London - If those “tip of the tongue” moments are becoming more frequent, fear not. They may be frustrating, but they do not indicate an increased risk of dementia, research has found.
Anecdotal evidence has long suggested that this type of memory lapse happens more often as we age – but its relationship to cognitive decline such as Alzheimer’s had never been established.
So American researchers asked more than 700 participants, aged 18 to 99, to give the names of famous places, common nouns or famous people, based on brief descriptions or pictures.
The volunteers indicated which answers they knew, which they did not and which gave them a tip-of-the-tongue experience.
Overall, older participants experienced more of these frustrating moments.
But there was no association between the frequency of tip of the tongue occurrences and their performance on the types of memory tests often used in the detection of dementia.
The University of Virginia researchers said: “Even though increased age is associated with lower levels of episodic memory and with more frequent tip of the tongue experiences, the two phenomena seem to be largely independent of one another.” - Daily Mail