{"product_id":"cant-remember-what-i-forgot-isbn-9780307407887","title":"Can't Remember What I Forgot","description":"Behind the Scenes of Cutting-Edge Memory Research\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Sue Halpern decided to emulate the first modern scientist of memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus, who experimented on himself, she had no idea that after a day of radioactive testing, her brain would become so “hot” that leaving through the front door of the lab would trigger the alarm. This was not the first time while researching \u003ci\u003eCan’t Remember What I Forgot \u003c\/i\u003ethat Halpern had her head examined, nor would it be the last. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike many of us who have had a relative or friend succumb to memory loss, who are getting older, and who are hearing statistics about our own chances of falling victim to dementia, Halpern wanted to find out what the experts really knew, how close science is to a cure, to treatment, to accurate early diagnosis, and, of course, whether the crossword puzzles, sudokus, and ballroom dancing we’ve been told to take up can really keep us lucid or if they're just something to do before the inevitable overtakes us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSharply observed and deeply informed, \u003ci\u003eCan’t Remember What I Forgot\u003c\/i\u003e is a book full of vital information and a solid dose of hope.“Fascinating….[Halpern’s] accomplishment is to have drawn out the myriad threads of these stories, connecting them when possible, to produce a panoramic portrait of an intricate and largely unknown world.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Evincing a gift for perfect analogies and supple metaphors, mischievous humor, and righteous skepticism, Halpern is an exceptionally companionable and enlightening guide through the maze of memory maladies and the promising search for remedies.”\u003cbr\u003e—Donna Seaman, \u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A vivid, often amusing introduction to a science that touches us all.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Engrossing….High-quality science writing: an illuminating picture of investigators at work and a lucid explication of their findings.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Educational, fabulously well written, and on a hot topic. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.\"\u003cbr\u003e— Nancy Fontaine, Library Journal (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like her fellow\u003ci\u003e New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e writer, Malcolm Gladwell, Sue Halpern has the remarkable capacity–genius, actually-- to absorb large amounts of complex information and deliver them to the reader in a comprehensible, engaging, page-turning way.  In \u003ci\u003eCan’t Remember What I Forgot\u003c\/i\u003e, she travels to the cutting-edge of medical and scientific research about memory and reports back with critical information for all of us now dealing with aging parents and with our own aging.  Informative, beautifully written, and hard to put down, this is a book you have to remember not to forget to buy.”\u003cbr\u003e—Julia AlvarezSUE HALPERN is the author of \u003ci\u003eFour Wings\u003c\/i\u003e and a \u003ci\u003ePrayer, Migrations to Solitude\u003c\/i\u003e, and two books of fiction.Author’s Note\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the canted ceiling above my desk is a map of the brain. It\u003cbr\u003eshows the frontal lobe and temporal lobe and parietal lobe and occipital\u003cbr\u003elobe as if they were places to visit–Rome, Milan, Trieste,\u003cbr\u003eSan Remo. The map, of course, is dumb. It says nothing about what\u003cbr\u003egoes on in those places: that deep in the middle of the temporal\u003cbr\u003elobe, which itself is deep in the middle of the brain, there is a tiny,\u003cbr\u003ecashew-shaped region called the hippocampus that is essential to\u003cbr\u003eforming new memories, or that the prefrontal cortex, which sits behind\u003cbr\u003ethe eyebrows, is vital to foresight and being polite and paying\u003cbr\u003eattention, or that the occipital lobe, which brings up the rear of the\u003cbr\u003ebrain, is central to sight itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI look at that map sometimes and think about how it is my own\u003cbr\u003ebrain apprehending it, and that to do so, it is traveling express. And\u003cbr\u003ethen my mind, declaring its independence from my brain, begins to\u003cbr\u003ewander among the events of the day, past and future, and plans for\u003cbr\u003esummer vacation, and concern for a friend who is sick and the dog\u003cbr\u003ein the yard, but never getting so far afield that it doesn’t heed its\u003cbr\u003eown call back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNear the map, tacked to the wall, is a picture of the brain that is\u003cbr\u003edoing all of that and all of this–this writing, thinking, typing,\u003cbr\u003eseeing–my brain, in bright colors, which was taken a few years ago\u003cbr\u003ein California. When I look at that picture I am not only seeing it,\u003cbr\u003ebut recalling that day, or aspects of it, so much has gone out with\u003cbr\u003ethe tide. I took notes on that trip, and carried a digital recorder, and\u003cbr\u003ehave read and reread those notes over the years, and listened to the\u003cbr\u003econversations, so I remember that day better than most, and what I\u003cbr\u003eremember comes with a certain confidence, but even so it is