Lately,I have noticed that I have a problem with the recall of short-term memories. The usual symptom/description is some book or idea that I want to check out on Google or Wikipedia. I intend to search for the item, but I totally forget it. This usually in in the time frame of 5-45 minutes. Is sch a memory loss common? What causes this?
How are you sleeping? I find that my memory is orders of magnitude worse when I don’t get a good night’s sleep, to the point of being comically bad. “What’s my zip code again? Um…”
I have concentration problems.
If I really want to remember something, I’ll write it down. The act of writing it down causes me to concentrate well, so I usually don’t even have to go back and look at what I wrote. Funny, eh.
Edit:
For example, If I see a term I don’t understand, and I want to look it up, if I don’t do anything, I’ll probably forget. However, if I write it in the corner of my book, I’ll remember it without even having to re-read what I wrote.
Lack of sleep, stress, and when your head is full. Seriously, I think as we all live life and learn things we gradually become more discriminating about the number of things we transfer from short term memory into the archives. If we don’t flag details as important when we learn them they may get filtered out as noise.
I have this. Drinker? I haven’t had a drink in about 4 months, but I spent the previous decade in a vodka bottle. I’m terrified that I killed my brain.
Here is a report on a study explaining just how common it is:
**The Boundary Effect: Entering a New Room Makes You Forget Things
**
And nowadyas anything can act as a boundary - swap tabs a few times while browsing the net and you will have forgotten why you sat down. And interruptions are almost endless.
I’ve heard that some people that smoke a lot of marijuana sometimes encounter issues with…wait…what were we talking about?