SHOULD YOU BE TAKING A MEMORY PILL? Can't put names to faces or remember where you left that thingamabob? Drug companies insist you need controversial new medicines...(Features)

Byline: JOHN NAISH

CAN'T remember your PIN number? Or the name of that film you love? Or why you just walked into the kitchen? We've all had those moments of forgetfulness and, quite naturally, worry about what's happening to our memory.

As our lives get more complicated and hurried, recollecting all the things we need to know seems to get ever tougher.

Now Scottish researchers have invented a new malaise to describe this type of memory loss -- Busy Lifestyle Syndrome (BLS). According to doctors at CPS Research, a Glasgow-based clinical trials company, the syndrome is caused by hectic lives bombarded with information overload from iPhones, BlackBerrys, TV, radio and the internet.

'We believe there are widespread signs of the problem,' says spokeswoman Angela Scott-Henderson. 'Our attention spans and concentration levels are going down. It's getting more common, affecting people at younger ages.'

Last week, the company announced it was launching a trial to see if low doses of the drug memantine, normally given to Alzheimer's patients, could boost our overdrawn memory banks.

The firm says it has since been besieged by eager volunteers.

In fact, this trial is just the vanguard of a widespread push by drug companies to create a lucrative new business in 'memory pills'. They clearly believe there is a massive potential market for people worried about their brains.

But should we really be taking powerful new drugs to boost our memory? And is there even such a problem in the first place?

The fact is, forgetting things is normal. Scientific studies show perfectly healthy people can suffer up to 30 mental lapses of the 'Why did I come upstairs?' kind every week.

Finnish psychologist Dr Maria Jonsdottir discovered this by asking 189 healthy volunteers aged from 19 to 60 to record their lapses for a week, and concluded that such episodes 'do not mean something is wrong with that person's brain'.

In an increasingly frenetic world of mobiles, emails and multi-channel TV, the more things we do and see, the more likely we are to forget other things.

IT IS simple maths. If we naturally forget a tenth of what is going on, then that tenth is going to be bigger if there is more going on in our lives. It might explain why the number of mobile phones left behind on Dublin buses is about 40 a week.

The problem is we tend to expect far too much from our memory banks, says Dr Jo Iddon, a neuropsychologist and co-author of The Memory Booster Guide.

'Many people worry about their memory being awful. We all think we have a worse memory than we do,' she says. 'We are perfectionists and like things to be predictable. But memory isn't predictable.

'The fact is, we all make these odd mistakes. Your memory is affected by how tired you are, if you are hungover, or if you have got something stressful or tiring going on in your life, such as a new baby.'

Our manically busy lives often leave us short of sleep and this can seriously affect our ability to remember things.

In one study published in the journal Sleep, researchers found that people who slept fewer than six hours a night for two weeks scored far worse on memory and cognitive tests than those who slept eight hours. One reason suggested by the study is that staying awake for prolonged periods affects our brain's ability to pay attention -- we remember less because we noticed less.

But there is more. Proper sleep enables our minds to sort and file our memories into things we keep and things we discard.

SCIENTISTS have discovered that during deep sleep, the brain layers our impressions of the day's events into memory and memory associations. Research shows that when we are in our main phase of dreaming -- called REM sleep -- the cortex area of our brain, which is responsible for consciousness, is sending impulses to the hippocampus, one of the main areas for memory storage.

The result is crucial to memory formation. If we don't sleep soundly, however, the whole process is disrupted.

People are becoming increasingly concerned about their memory because they see items on dementia in the media or have a relative with the condition, says Dr Iddon.

About 44,000 people in Ireland suffer from dementia, with 66 per cent of these being affected by Alzheimer's disease. People fear that what are, in fact, ordinary memory problems are instead a sign of the inexorable decline into this horrible disease.

On top of this, we are surrounded by machines that don't ever forget things. This makes our wonderfully clever grey matter seem feeble by comparison. Fear of memory loss means memory aids are already becoming big business.

Legions of the 'worried well' are queuing to pay for workshops, selfhelp books and expensive herbal and nutritional supplements with names such as Focus Factor and Neuro-Natural Memory.

Then there is a fast-growing market in computerised braintraining games such as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, played on the Nintendo DS console, even though they have not been shown conclusively to help.

