Customer Reviews

Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are looking for a self-help book, there are plenty out there. But as Sue Halpern shows in this beautifully written exploration of modern memory research, many of them simply spout platitudes and propose "remedies" that have little basis in science. Halpern gets behind the hype and tries to tell us what really works and why it works, and she introduces us to the people who are searching for cures and therapies. By the end I felt like I had a much broader understanding of what was going on with my own memory and that I was much better equipped to talk to my doctor about my concerns, both of which seem like the best kind of help a book could offer, even for a book that is in no way a self-help book. And it's fun to read, too.

This is a really wonderful book--it's just that it's about normal memory loss, not catastrophic types like Alzheimers. I.e., about the thing that's affecting all of us as we age, and keeping us from remembering where the hell the car keys are.

The author, who has a piece about PTSD in last week's New Yorker, has been in all the cutting-edge labs, and indeed has let them scan her brain with all the latest gear. It describes what scientists are discovering about the brain, and about what you can do to keep yours working better longer--hint, I'm going out for a run now.

Sue Halpern does a tremendous job of taking a complex area of study (neuroscience) and boiling it down to relevant, digestible information. I was impressed with her ability to distill the information in a way that can help non-scientists understand clinical issues, diagnostics and best practices. Additionally, it was a pleasure to see an author become well enough acquainted with the scientific process and the specific subject matter to recommend that consumers purchase products with independent, peer-reviewed research backing up their claims. Thank you for doing the work and providing consumers with useful guidance. Three cheers!

Sue Halpern takes the reader on a fascinating and provocative safari through the wilds of the human brain in this new book. Conventional wisdom should run and hide from Halpern's penetrative gaze: forget what you thought you knew about how memory functions, this book's tour of the frontlines of memory research tosses out old theories about how to stay sharp into old age and offers quality (and scientific) advice on how to keep your melon from meandering. So put down the crossword puzzle, read this book, and then call up an old flame and take him or her out ballroom dancing - you'll see what I mean when you finish Halpern's masterpiece. Bravo!

Sue Halpern writes with vivid clarity, honesty and empathy about that scary, complex world that looms before us all -- aging,and memory loss. She makes it a lot less scary by explaining the science so clearly, and by helping us understand that forgetting is "normal." She sifts through all the confusing studies and tells us what really works (aerobic exercise and, maybe, blueberries). And she takes us into the labs, and minds, of some of the brilliant neurologists who are working on the front lines of memory research. This book is packed with science -- understandable science -- and humanity.

I hoped this book would be practically helpful for a family member with pretty severe short-term memory problems. It was actually a sort of "travel book" - a tour of scientists who are studying memory problems generally.

It's good if you are interested in a general tour but, for me, this was unfortunate since I had hoped this book would be practically helpful for a family member with pretty severe short-term memory problems. It contained very few useful tips, most of which are already widely publicized, such as drinking red wine (apparently it's the flavanols, like green tea) and aerobic exercise as well as walking (two miles a day in one study, just one and a half hours a week in another) - also ballroom dancing is tops of all leisure activities. Chocolate, because of its flavanols, receives several pages; although it warns that the chocolate should not be processed in the usual way it doesn't suggest which chocolate brands are best - rather irritating but fortunately I have since learned elsewhere that we need to use the raw, organic cacao bean.

More helpful was "The Brain That Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge. One elderly doctor interviewed by the author recommended one of those computer-based programmes with mental exercises scientifically designed to improve memory which he personally had found beneficial and we bought it immediately. It was hard to get our loved one to use it though (memory problems apparently tend to affect those who don't really use their minds that much - or who take certain types of drugs: read "Lipitor: Thief of Memory " and your blood will run cold) and in the end we did not see much improvement although we suspect it wasn't used for long enough.

Later note: anti-anxiety medication was the most practically helpful step, showing benefits within hours, despite the medics saying it takes weeks.

