Children and young adults are often proud of their memories while as adults we generally complain about ours. Achievement in school and the work place is largely dependent on the ability to memorize facts and social success is tied to the ability to remember names and faces. When we reach our forties things change. Did you ever find yourself looking in the closet but not knowing what you are looking for only to remember what it was when you got back to the kitchen? This is a normal consequence of aging and usually only effects short-term memory.

The Tenuous Past: Memory and the Ways it Fails

" I remember it like it was yesterday!" you say. But how well do you really remember it? How well do you remember yesterday? Here's a quick quiz: What time did you have lunch yesterday? What exactly did you eat? What did you say? What did the people around you say? If you read the paper yesterday, name all the stories you read and summarize them briefly.

Don't remember yesterday as well as you thought? Don't worry, nobody does. Our memories are often thought of as recording devices, mechanically noting what has happened during the day and replaying these events like a tape. In truth, memory is a function of the brain, which is constantly in flux, organic, and does not behave like a machine. Your memory can be affected in many ways by many things, which can cause you to forget, to change memories around, to repress memories, and even to invent completely new ones!

This is of no small importance, because our only evidence that the past occurred comes from our memories. In what ways, then, can memory fail us?

Did you know there are a bunch of things you’re probably doing to make your memory worse?

Dr. Daniel Schacter of Harvard University lists "7 Sins of Memory," ways in which our memories fail us. His list features :
Transience, absentmindedness, blocking, suggestibility, bias, persistence, and misattribution (5). Most of these sins are things we experience in everyday life. When something you read last week isn't as clear now as it seemed then, that's transience. When you forget where you put your book or forget that you have to be somewhere, that's absentmindedness. Blocking is the "temporary inaccessibility of stored information," such as a person's name or a word. Suggestibility and misattribution go together, since memories can incorporate misinformation and also BE misinformation. Suggestibility is the "incorporation of misinformation into memory due to leading questions, deception and other causes," and misinformation consists of 'remembering' something that did not occur. Persistence is slightly more abnormal, and the inability to get a thought out of your head that it characterizes is common in post traumatic stress disorder.
Dana Bakalar

Memory loss probably affects the majority of us in one way or another. More often than not, it is a momentary memory lapse; nothing to worry about – it happens to the best of us. However, when memory lapses begin to become a regular occurrence, it is wise to dig a little deeper and seek .

Memory can be affected by a number of factors, some more sinister than others: it may simply be lack of sleep; fatigue due to over-work, lack of exercise, or poor diet; or stress-related. These are all issue about which we can do something constructive to help us. However, memory problems can also be the result of deeper-rooted issues such as brain disease, tumours, or the onset of a brain cell deteriorating disease such as Alzheimer’s. Sufferers that have any doubts at all should always seek medical advice with regards to continued memory loss.

Causes of Memory Loss

1. Alcoholism
2. Trauma
3. Aging
4. Stress
5. Dementia
6. Psychological disturbances
7. Drug abuse
8. Medications
9. Malnutrition
10. Vitamin deficiencies
11. Sleep disorders
12. Prolonged exposure to toxins
13. Infections
14. Chronic medical conditions.

Short-term memory provides a small storage space for daily tasks and lists, and is more likely to be affected with age. Forgetfulness is not a symptom of a serious problem, unless it becomes debilitating or accompanied by other symptoms of mental instability such as confusion or behavioral changes.

Memory is also affected by lack of sleep or by stress and anxiety. Conversely, if the mind is dull from depression or boredom, short-term memory becomes rusty from lack of use. Long-term memory tends to remain stable with age. Childhood memories remain in the mind better than adult memories.

Memory can be affected by a number of factors and there are many possible causes of patches of memory being lost, some more sinister than others. A high fever, an attack of epilepsy, severe alcohol intoxication or surgery can erase memory. A stroke can cause sudden memory loss (accompanied by other neurological symptoms, such as dizziness, visual changes, buckling knees or slurred speech.) A passing loss of short-term memory, or ischemic attack, lasts only a few minutes and can precede a stroke.

Memory problems can also be the result of deeper-rooted issues such as brain disease, tumors, or the onset of a disease such as Alzheimer’s that causes brain cell deterioration. Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia are sources of memory loss in older persons and are associated with the gradual erosion of the personality. Sufferers who have any doubts at all should always seek medical advice with regards to continued memory loss.