And now the pharmaceutical industry is entering the race. Teams of university researchers in Edinburgh, Texas and California, as well as big drug companies such as Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca, are all working on memory boosters.

These employ a variety of strategies -- such as promoting the growth of new brain cells, blocking hormones that promote forgetfulness and boosting levels of brain chemical norepinephrine, which is used to form short-term memories.

Such drugs are initially aimed at treating Alzheimer's, but they could also be licensed for over-thecounter sales in a few years. They would then create a whole new moneyspinning market in which masses of people buy daily pills for decades.

As has happened with shyness and other personality traits, normal forgetfulness could soon become medicalised to suit drug companies' need for profit. There is clearly a market for such products. Indeed, surveys show that so-called 'mind-boosting' drugs are already being taken surreptitiously in Ireland by thousands of healthy people, particularly academics and students.

The drugs used include Adderall XR and Ritalin -- treatments for attention deficit disorder. But brain-boosting drugs may have serious sideeffects. Memantine, the substance involved in the BLS trial, can cause dizziness and insomnia and may actually worsen confusion in some people. Other memory drugs have been found to cause stomach problems, nausea and vomiting, while Adderall can raise blood pressure.

A study in February warned that long-term use of amphetamine drugs such as Ritalin may significantly raise the risk of Parkinson's disease.

And then there is the question: how good do you really want your memory to be?

Having a brilliant memory can be a curse. Persistent memories are at the heart of post-traumatic disorder, where the brain will not stop replaying a terrible event.

In fact, researchers are developing drugs to help people with such disorders to forget what happened to them. The drugs aim to boost levels of the compound called BDNF, which is naturally produced in the brain and helps to overwrite memories.

The fact is that forgetting is part of how a healthy brain works. So it should be little surprise that useful things sometimes get deleted among the constant memorydumping that our brains do as everyday housekeeping.

If your brain did not forget things, you would continually be recalling all kinds of useless information -- it would bury you in mental clutter.

Just such a hellish problem afflicts Jill Price. The 45-year-old can recall, in minute video replay-type detail, virtually every day since she was 14. This includes witnessing her husband Jim die of diabetic complications.

FOR most people, such traumas would fade with time, but not for her. 'I have found no escape from the repetition in my mind of the day Jim collapsed, or the call from his work, or the six days I sat by his hospital bed,' says Jill.

'I find myself remembering those moments every day and I fully expect to do so for the rest of my life.

'My memory is too strong. It's like a running movie that never stops. Most have called it a gift, but I call it a burden. I recall every bad decision, insult and excruciating embarrassment.

'Over the years it has eaten me up. It has kind of paralysed me.'

Jill published a memoir, The Woman Who Can't Forget, in 2008. She is still being studied by researchers at the University of California in Irvine, who have found only three other cases of such severe 'autobiographical' memories.

For the rest of us who are worrying if our absent-mindedness is getting worse, one of the best remedies might be a change of mindset.

If you worry that your memory is bad, it will get worse; conversely, if you raise your confidence in your brain, it boosts your recall.

So suggests research by Margie Lachman, a professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Massachusetts. She asked 335 adults, aged from 21 to 83, to take memory tests and also asked them to rate their selfconfidence.

'Belief in your ability to retain a good memory helps make it happen,' she says. 'Our study shows the more you believe there are things you can do to remember information, the more likely you will be to use effort and helpful strategies such as mnemonics and to allocate resources effectively, and the less you will worry about forgetting.'

While many of us see memory decline as an inevitable part of the ageing process, Professor Lachman says these beliefs are detrimental because they mean you simply give up trying.

Her findings are supported by another study, by Dr Sophie Parker, a researcher at New Zealand's Victoria University. She set up a fake drug company with its own website, DVDs and posters promoting a powerful new memory drug.

In fact, the drug was a sham. But when she gave it to 300 people, their concentration and recall improved significantly.

This is because people given the 'pill' were more likely to use active strategies to remember things, rather than relying on automatic memory processes. This improved their concentration and recall. 'People unwittingly acted in ways that improved their memory,' she says.

So, just remember -- your memory is absolutely fine. As for the memory pill? It might be best to forget it.