Have you ever: forgotten where you left your keys?

found yourself wandering in a parking lot looking for your car?

entered a room thinking, "What did I come in here for?" been unable to remember a close friend's name?

If so, don't despair. These brief, but frustrating, moments when your memory takes a holiday doesn't mean you are losing your mind. Nevertheless, these incidents can leave you feeling uneasy, especially if you believe they are happening more often than they used to.

Your brain is constantly bombarded with information which, if perceived as unimportant, is stored for only a few seconds. You may retain some of the salient features for a short period of time but they quickly fade into obscurity. Losing your keys or forgetting why you entered a room occurs because you've done nothing to influence your brain to register the information important. It's easy to understand how this short term memory can be challenged when you have a lot on your mind.

On the other hand, remembering someone's name, your address when you were a child or the date of your mother's birthday is a function of more complex long term memory patterns. Accessing this information may sometimes be hazy at first recall but, ultimately, the stored information pops into conscious thought. How many times have you been baffled only to have the information "come to mind" later.

Memory patterns work by creating links between information and a structure we acquire genetically or learn environmentally to retain life experiences. When you were young, and challenged daily in school to remember facts and figures and do the creative thinking necessary to pass exams you used one of two techniques. If you "crammed" for the exam, chances are you forgot the information pretty quickly. But if you created stories around the words and concepts or made associations between different elements of what you had to remember, or used the information repetitively, it is probably still embedded in the memory center of your brain.

Research demonstrates over and over that in healthy individuals memory gets worse only for people whose life is so routine they no longer experience daily memory enhancing events. Memory is like a muscle, if you don't use it you will lose it.

Crossword and other puzzles, logic problems and games challenge the brain to use or create new memory patterns. Whole books have been written about mnemonics. These are the use of a variety of formulas and rhymes and association patterns to recall information you don't want to forget and to sort what is and isn't important when it comes to sorting the immense amount of data necessary to live in today's world.

Since brain memory can't be upgraded as quickly as computer memory, make it a priority to find ways to be brain active. Change the route you take to work or other regular appointments. If you are right-handed, attempt tasks with your left hand (and vice versa). Begin to use your imagination and association patterns to create vivid stories and pictures about information you want to remember. Cultivate your mind and keep it open to new experiences and your memory can get better as you get older.