Have you ever wondered why older people need more time to remember something?
It was long held that the older a person gets, the harder it is for them to recall certain things. This used to be put down to the cognitive capacity of the brain. Now, though, scientists have put forward the theory that the older you get, the more information your brain stores, and the harder it is for it to find the piece you need at a given moment.
"In old age the human brain works more slowly, but only because we store detailed information over a long time," says Dr Ramscar. An old brain is not a weak one; in fact it holds a large volume of information.
The effect can be compared with a computer's hard disk. A hard disk full of information works far more slowly than the same disk when it is empty.
"Imagine someone who knows the birthdays of two people. When he needs them he will recall them quickly and without error," says Dr Ramsler. "Can one really say that his memory is better than that of someone who knows the birthdays of two thousand people but recalls only 90% of them?"