How does aging and stress affect memory?

The lecture will be dispelling the myth that older people automatically lose their memory. According to Tania Elaine Schramek, director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress, that's not the case.

"Older people are more vulnerable to stress and stress is a form of interference to memory, so it is connected in a way, but what some people assume is a natural progression of aging, has more to do with other factors," she explains.

According to the researcher, stress interferes with all three steps of the memory process (encoding, consolidation of information and retrieval).

Despite what the vast majority of the public assumes, older people are as susceptible, if not more so, to stress, than younger people are. If you understand the process, you can recognize the effects and decrease your chances of stress affecting your memory.