there are many types of Memory that haunt the elderly such as semantic memory, an ability to

remember vocabulary, knowledge of language and concepts and general facts unrelated to
particular experiences. For instance, an example of semantic memory is knowing that clocks are
used to tell time. Procedural memory is another type of memory, it’s basically the ability of how
to do things, for example how to tell time by reading the numbers on a clock. Additionally,
episodic memory, is the ability to capture the “what,” “where,” and “when” of our daily lives.
For example, “where” did I put my car keys? “when” was the meeting supposed to be? Or
“what” did I eat yesterday? A common concern from older adults is that they have difficulty
recalling names, even names of close friends and family. So, is there a special problem linked
with trying to remember names in older adults? Are the brain regions and networks involved in
memory retrieval affected by the ageing process? Two studies were made to investigate this
issue: the first experiment examined episodic memory for surnames and occupations; older
adults and younger adults under split focus responded less well than younger adults with
complete attention but displayed no significant loss of name details. Experiment 2 examined
semantic memory by exploring their capacity to identify images of public figures and uncommon
objects. Here, older adults were unable to remember the names of known people but were able to
remember known objects. When older adults forget the name of someone they met only once, it
may simply be an inefficiency of new learning linked to ageing, but when older adults forget the
name of a very close friend, this is a case of an age-related problem of retrieval. The first
experiment involved the process of new learning, while the second involved the retrieval of
previous known information. Another important question researchers wonder about it is: Why is
memory in young adulthood more flexible than in old age? ‘King's College London and The
Open University’ sought the reason by experimenting in mice. The end result was that there was
a major difference in the way memories were stored in old age; at the cellular level, it was much
harder to modify the memories made in old age compared to young adulthood. Reinforcing the
connections between synapses, allow memories to be placed in the brain. However, by trying to
remember a memory these connections change, thus the memories also change in a way. Why?
to adjust towards the situation that needed to remember the memory. But is this memory
updating process affected by age? An experiment involving young adult and aged mice in a
memory task was made. The findings were as followed: even though the animals' age affected
NONE of the animal’s capability to produce new memories, after a thorough analyzes of the
synapses comparing the before and the after of the memory task, The researchers identified
fundamental differences between older mice and younger ones. For older animals, memories
were formed by a slightly different mechanism compared to younger ones. Additionally, the
synaptic changes associated with new memories were much harder to modify in older mice than
the changes seen in younger mice. Mammals share the basic biological processes for laying
down memories, so memory formation in humans is likely to follow the same processes
discovered in mice. “Our results give a fundamental insight into how memory processes change
with age. We found that, unlike in the younger mice, memories in the older mice were not
modified when recalled.” (Professor Karl Peter Giese, from the Institute of Psychiatry,
Psychology & Neuroscience at King's). These results shattered the belief that older people would
be able to shape memories in the same manner as younger people and resolving memory
problems should only require restoring this ability. Nevertheless, these findings reinforced the
fact that there is a major biological change between how memories are stored in old age
compared to young adults.

References:

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezsecureaccess.balamand.edu.lb/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
vid=2&sid=641370e4-7bd4-41dd-8cd1-c4a45a1cd6e2%40sessionmgr4008

https://academic-oup-com.ezsecureaccess.balamand.edu.lb/acn/article/28/4/331/5204

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezsecureaccess.balamand.edu.lb/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
vid=1&sid=0d7d209c-16e9-460a-be23-82533bcad86f%40sdc-v-sessmgr01

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191017141112.htm

https://www.apa.org/pi/aging/memory-and-aging.pdf