Because her father suffered some kind of not-clearly-diagnosed dementia near the end of his life, Sue Halpern was concerned that she might have inherited a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease. So she went to talk to neuroscientists. And took memory tests. And watched other people taking memory tests. And talked to nutritionists, and lots of other people in, around, and related to the "memory loss" field, including some who were making good money promoting various "how to" classes. The result is sort of a smorgasbord of what's out there, and the reader can meander around and pick and taste.

"Can't Remember What I Forgot" includes the promising, the questionable, and the dismaying, but spread out for our inspection are a lot of nuggets of interest. My favorite, and perhaps the hero of the book is Scott Small, who, using techniques he himself developed, came to the conclusion that the part of the brain that is impaired in Alzheimer's patients is not the same as the part impaired in "normal" forgetting that supposedly is a function of aging. Next nugget, not particularly in any order, is research that suggests that eating blueberries promotes the growth of new neurons in rats (and maybe in people). Next, the nugget of research that suggests that aerobic exercise is a good way of staving off memory loss. Another nugget of research suggests that people with a lot of education are less likely to develop Alzheimer's than people without. Since we're visiting a lot of booths at the bazaar, we also visit some people selling exercises that hopefully will increase the ability to memorize long lists of items, a skill that supposedly helps guard against . . . Against what? Mind deterioration? Memory loss? Alzheimer's?

Somewhere along the way I start having questions. Altzheimer's disease apparently involves the loss of personality and selfhood along with the loss of memory. These aren't quite the same things, or are they, and why does the book concentrate so much on memory? Does becoming more adept at remembering names make a person more adept at dealing with a doctor office mistake? More adept at driving one's way to a location not previously visited? It would be good to get an informed explanation on the connection between memory skills and other skills. And what about the research that says educated people are less susceptible to Alzheimer's--I can think of lots of counter examples, so what exactly does the research say, and how reliable is it? More important, what is it leaving out? What about all the programs selling memory loss prevention? Why am I reminded of the people who used to hawk glass knives at vacation resorts?

I find I'd like to ask these and other questions of someone really expert in the field, who works at it day by day, who has infinite patience and (since the answers will be in a book) excellent popular science writing skills. Someone like, say, Stephen Jay Gould or Stephen Hawking, only a neuroscientist instead of a paleontologist or a physicist. My imagined someone would have strong opinions on where the field is and where it might be going. This someone would be very authoritative, someone with lots of experience and, more important, lots of good sense, someone whom I could trust. In short, I read this book sort of wishing I were reading another book in the same field but a book that exists only in my mind's eye, unless it is out there and I don't know about it.

In the book's favor: (1) it gathers in one place all the items you think you came across in the science section of a good newspaper, plus some you missed and (2) plain and simple, it is very interesting.

I was a bit disappointed with this book. I thought it would talk a lot more about the different types of memory we have and the different types of research that is being done about memory. The book mainly focuses on Alzheimer's disease which is something that does not really interest me. The book is basically about Alzheimer's disease and the type of research that is being done about it. If you are interested in the subject then you might find it helpful. It was a very easy read and not too technical.
I found the author spent a bit too much time talking about herself when she could have used that time in discussing ways on helping people with it.

Do you have trouble remembering names? Forget where you parked your car at the mall? Miss an appointment? Most of us do from time to time, then wonder uneasily if we're showing signs of dementia. (According to the Alzheimer's Association, 64% of Americans worry about getting Alzheimer's at some point in their lives.) Should we worry? Sue Halpern has written a wonderfully readable book about memory and brain function. She explains the different types of memory, the way the brain stores and retrieves memory and the various approaches researchers are taking in order to help people with memory problems and she does so in a thorough but non-technical way. This ultimately hopeful and reassuring book is like having a conversation with a knowledgeable friend.

And while I still can't find my car keys or remember the first name of the guy who fixed my sink, I don't feel quite as anxious about it as I did before.

I enjoyed this book immensely. No matter how difficult the science being discussed, the prose is always lucid and entertaining. Sue Halpern writes with authority and good humor. As the title suggests, there is much to be encouraged about in the field of memory research. I am comforted that so many committed scientists are working so hard to cure the plague of Alzheimer's Disease. We don't know much about the human brain, but we know a hell of a lot more today than we did ten years ago.