Today is Memorial Day, when we honor the many sons and daughters of America who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. It’s fitting that this holiday is called Memorial Day (it used to be called Decoration Day) because memory is essential to honor. We can honor only what we remember.

We are also coming to the end of mental health awareness month, and the ability to learn and remember correctly is a feature of mental wellness. We do become increasingly concerned about this ability as we age. According to Harvard Health, the ability to remember changes with age. But we need not panic! “Many of these changes are signs of normal aging, not dementia.”

I learned recently about the seven distinct flaws of normal memory through Harvard Health Publishing (HHP), a division of Harvard Medical School. These flaws are the most common ways that memory fails us. They were defined by Professor Daniel Schacter and developed in his book The Seven Sins of Memory. According to Dr. Schacter, some of these flaws become more pronounced with age, but, unless they “become extreme or persistent, they are not considered indicators of Alzheimer’s or other memory-impairing illness.” Here the seven flaws.

Transience

Transience “is the tendency to forget facts or events over time,” a most normal occurrence. When our brain receives new information, it stores it in short-term memory. But the information does not stay there long; a good bit of it fades away, because “memory has a use it or lose it quality.” If we’re using and recalling information regularly, we’re less likely to forget it.

Transience is not a sign of memory weakness. Says Professor Schacter, scientists regard it as beneficial. Why? “It clears the brain of unused memories, making way for new and more useful ones.” It’s like clearing out junk or temporary files from our computer.

Absentmindedness

Who hasn’t put down their car keys and not been able to find them moments later, or searched for a pair of shades that were sitting right atop their head? These are examples of absentmindedness. Absentmindedness happens when you are learning new information or doing something while thinking of something else or not thinking of anything in particular; your brain does not securely encode or acquire what it was you learned or did. Absentmindedness also involves “forgetting to do something at the prescribed time.”

Is there a way to avoid absentmindedness? Yes. Identify things that can serve as “reminder cues,” e.g., if you want to remember to take your medicine at a particular time, say, at night, associate it with brushing your teeth, and that will serve as your cue.

Blocking

I know the name of the show, but I just can’t recall it. It’s on the tip of my tongue! This is blocking: the “temporary inability to retrieve a memory.” The memory you are trying to recall is properly stored in your brain, “but something is keeping you from finding it.” This something is a competing memory “that is so intrusive, you can’t think of the memory you want.” Scientists have dubbed competing or blocking memories “ugly sisters,” “because they are domineering like the stepsisters in…” the name will come to me! And it usually does. Says Dr. Schacter, “Most people are able to retrieve about half of their blocked memories within a minute.” Cinderella!

Misattribution

What is misattribution? “Right memory, wrong source.” You can correctly remember the details of an event but incorrectly remember how you came to learn about it. This memory flaw increases with age, but it can happen to anyone. It is generally harmless but “can have profound consequences” in the criminal justice system and in academics. For instance, plagiarism: you believe the point you argued was original “when in fact it came from something you read or heard and forgot about.”

Suggestibility

This is one memory flaw I believe advertisers and marketing gurus exploit. Our memory is vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Here’s the example given by Dr. Schacter: You hear a car’s anti-theft alarm go off; you turn in the direction of the noise to see a man in a brown sweater running away. Later, at the police station, you are shown pictures of suspects and asked to identify the person you saw; you’re uncertain, until you see a picture of a man in a brown sweater and then you are certain that he’s the culprit.

Not much is known about how suggestibility works in the brain, but, according to Professor Schacter, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it is a real memory. This kind of memory flaw “may be the culprit in recollections that adults have of childhood incidents that didn’t really happen.”

Bias

This memory flaw reminds us that memory is not objective. Memory, no matter how perfect, says the scientists, does not work like a camera and is not a snapshot of reality. When I was helping my mother with her memoir, I had reason to cross-reference some of her details with historical records. After discovering a few inconsistencies, I remarked to her that just because she remembered an event a certain way does not mean it happened that way. Our personal biases can affect our sense of reality when they are “encoded in the brain.” Biases can originate in “experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge and even your mood at the moment you’re learning new information.” These biases can influence the information you recall.

Here is a point about this memory flaw that should concern us all. Bias can play a destructive role in people prone to depression. They tend to remember negative information better and with greater frequency than positive information. This is called “negative memory bias,” and it is a risk factor for depression. How so? “Constantly remembering sad things that happen to you more than happy things is likely to sustain a depressed mood.”

Persistence

There are some things we should want to forget: “Traumatic events, negative feelings, and ongoing fears.” When we can’t shake such memories from our heads, they are called “persistent memories.” Some of these memories may “accurately reflect horrifying events,” others may be “negative distortions of reality.”

Two groups of people are prone to having persistent traumatic memories: individuals with depression and individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The next time you get yourself into a tizzy about losing your memory, remind yourself:

• The ability to remember changes with age.
• Many of these changes are signs of normal aging, not dementia.
• There are seven common ways our memory fails us: transience, absentmindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence.
• Unless any one of these failures becomes extreme or persistent, you don’t have to worry about having Alzheimer’s or some other memory-impairing illness.

Go on and enjoy your Memorial Day!