Many substances affect memory, including prescription drugs, such as sleeping pills and antidepressants, and chronic alcohol abuse. Nutritional deficiencies should also be evaluated, especially in older people who do not always eat well. Problems with memory are often associated with physical fatigue that causes inattention. Some women experience memory loss in conjunction with menopause as a result of hormonal imbalances. Usually short-term memory loss is a side-effect of too much stress and an overload of information. There are many illnesses related to fatigue and poor attention span, including anemia, underactive thyroid and hyperactivity.

High Blood Pressure
When you are under the age of 45 years and you often forget, you should check your blood pressure. University of Alabama study found people with high blood pressure is more likely to experience impaired memory and thinking than those with normal blood pressure.

Menopause
When entering a certain age, women often feel more forgetful. University of California study confirms that the reduced levels of estrogen at menopause have an influence on memory. However, memory impairment is not permanent.

Chemotherapy
One of the list of unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy is memory loss. Half of breast cancer patients following chemotherapy sessions admitted that it is difficult to remember during treatment. It is estimated, chemotherapy affects healthy brain cells, and reduces its function. Stanford University study found that patients who have undergone breast cancer treatment, have less activity in brain areas responsible for memory.

Asthma Drugs and Arthritis
Corticosteroids are medicines commonly used to reduce asthma and arthritis. Long-term use in high doses, for six months or more, can cause memory problems, said Stephen Bazire, professor of the University of East Anglia. Corticosteroids can kill brain cells, and brain areas particularly the hippocampus shrinks. “Changing steroids might reduce the risk of memory loss.” Bazire said.

Depression
This mental condition is associated with lower levels of brain chemicals like serotonin and norepinephrine that has the function to convey the message. Thus, depression is also effect on memory. “Treatment of depression, which involve talk therapy or not, and successfully, it can also help alleviate the problem of memory,” said Dr. Gross
Drug Free Depression protocol

Memory Alzheimer's Dementia Stress

Overall, then, our memories, which we depend on to report the past and to form our personalities, are in fact extremely mutable. They can be affected and changed by things we think, things we see, diseases we get, and they can be fabricated out of suggestion or imagination. Since these flawed memories are all we have, we must form a world view based on the premise that they are more or less accurate interpretation of the past; this premise is usually useful and necessary, but can sometimes cause problems. How much should we trust eyewitness reports of crimes, for example? Or the reports of a repressed abuse memory?
Who are we really if our memories of our selves and our interactions with others are so changeable?
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/
neuro/neuro04/web1/dbakalar.html

How Memory Works
Doctors think memory works in three steps, first is registration, sensory memory comes into play here, we perceive our surroundings and make our observations ready for storage. Retention is the second component followed by recall. If sensory memory is considered important it is rehearsed, repeated, mulled over, and kept in STM for a time. Generally, we can only juggle about seven facts at a time in STM. When new facts enter, they displace the old, which are either lost or, if they have been rehearsed enough, saved in LTM.

Does Memory have to Fail?
The good news is - we do become more intelligent and wise as we age. Wisdom is demonstrated by our increased ability to make associations or links between past experiences and new. This function becomes easier as we accumulate more experiences with time. Does our memory fail or does it just slow and require more maintenance? This is controversial subject in medicine. Remember that all of the statements made concerning memory loss are based on studies that measure averages of groups of people not individuals. We all know of an 80+ year old who is as sharp witty and intelligent as ever. The brain shrinks as we age, some of the shrinkage is due to cells dying, but cell death is less of a factor then previously thought. Cell death begins as early as 40 but measurable intellectual slowing does not begin until age 60 and does not accelerate until age 80. Other cells take over the dying cell function and cell death alone does not significantly effect memory. The neuro transmitter acetylcholine decreases over time and may contribute to age associated memory impairment.

BRAIN CELL GROWTH AFFECTED BY STRESS

For years, neurobiologists clung to a fundamental truth: as animals and people reach adulthood, they lose brain cells and they never grow new ones. There were a couple of exceptions such as birds and rats, but the thought was that these were peculiarities of nature and not evidence of a general principle.
Now, in experiments that experts call amazing, that dogma has been overturned because scientists have found that monkeys are constantly making new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain used for forming long-term memories.Moreover, they report, the production of new cells is squelched when the animals are under extreme stress.

