Good news! Forgetfulness and talking to yourself are signs of intelligence. Seriously! That is where we get the stereotype of the absent-minded professor always muttering to himself. He’s brilliantly solving his equations but can’t remember where he left his keys.
I often work with people who have Alzheimer’s or other dementia, and sometimes it is really good to take a break, to focus on the positive and to remember that aging is not a disease, that many of us age gently and gracefully. It can be easy to lose all perspective when you are a caregiver, but some 85% of us who live long lives will leave this world in relatively good health.
I mention this because it has long been thought that some memory loss was just an inevitable symptom of getting older. Some new research has begun to question that, to study how the brain actually works as we age. Come to find out, older people may not actually be declining at all, but rather just becoming wiser, more intelligent.
We know our absent-minded professor can be in his 30s and there really is a correlation between intelligence and forgetfulness, so researchers wanted to know why. The theory is our brains are kind of like computers, so the more data we take in, the more windows we have open at the same time, the more crashes there are. Our processors can only handle so much data at once, so our brains engage in perpetual data dump. We may think it’s important to remember where we left our keys, but our brains simply see extraneous data and dump it into the abyss for us.
We talk to ourselves because spoken words stimulate and trigger memory. Words have amazing power, all related to memory, whether we are singing, writing them down, or simply muttering to ourselves. Songs can be so powerful that even people with serious injuries to their brain can sometimes be stimulated by a song from childhood, a song that has been lost in their head somewhere for half a century. Words have power. Words set to music are just phenomenal.
One trick for remembering where you left your keys is to always put them in the same place, but also to make up a little tune about it and sing the words to yourself a few times. Music and rhythm can help to trigger memory so if something is connected to music, you’ll have a much easier time retrieving the data.
So, just some good news to keep in mind if you find yourself forgetful and walking around muttering to yourself. You may not be “declining” at all, you may simply be getting much smarter. The longer we live, the more information we take in and the more clutter our brains must learn to process. There are many very sharp people in their 90’s, even past 100.
Many of our brain fogs and forgetfulness can be related to excessive stress or health issues, so temporary and fleeting things if we can relieve the stress and identify the health issue. The other kind of forgetfulness that leaves us walking around and muttering may well simply be a sign that we are getting smarter. Remember that the next time someone speaks of your alleged “decline.”
thesilence2017 said:
Thanks for sharing, that’s something that I always do: whistle a song to remember what I lost. Peace. 🙂
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Brandon Adams said:
Guess I’m a genius, then…
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Susan Irene Fox said:
Whew! 😮
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atimetoshare.me said:
Oh thanks for this. I thought I was falling into that deep abyss ❤️
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Julie (aka Cookie) said:
well I can’t wait to tell my son that my “talking to myself” is actually a sign of my intelligence and not mere eccentric ways!!
Now if I can only remember his number!!!!!
thank you IB for the interesting post as I’ve had my share of dementia care in recent months…..
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
I had a thought in mind when I first started reading this but I forgot what it was.
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wzippler said:
Thank you for this! I thought that I was already having senior moments in my 40’s!
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heartsnippets said:
And I thought I was losing it!
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Clyde Herrin said:
The best way to avoid forgetting where you put your keys is to carry them in your pocket all of the time.
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MJThompson said:
Delightful read! good to know.
I especially appreciate the cat meme.
Everyone who knows me realizes its a waste of time to approach me before I’ve ingested my morning coffee!
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MJThompson said:
A further note – one of sincerity… I had a moment the other day when I actually asked my wife of 41 years how people can get so frustrated with me when they retell stories from our shared past and explain that I don’t remember it that way. Sometimes I have zero recollection of events, but usually my memories are filtered through a personal perspective that unfortunately seems to place far less importance on a matter than other expect I should.
That always (usually?) results in accusations that I don’t remember because I don’t really care. It is quite difficult to embrace such a self image as a non-caring ogre. But it is even more difficult to care about something I actually don’t remember!
Weirder still, is the fact that my earliest childhood memories are intact. I recall running thru my grandpa’s cornfield, my 1st kiss, the horses I fed apples to across the way – all realities of my life BEFORE moving to California at age 5. But I don’t remember what I may or may not have had for dinner last Monday. LOL.
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insanitybytes22 said:
LOL! Now that can just be a guy-girl thing. Women tend to have memories like dinosaurs. That’s why we can bring up details from arguments ten years ago that men can’t even recall. 🙂
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MJThompson said:
I suppose I’d have to care about the subject of such hypothetical arguments to remember them… excuse me while I beat my chest in triumph. Gotta go hunt some dinosaurs for dinner, now! I forget… where did I put my club?
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