ABSTRACT

So far we have considered memory disorders which only an unfortunate few of us are likely to experience at first hand. In this chapter I will consider a form of memory disorder that we will all expect to experience: that due to the normal processes of ageing. Although a decline in memory is evident from a relatively early point, it becomes far more noticeable once we reach retirement age. Considering his own memory, the author John Mortimer noted:

The distant past, when I was acting my solo version of Hamlet before the blind eyes of my father, duelling with myself and drinking my own poisoned chalice or, further back, when I was starting an English education, with huge balloons of boxing gloves lashed to the end of white matchstick arms, grunting, stifled with the sour smell of hot plimsolls which is, to me, always the smell of fear, seems as clear as yesterday. What are lost in the mists of vanishing memory are the events of ten years ago.

While there is a slight irony in Mortimer having constructed such a complex sentence to make his point, his observations on ageing are accurate. As we get older, it is not our early memories we forget; it is the things that have happened more recently. We have, of course, encountered this pattern earlier in the book when we were considering retrograde amnesia, and it is of great interest that normal loss of memory should show a similar pattern. We will return to this point at a later stage.