Memories start slipping away from young age

LONDON - Memory loss, far from striking late in life, creeps up on people from their mid-20s, an American psychologist's research shows.

Dr Denise Park of the University of Michigan found that performance in a wide variety of memory tasks deteriorates steadily from an early age.

"It's not as though you hit 60 or 70 and fall apart. We're falling apart as we speak," New Scientist magazine quoted her as saying.

Dr Park tested 350 people from 20-somethings to octogenarians.

She found that the decline in performance between the 70s and 80s was the same as that between the 20s and 30s, dispelling popular notions that mental abilities fall sharply after a particular age.

Dr Fergus Craik, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, said the results were surprising, both because the decline started so early and because it seemed to happen at the same rate for many different memory tasks.

- REUTERS