Essay Example: Memory and Intelligence Changes With Age

Memory and intelligence are important for human survival. Human needs memory to recall events, while they need intelligence to process information. One is said to possess good memory if he or she has a strong power to recall past events which might have taken place recently or a very long time ago. However, one is said to possess a weak memory if he or she cannot recall or recall only a few things or nothing that happened recently or a long time ago. On the other hand, one is said to possess high intelligence if he or she can process small or large information in a very short time. The information can be simple or complex. However, one's intelligence is not only measured by how fast him or her process information but also on the complexity of information. People with poor intelligence process simple information in a very long time as compared to intelligent people. Further, people with poor intelligence also have problems processing complex information or solving of complex problems. There are various ways of measuring intelligence. Although memory and intelligence are critical to ones survival, it has been found that they may not be consistent throughout ones life. Recent research activities show that much interest has been focused in the area of memory, intelligence, and aging. It has been hypothesized by various scholars that memory and intelligence deteriorate with aging.

There is a widespread belief that memory and intelligence decline with age (Manard, Carabin, Jaspar, & Collette, 2014). A lot of studies have demonstrated that adults who have attained the age of 60 and over have more memory problems than their younger peers and they are also thought to possess less control in the manner in which their memories are functioning. While such beliefs are widespread, they are not baseless. Evidence has shown that older adults perform poorly as compared to their younger counterparts in a standard neuropsychological assessment that taps memory as well as laboratory examination that recall and recognition. Although deteriorating health has been associated with declining memory and intelligence, the frequency of complaints has been shown to increase even when the variable of health was controlled. The decline in memory with age cannot be attributed to the laboratory experiments since it has been found that older adults perform poorly as compared to younger adults even on tasks that are more ecologically valid. For example, older adults have been found to possess poorer memory for prose as well as for information on simulated medical labels. Although the subject of whether age has an impact on memory and intelligence, other studies have focused on investigating the causes of decline.

Although there is a lot that is yet to be known as to what happens to the memory and intelligence as people age, there are some theories that have been used to explain why there are such changes. To get an idea of why older adults have challenges in memory and intelligence, it is important to study what happens inside their brains. Studies have shown that the volume of the brain is at its peak in the early 20s but gradually begins to shrink for the rest of the life. By the time one attains the age of 40, there is a tendency to forget some things. At that time, the cortex in the brain has begun to shrink (Kwon et al., 2015; Mapstone et al., 2014). Apart from the cortex, other critical sections of the brain also begin to exhibit notable changes. The nerve cells in the brain exhibit some atrophy or they begin to shrink leading to a drastic decline in the extensiveness of the interneuron connections (Mander et al., 2013). As the brain ages, there is a marked decrease in the blood flow. Consequently, the brain becomes less efficient in allocating tasks to different areas. All these brain changes as individual ages have an impact on the speed with which such a personal process information. The speed at which older people process sensory information is quite slow as compared with young people. Conduction velocities within the within the motor as well as sensory nerves decline as one age.

The changes in the brain are associated with the peoples behavior. Since it has been found that decline in blood flow often occurs at the frontal cortex, people usually experience a notable decline in their verbal fluency, or the ability to select the word they wish to speak. Additionally, the older have to work harder when they are planning androgynizing their activities. The areas of the brain that are most affected include the parietal cortex, which influences the construction of vasomotor performance. Additionally, another area that is often drastically affected is the medial temporal area which affects ones ability to not only think with flexibility but also to make new long-term memories. Researchers using advanced neuroimaging and other highly sensitive psychological assessments have disputed claims that as people get older, they undergo a general decline in their mental performance. Rather, the researchers have developed a model that has specific deficits that suggest various rates of decline depending on the individual. The researchers believe that middle-aged sensitivities regarding memory loss may be heightened by comparing one's performance during age-old and ones performance during the youthful age. To them, it is more realistic to perform a comparison of one mental performance to peers of similar age.

Information storage and retrieval have been found to affect all age groups and tend to grow worse with time. Encoding, however, takes not only more time but also more effort. Studies have shown that older people react slowly to stimulus as compared with younger people due to the slow pace in which encoding takes place in their brain. For example, when older people experience a surprising event, their speed of response is usually slowers compared with the young. However, older people have been found to value accuracy as compared with the younger adults.

While the question of memory and age seemed to have been answered, there is controversy regarding the influence of age on ones intelligence. Although a group of aged people can exhibit a lower intelligence as compared with young adults, studies have shown that little changes take place over time (Deary, 2014). For example, tests such as comprehension, vocabulary, and information retention tend to be stable over time. However, on the other hand, tests of speed, tend to decline with time. Still, there is an argument that the traditional methods used to measure intelligence may not have been accurate for measuring intellectual performance as people get older. For example, some researchers argue that given that speed was assigned more weight puts aged people at a disadvantage. Additionally, some researchers contend that as people age, they tend to be more cautious, and thus less susceptible to making mistakes as compared with young people. In practice, that caution can be a critical survival technique. However, laboratory tests suggest that they are biased against the survival value brought about by the slow speed of response among the aged.

It has also been shown that while some type of memory declines with age, another type of the brain either remains the same or improve. For example, a type of memory that is known as semantic memory has been found to improve with time among the adults. Semantic memory has been defined as the ability to recall concepts as well as general facts that are not associated with any specific experience. For example, understanding the concept that watches are used to tell time one of the example of such type of memory. Semantic memory also includes the knowledge of language and vocabulary. However, as it has been discussed, some types of memory has been found to deteriorate over time. This includes such memories as going to a shop and forgetting what one was going to do there or forgetting appointments.

Despite aging, other causes of the decline in memory have been found to be associated with other factors such as diseases and environmental conditions. Studies have shown that other than aging, and apart from Alzheimers disease, other causes of memory deterioration include anxiety, dehydration, depression, infections, medication side effects, poor nutrition, psychological stress, substance abuse, and thyroid imbalance. Although memory performance can decline over time, some tips have been found to help in maintaining or improving its performance. They include socializing, physical activities, training by using pneumonic strategies and avoiding distractions.

References

Deary, I. J. (2014). The stability of intelligence from childhood to old age. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(4), 239-245.

Kwon, D., Maillet, D., Pasvanis, S., Ankudowich, E., Grady, C. L., & Rajah, M. N. (2015). Context memory decline in middle-aged adults is related to changes in prefrontal cortex function. Cerebral Cortex, 26(6), 2440-2460.

Manard, M., Carabin, D., Jaspar, M., & Collette, F. (2014). Age-related decline in cognitive control: the role of fluid intelligence and processing speed. BMC Neuroscience, 15(7).

Mander, B. A., Rao, V., Lu, B., Saletin, J. M., Lindquist, J. R., Ancoli-Israel, S., ... & Walker, M. P. (2013). Prefrontal atrophy disrupted NREM slow waves and impaired hippocampal-dependent memory in aging. Nature Neuroscience, 16(3), 357-364.

Mapstone, M., Cheema, A. K., Fiandaca, M. S., Zhong, X., Mhyre, T. R., MacArthur, L. H., ... & Nazar, M. D. (2014). Plasma phospholipids identify antecedent memory impairment in older adults. Nature medicine, 20(4), 415-418.