Memory Aids

Everyone has done it: You try and remember to pick up milk on the way home from work - mentally repeating "get milk" over and over in your mind. But on the ride home, that crucial stop at the grocery store just does not happen.

According to psychologist researcher Denise Park, director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Illinois., the problem of forgetting important daily tasks only worsens as you get older. "As you age, your ability to engage in what we call controlled or executive functions declines" she explains.

Executive functions involve deliberate, planned actions that are processed in the brain's frontal cortex. Unfortunately, the frontal cortex shrinks with age, and these frontal processes become less efficient. Realizing that reminder techniques that rely on the frontal cortex might not work. Park's team looked for help elsewhere in the brain. They focused on "Automatic" response - mental activity triggered by visual cues in the environment. Experts believe thatwhile the frontal cortex deteriorates with age, brain areas specific to automatic response stay relatively intact.

To test this theory, Park and coauthor Linda Liu trained a group of 31 people over 60 years to track their blood sugar several times a day using a standard testing device, much like diabetics must do, although the study participants did not have diabetes.

Study participants were put into three groups - a "deliberation" group talked over the reasons why daily blood sugar testing was a good idea: a second "rehearsal" group recited the instructions for using the testing device: while third "imagination" group spent three minutes using the glucose monitor within the home or work environment.

Park and Liu then tracked blood sugar monitoring rates for the next three weeks.

"We found that if you imagined completing the desired act in great detail, you are much more likely to do it", Park says. Indeed, participants in the imagination group remembered to take their blood sugar readings at a rate 50-percent higher than participants in the other two groups.

According to Park, imagination works because it sets up visual environmental cues that trigger action.

"For example, say you know you are going to have orange juice every single day with your breakfast before you test your glucose. Suddenly, when you pick up the orange juice you go, ''Oh yeah, I need to monitor my glucose.' This is primed, automatic response originating in a part of the brain that's more resistant to aging," she says.