"Carved in Sand:" New Book Looks At Midlife Memory Problems

When forty-something journalist Cathryn Jakobson Ramin started forgetting things, she did what seemed natural: she investigated. Then she wrote about it.

The result of her research is "Carved in Sand: When Attention Fails and Memory Fades In Midlife," which will be in bookstores on April 3, 2007 (click here for Amazon link).

Her publisher says that

Jakobson Ramin sets out to discover what midlife forgetfulness is all about—from the perspectives of physiology, psychology, and sociology. Relentless in her search for answers to questions about her own unreliable memory, she explores the factors that determine how well—or poorly—one's brain will age. She consults experts in the fields of sleep, stress, traumatic brain injury, hormones, genetics, and dementia, as well as specialists in nutrition, cognitive psychology, and the burgeoning field of drug-based cognitive enhancement.

We're working our way through our review copy, but we can already tell you that Jakobson Ramin's first person story is both interesting and fun. Never taking herself or her advisors too seriously, she consults with experts such as UCLA memory expert Dr. Gary Small, complementary medicine guru Dharma Singh Khalsa, neuropsychologists, nutritionists, psychopharmacologists, and mindulness experts, among others. In the process she subjected herself to batteries of tests, MRIs, took various prescription drugs, and played hours of Tetris.

Among other tidbits, she covers the work of Harvard psychology professor Daniel Schacter, who found that blocking -- imagining the thing you want to say, but being unable to find the word for it -- exists in fifty-one languages.

While elements of Jakobson Ramin's journey are clearly her own -- she had repeated mild head trauma as a child, which can cause problems later on -- she also clearly explains the state of the art for anyone interested in knowing "why can't I remember stuff any more?"

The book originated with Jakobson Ramin's 2004 article "In Search of Lost Time" in the New York Times Magazine. According to Jakobson Ramin's website, it was the second most e-mailed article in that Sunday's paper. Readers were fascinated with topic of middle age memory loss. The book provides significantly more depth and gives the reader a sense of their sometimes contradictory array of treatment options.

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NPR's Alex Chadwick discussed the NYT Magazine article with Jakobson Ramin back in 2004; you can hear the interview here (Real Player or Windows Media only).