fuzzy. I\u003cbr\u003ecannot say, for instance, what kind of rental car I drove, or what\u003cbr\u003ebook I was reading later that afternoon when I went to the beach,\u003cbr\u003eor which beach, specifically, it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe rely on memory not only to remember, but to walk and dream\u003cbr\u003eand talk and smell and plan and fear and love and think and learn\u003cbr\u003eand more and more and more. Memory is how we know the world–\u003cbr\u003ethat is a tree, this is a sentence–and know ourselves–I like chocolate\u003cbr\u003eice cream, I am a singer–and know ourselves in the world. Amnesiacs\u003cbr\u003emake the case well: it is not, simply, that they don’t remember\u003cbr\u003etheir name or where they live, it is that absent memory, they are\u003cbr\u003estrangers to themselves. The English philosopher John Locke believed\u003cbr\u003ethat we came into the world with our mind a blank slate, a\u003cbr\u003e“tabula rasa,” ready for the pen of experience to inscribe. It’s a perfect\u003cbr\u003emetaphor (even if it’s not exactly true), because it works to describe\u003cbr\u003ewhat it’s like to gain knowledge, and what it’s like to lose your mind.\u003cbr\u003eStroke by uneven stroke, the eraser plies the board.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy father, before he died at the age of seventy-seven, had begun\u003cbr\u003eto know this intimately, though never to the extent that the board\u003cbr\u003ewas wiped so clean that he approached Locke’s natal state. He\u003cbr\u003eknew, and he talked about it–about how frustrating it was to read\u003cbr\u003ethe newspaper and then have to read it again, or to stare at a can\u003cbr\u003eopener, not knowing what it was for, or to pick up the phone to call\u003cbr\u003ea friend, whose funeral he’d attended two years earlier.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile it might have been natural for me to worry that my father’s\u003cbr\u003efate someday would be my own, I didn’t, really. The doctor\u003cbr\u003esaid he didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease, and since Alzheimer’s disease\u003cbr\u003etends to run in families, I figured I was safe. This was not one of\u003cbr\u003ethose calculate-your-odds kind of conclusions. It wasn’t a calculation\u003cbr\u003eat all. At best it was a passing thought. Call it denial, call it repression,\u003cbr\u003eor maybe arrogance, I just figured that if he didn’t have\u003cbr\u003eAD, what was it to me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut later, after he was gone, and all that was left were my memories,\u003cbr\u003esome photos, and the key-chain recorder my mother made\u003cbr\u003ehim carry like a pair of military dog tags at the end in case he got\u003cbr\u003elost, into which he spoke his name, his phone number, and his\u003cbr\u003estreet address in the flattest of voices, I began to wonder. What if\u003cbr\u003ethe doctor had been wrong? Almost everyone I knew had a parent\u003cbr\u003eor an in-law or a favorite aunt or a colleague or a neighbor or a\u003cbr\u003egrandfather or a friend or a friend of a friend who had Alzheimer’s,\u003cbr\u003eas if the standard six degrees of separation had been universally\u003cbr\u003eabridged to one or two. But another question bothered me more:\u003cbr\u003ewhat if the doctor had been right? What I mean is: what if my father\u003cbr\u003ehadn’t been sick?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was not a wishful fantasy about what my father’s last years\u003cbr\u003ewould have been like if, when going to the basement to sort the recycling,\u003cbr\u003ehe didn’t lose track of which items went in which bin and\u003cbr\u003estood there, paralyzed by confusion, for half an hour, or if he hadn’t\u003cbr\u003ethought he’d filed his income tax when he hadn’t. He knew who his\u003cbr\u003echildren were. He remained interested in politics. He had never\u003cbr\u003eneeded to activate the key-chain recorder. The question, rather,\u003cbr\u003ewas a kind of private, one-person, one-vote referendum on sickness\u003cbr\u003eand health: if he wasn’t sick, what was going on?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince it is the nature of questions to beget more questions before\u003cbr\u003ethey yield answers, I soon stopped thinking about my father,\u003cbr\u003especifically, or about myself, even when I wondered why, for instance,\u003cbr\u003ethe memory of a forty-four-year-old was generally better\u003cbr\u003ethan the memory of a seventy-seven-year-old (or was it?), and why\u003cbr\u003ethe memory of a twenty-six-year-old was better than both. The answer\u003cbr\u003eto this was not as obvious as it might appear. If age were the\u003cbr\u003eculprit, what, precisely, was it stealing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the popular literature I kept coming across references to the\u003cbr\u003ebrain that made it sound like a muscle. “Use it or lose it” was the standard\u003cbr\u003edogma. I read countless self-help books that promised to help\u003cbr\u003etheir readers “use it,” and compiled a stack of newspaper articles\u003cbr\u003ethat touted crossword puzzles and sudokus as the mental equivalents\u003cbr\u003eof jogging and strength-training, and the more of these I looked at,\u003cbr\u003ethe more curious it all seemed to me: I understood that these activities\u003cbr\u003ewere supposed to be good for you because, apparently, they\u003cbr\u003ebuilt mental muscle, but why was that? Was there a physiological\u003cbr\u003eresponse to crossword puzzles, something that happened to the body\u003cbr\u003eby doing them, and just whom did they help? Anyone of any age?