Experts say they fully expect that humans are no different and that they, too, make new brain cells in adult life. That raises the glimmer of a possibility of eventually treating degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's or Parkinsons disease and injuries such as those resulting from stroke or trauma — by prompting the brain to grow replacement cells.

It also means that neurobiologists must rethink basic notions of the way the brain changes with learning or life experiences.

Dr. Elizabeth Gould of Princeton University, Dr. Bruce S. McEwen of Rockefeller University in Ncw York and their colleagues investigated using marmoset monkeys, adding two tracer chemicals to the animals' brains: one that labeled cells that were dividing — the process that gives rise to new cells and one that labeled mature nerve cells. Cells that were born during adult life and that grew into mature brain cells would be marked by both chemicals.

With this method, the researchers looked for, and found, new cells in the animals' hippocampuses.

Dr. Gould estimated that thousands of such cells were being made each day. She said she suspected other cells were dying to make room for new ones, but her study did not count numbers of dying cells.

The hippocampus was particularly intriguing for another reason, Dr. Gould said. Earlier research had shown that when people are under stress, the hippocampus shrinks in size. For example, people with tumors that pour out the stress hormone cortisol have a diminished hippocampus. So do people with recurrent depression and people with posttraumatic stress disorder, Dr. Gould said.

It might be possible, she reasoned, that monkeys under stress might decrease their production of new brain cells in the hippocampus, making that area of the brain shrink.

To test the hypothesis, Dr. Gould and her colleagues stressed monkeys by putting a male monkey who had always lived alone into a small cage where another male was living. The intruder was terrified and cowered in the cage, with a rapidly beating heart. When Dr. Gould and her colleagues examined the brains of the frightened monkeys, they found that after just one hour of this stress, the monkeys were making substantially fewer new I brain cells.

The study is being published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As so often happens in science, the seeds for the new view of brain regeneration were sown decades ago, but were largely ignored.

In the 1960s, Dr. Joseph Altman, a Purdue University scientist who is now retired, reported that rats make new brain cells throughout their lives. The cells were in the hippocampus and in the olfactory bulb, an area used to sense smells, he noted. "No one paid attention,"Dr. Gould said.

Twenty years later, Dr. Fernando Nottebohm, who is head of the laboratory of animal behavior at Rockefeller University, asked whether brain cells were being born in adult birds. Bird brains, he noticed, grow and shrink with the seasons, swelling when the animals need to learn new songs to attract mates and shrinking after they had bred. He wondered whether the swelling brains during breeding seasons could represent the actual growth of new brain cells. At the time, Dr. Nottebohm said, he knew nothing of Dr. Altman's work.

In a series of painstaking experiments, Dr. Nottebohm showed that birds constantly make new brain cells and that the new cells replace old ones that die. "There was a program of constant brain rejuvenation,"Dr. Nottebohm said.

In 1984, Dr. Nottebohm organized a meeting in New York that he called Hope for a New Neurology A colleague at Rockefeller, Dr. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla recalled that Dr. Nottebohm "was pushing the idea that in the adult brain, there is no impediment to the formation of new neurons." But, Dr. Alvarez-Buylla added, "people thought that was bordering on fantasy."Nonetheless, some researchers persisted, showing in rats and mice and in tree shrews that new brain cells are born throughout life, at least in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb.

Dr. Alvarez-Buylla, for example, recently found that adult mice make 5,000 to 10,000 new brain cells each hour. The brain cells that end up in the olfactory bulb are born on the walls of the ventricles, cavities in the brain that are called with cerebrospinal fluid. They travel in "little trains of cells" to their destination, he said. Those that end up in the hippocampus are born there. But many scientists believed that monkeys and humans could not be growing new brain cells -- that in order to store memories for a lifetime, you need a stable brain.

Dr. Gould said. "If cells are constantly dying and new ones being produced, how would that be possible?" Dr. Gould, however, was persuaded by the findings on other species. ''Why not monkeys?" she asked. Others also began seeking and finding brain regeneration in monkeys, but Dr. Gould is the first to publish her findings.

