Fortunately, I retrieved the fish before it was too late. First, when it comes to incipient memory loss, I've got good reason to worry. Second, there's genetics. While members of my family often live into their 90s, by the time they hit their 70s, a lot of their cognition seems to wane, and their memory is first to go. With the odds stacked against me, I was concerned.
Bookstores bulge with memory-improvement guides.
The Web is awash in memory sites, and numerous hospitals and private therapists teach memory courses. To find out whether any of them work, I spent a couple of weeks researching and sampling the cures. To begin, I telephoned a few experts to learn how common memory complaints such as mine are and how serious they could become. While the brain stores memories in a number of areas, it is the frontal lobe that retrieves them and puts them to work. For all its data-crunching power, the frontal lobe is a fragile thing.