ABSTRACT
Some degree of memory impairment is one of the commonest complaints of older adults. After their 60th birthday, and sometimes earlier, many older people report that they experience difficulty in retrieving well-known names and occasional difficulty in finding the right word to express an idea. In addition, they report an increase in everyday forgetfulness with regard to carrying out intentions, remembering where they left a book or their spectacles, and where they met a person previously. This benign memory loss is often irritating and sometimes embarrassing (forgetting a person’s name when you meet them in a social setting, for example), but it is usually remediable and rarely catastrophic. Nonetheless, it is important for memory researchers to understand the underlying causes of the condition. Two obvious reasons for such a research programme are, first, that age-related memory losses may reflect the same causes (in a milder form) that underlie the pathological losses seen in some dementias and, second, an understanding of causation is the first step in the development of methods of prevention and rehabilitation.
