest and it is worth exploring whether they work in part because of reducing interference,” he says, though it may be difficult to implement in people with severe dementia, he says.  

Beyond the clinical benefits for these patients, Baguley and Horner both agree that scheduling regular periods of rest, without distraction, could help us all hold onto new material a little more firmly. After all, for many students, the 10-30% improvements recorded in these studies could mark the difference between a grade or two. “I can imagine you could embed these 10-15 minute breaks within a revision period,” says Horner, “and that might be a useful way of making small improvements to your ability to remember later on.”

In the age of information overload, it’s worth remembering that our smartphones aren’t the only thing that needs a regular recharge. Our minds clearly do too.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180208-an-effortless-way-to-strengthen-your-memory