Do we lose brain cells as we get older? Scientists know that most of us lose brain mass as we get older. CT scans of older adults often show some degree of cerebral atrophy - brain shrinkage. There is also research that suggests that we lose connections between brain cells as we age. My father is beginning to have difficulty remembering names. They usually come to him eventually, but they do not seem to be as easily retrieved as in the past. The name is still stored, it's just not easily accessed.

How often have you asked yourself the question:
" Why can't I remember everything I read?"

The problem with poor memory is not confined to reading. It is more generalized in that we also have difficulty remembering: names of people dates and times telephone numbers codes, passwords events and occasions business facts and figures jokes
etc, etc.

It is not ONLY remembering what you have now read, but remembering what you read yesterday, last week, a month ago, a year ago, and so on.

The problem is not because you are running out of brain storage space. Even when we reach old age, we still have plenty of unused brain capacity available.

The problem is not TIME. Information simply cannot "leak" out of our ears over time. Why can we remember vivid details of childhood yet the details of last week's newspaper are vague? We remember perfect details of scenes that only happened once, yet information drummed into the brain just simply will not "stick".

So, what Perhaps is the cause of the memory problem?

Every computer's hard drive is organized. The aim of loading information onto the hard drive is not to leave it there, untouched and inaccessible, but to use it. Much thought was put into how the information will be filed away so that when it is needed it can be accessed quickly and easily. Your computer has a filing system to access all information placed in any possible location.

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Short Term Memory Improvement
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Note: the possible range of benefits listed above are based upon years of experience working with CES. Because there are currently no published research studies involving the BTsystems individual results will vary and must be considered personal and subjective. Typically, individuals will report a range of improvements - from very substantial - to very little.

21st Century Medicine & Learning
This response submitted by Ronald B. Keys, JD, PhD .

Slow learners and, or, those with impaired nervous system development may have their brains and nervous system jumpstarted. Little did we know back in the 1950s when the movie, Forbidden Planet, with Leslie Nielson, Ann Francis and Walter Pidgeon, that the Krell technology to stimulate brain growth, with a form of cranial electrical stimulation, might be in use in the 21st century.
currents.

Cranial electrical stimulation (CES) may improve memory, attention and focus; important studies are emerging on the uses of mild electrical current to enhance cognition and aspects of intelligence.

THE BT Plus The most advanced CES unit ever produced

While inducing replenishment of general deficiency states through direct oral supplementation, particularly necessary substrates may be electroporated into brain and nervous tissue via electroporation through cranial electrical nerve stimulation, via an electrical current. This is the equivalent, by analogy, to putting the plug of a toaster into an electric socket in order to toast the bread.

For those of you that still think this is voodoo medicine, do a google search for electroporation, electropharmacology and cell biomembrane transport. Also do a PUB MED search for Saul Liss, PhD, to pull up actual abstracts.

The brain is a highly pliant, flexible organ that has greater capacity than we ever imagined.....

CES is a simple treatment employing an electronic stimulation through clip-on electrodes that attach to the earlobes. Current flow is user controlled so that the most a user need experience during the process is a tingling sensation. Its most immediate impact is reduction of anxiety. For most people, anxiety reduction is experienced in the course of treatment, After a CES session you are left feeling both alert and relaxed . Psychologists call this an "alpha state". The effect differs from pharmaceutical treatments in that people report feeling that their bodies are lighter and more relaxed and their mind more alert and clear. The results are cumulative and often lasting.

In the Book" In thePalaces of Memory" they suggest 5hz as being the optimum learning frequency.
Even as you read these words, a tiny portion of your brain is physically changing. New connections are being sprouted -- a circuit that will create a stab of recognition if you encounter the words again... Read: In the Palaces of Memory

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Unit + Link	BT11	BT Plus	BTPro
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1.00Hz			Optional
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References:
Van Dyke, Halpern, Busby, 'Space Biomagnetics' Space Life Sciences (1968).
Basset, Pawluch, NY Acad of Science (1974); Gross, Lawrence, FEd Proc (1961); Kolin, Brill, Broberg, Biol & Med (1959); Degen, Vracdelo (1971); Freeman, Magnetism in Medicine - Journal of Appl Physics (1960).