forgetfulness
Forgetfulness is a very common complaint in the neurologist's office. It is usually an isolated symptom, like forgetting a pan on the stove, or forgetting to pick up your child/grandchild from school.
It is also very common to complain of memory lapses or difficulty retaining new information, with a drop in performance in college or work.
Forgetfulness does not always mean Alzheimer. Often, forgetfulness is linked to other illnesses, such as mood disorders -3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_and even lack of some specific vitamins in the body.
In most cases, forgetfulness is a symptom associated with nonspecific episodes and is not always associated with disease.
Generally speaking, themood disorders, as depression and anxiety are the most common causes of forgetfulness in everyday life. Be it in the young, the adult and even the elderly.
This happens because the process of learning and retaining information involves various mechanisms, which integrate to bring to light something recently seen or analyzed.
Memory involves a de engineattention and concentration, which is the part of focusing on one subject at a time and not dividing attention with other external stimuli, be it sound (music, noises, parallel conversations) or visual stimulus (like TV on, people walking around).
It also involves a processrepetition (information seen several times has a greater chance of being stored), and a association ability(when you relate an activity to another previously learned one).
If at least one of these processes is compromised, the result can be of amemory deficit.
Anxious patients with depressive disorders or affective disorders often lack external stimuli that reduce their attention. However, their concerns, fears and anguish significantly reduce their ability to concentrate and their ability to associate, leading to very severe memory impairment, with increasingly progressive complaints of forgetfulness.
When to worry about my forgetfulness?
Whenever the complaintforgetfulnessis maintained for long periods, or when it is progressive, with the perception of being increasingly important and especially whenever the memory problem leads to impairments in daily activities, with impairment of routine activities, the_cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ a neurologist should be consulted, so that the actual degree of impairment of the complaint and the need for further investigation can be assessed.