Submission # 5: To what extent do we lose cognitive power as we get older?

I found this article the other day through StumbleUpon, which is a website where you add your interests and it will take you to websites based on those interests. It’s a really fun thing to do when you are bored or when you want to find something new. The article I found (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/older-people-dont-lose-cognitive-power-they-just-know-too-much-say-scientists-9074205.html ) was about elderly people and how they don’t lose their ability to recall knowledge, they just take longer to recall knowledge because they have so much of it. The article explains it like a computer; a brand new computer will run fast because it doesn’t have so many files and data to slow it down; whereas an old computer will take longer to load a file because it has so much data and has been pulling up files for a long time, thus wearing itself out.

            Our brain is extremely complex when it comes to our memory. Memory is very selective on what it stores; there are three basic steps to the storage and remembering of our memories. Encoding; this is the labeling of memories for storage. Consolidation; this is the storing of our memories. Lastly, there is retrieval; this is the remembering of memories. Because memory storing is a highly selective process, we only remember the very important things and we lose the memory of other not so important things. Let us say, for example, we create 100,000 memories a year. Multiply that by 80 years and we have 8,000,000 memories stored. I like to compare this to the movie Inside Out (if you have not seen it already, I highly recommend you do). Inside Out is a children’s movie about memories and emotions. Each memory that the protagonist has is stored into a ‘memory orb’ which are stored in her brain: shown here: