My husband I now have a rule that when we're in conversation over coffee and we can't find the right word, person, book title, movie title, we don't pause at the forgetting but move on. So instead of saying, "You know, that guy who played the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz who didn't have a brain, you know?" We say: "The guy who played the Scarecrow. I'll remember tonight when I'm falling asleep."

 The rapid fire brains of our youth are not as rapid firing anymore. It's a loss. But apparently, it's within the normal range of forgetting. HealthDay, a medical news service, sent out this recent press release on older brains:

Slowing of the brain's processing speed as people age is the prime cause of typical communication problems in older adults, new research indicates.In the study, University of Kansas researchers compared the ability of young and older adults to do two things at once: keep a cursor on a moving target on a computer screen while responding to questions. Overall, younger adults did better at this dual-tasking. Psychology professor Susan Kemper, a senior scientist at the Gerontology Center at the university's Life Span Institute, said in a university news release: "What I think is going on is that you have to rapidly switch your attention from tracking to talking, going back and forth pretty rapidly, and that's where the processing speed really comes in," Kemper said. "Older adults seem to be slower at switching between tasks so their functional ceiling is lower."

Do you have any remembering tricks?

(AP Archive Photo)

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