\u003cbr\u003ePeople with mild memory problems? The worried well? People who\u003cbr\u003ewere sick? And if they were beneficial for people who were sick as\u003cbr\u003ewell as people who were not, was that because the same thing was\u003cbr\u003egoing wrong in the healthy brains that had already gone awry in\u003cbr\u003epathological ones?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe questions piled up in my notebook, a sign, perhaps, that I\u003cbr\u003ewas using my brain, but to what end? Books evolve idiosyncratically,\u003cbr\u003etheir single law of natural selection being, it seems, that they\u003cbr\u003echoose you. I began calling up neuroscientists and spending time\u003cbr\u003ewith doctors and sometimes their patients. They were in New York,\u003cbr\u003eNew Haven, San Francisco, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Chicago,\u003cbr\u003eLos Angeles, and Irvine. They were in England and the Dominican\u003cbr\u003eRepublic and Canada and Italy and Iceland. To friends or acquaintances\u003cbr\u003ewho, upon hearing what I was doing, told me their particular\u003cbr\u003ememory complaint or expressed a more generalized worry, I could\u003cbr\u003etell them how many smart and committed people were out there\u003cbr\u003elooking for genes and molecules, developing drugs and vaccines,\u003cbr\u003esearching out cures and therapies in plants and minerals already at\u003cbr\u003ehand. These bench scientists and clinicians were making headway.\u003cbr\u003eMoore’s law–the one about the speed of microprocessors doubling\u003cbr\u003eevery eighteen months–didn’t quite apply, but there was progress\u003cbr\u003ebeing made and I was seeing it. (I was also seeing rogues and patent\u003cbr\u003emedicine salesmen, but doesn’t every court have its jesters?)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe other thing I kept running into was lots of exclamations. A\u003cbr\u003eweek couldn’t go by, it seemed, without an announcement of a breakthrough\u003cbr\u003edrug, a breakthrough gene, a breakthrough gene mutation, a\u003cbr\u003ebreakthrough cognitive therapy, a breakthrough food, a breakthrough\u003cbr\u003eherb–so many breakthroughs that it seemed as though whatever\u003cbr\u003ewall there had been between us and the dark should have come\u003cbr\u003edown already, letting us bask in the sunshine of the eternal mind\u003cbr\u003ecure. But hey, not so fast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore a drug can come to market, before a therapy can be designed,\u003cbr\u003eand (more often than not) before a body can be healed, you\u003cbr\u003ehave to know where the problem lies. In medicine that knowledge\u003cbr\u003eis often found at the cellular or molecular or genetic level, somewhere\u003cbr\u003ein the mix of proteins of which we are made. To get through\u003cbr\u003ethe hyperbole and hype and promises and platitudes that now attend\u003cbr\u003eto most public discussions about memory (which almost always,\u003cbr\u003ethese days, seem to be about memory impairment), I had to\u003cbr\u003efind out what the molecular biologists and cell biologists and biochemists\u003cbr\u003eand geneticists knew. This meant spending time in brainscanning\u003cbr\u003esuites and chemistry labs and mice nurseries and hospitals\u003cbr\u003eand pharmaceutical companies, and attending scientific meetings,\u003cbr\u003eand reading research papers with unintelligible titles. Because there\u003cbr\u003eare now many ways to look at the brain, I also made sure mine was\u003cbr\u003eexamined using each of them, in honor of one of the first scientists\u003cbr\u003eof memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus, who made it a point to experiment\u003cbr\u003eupon himself. Still, as a neuroscientist at Yale pointed out to\u003cbr\u003eme, “you can’t tell much from an \u003ci\u003eN \u003c\/i\u003eof 1.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn our own lives, by definition, we are always \u003ci\u003eN\u003c\/i\u003es of 1, which is\u003cbr\u003eone reason why the prospect of getting sick can be so scary, and why\u003cbr\u003ebeing sick is scarier still, especially if either of those conditions\u003cbr\u003eentails the loss of self. (Can there be an \u003ci\u003eN \u003c\/i\u003eof −1?) If we’re lucky,\u003cbr\u003eof course, our \u003ci\u003eN\u003c\/i\u003es connect–directly, contiguously, through each\u003cbr\u003eother–which is how families and communities are formed. It is also\u003cbr\u003ehow, in science, evidence mounts and findings are made and then\u003cbr\u003econfirmed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the years that I was writing this book, crucial findings about\u003cbr\u003ememory loss and Alzheimer’s and normal memory and medicines\u003cbr\u003eand cognitive therapy were made and confirmed, and even where\u003cbr\u003ethey were not, the ball was pushed farther up the pitch. From my\u003cbr\u003eseat the view has been outstanding, and from what I have seen\u003cbr\u003ethere are many reasons to cheer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRipton, Vermont\u003cbr\u003eNovember 2007\u003c\/i\u003eWith a New Afterword by the Author","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304690503909,"sku":"NP9780307407887","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307407887.jpg?v=1767723351","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/cant-remember-what-i-forgot-isbn-9780307407887","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}