That Word on the Tip of Your Tongue: Gone (for the moment) But Not Forgotten
Good news!
Like a disobedient dog, when the word on the tip of your tongue won’t come when you call, that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good.
We’re OK as long as it eventually comes back!
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The inability to find that previously-known word that is now on the “tip of your tongue” (TOT) is one of the most frequently self-acknowledged memory failures. It is that exasperating feeling that accompanies our temporary inability to retrieve information from memory. This is most noticeable with proper nouns (persons, places, or organizations, spelled with an initial capital letter). We ‘know we know the answer,’ yet the elusive information is mockingly just outside our mental reach. Increasing episodes often heighten concerns about memory decline.” In specific tests of recognizing and recalling the names of famous people from photographs, TOT has been both associated with and predictive of Mild Cognitive Impairment, the slight but measurable decline in office-administered tests of memory and cognition preceding Alzheimer’s disease.
Take some comfort: I found it encouraging during my research to discover some reassuring references regarding the inability to remember the word at the tip of the tongue (TOT). Logically, some authors (including at least one I have consulted as a patient) point out that if you can eventually remember the proper noun you were unable retrieve earlier, it means that it isn’t gone. Instead of experiencing memory loss, you are demonstrating the age-related problem of memory retrieval or recollection. Your brain cells and the pathways connecting them may be Aging, but they have not yet been erased by little bundles of amyloid and tau proteins. The first solid research to support this encouraging theory employed functional MRI images to identify the brain areas involved with TOT as separate from those areas associated with memory failure.491
Reposted from: https://agingoralzheimers.com/category/my-personal-journey/
and excerpted from:
Originally Published on https://agingoralzheimers.com/
