Here's how communications with my partner go these days: "Would you mind calling my mobile? I can't remember where I've left it." Or "Where are my glasses? Oh, they're on my head."
As the first of the baby-boom generation turns 70 this year, it's not heart disease or cancer we fear most but dementia.
![Sherlock Holmes: the best-known user of the "memory palace" technique.](/web/20170106145152im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/k/r/y/l/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtimsm.png/1483413365726.jpg)
Many of us have given up smoking, reduced our alcohol intake, and taken to Nordic walking and Pilates in the hope of warding off the traditional diseases of old age. We tend to laugh off memory lapses with a dismissive "oops, senior moment...", and carry on, hoping things won't get worse. But the reality is that when it comes to the business of memory, we feel we're groping in the dark.
For those whose brain cells are degenerating and dying more quickly than they would as part of the normal ageing process, there is no evidence that brain training can help to prevent dementia. However, for the worried well, there is scant, but growing, support for the idea that we can give our brains a boost. Brain training can potentially provide the kind of workout that will improve memory, focus, language and problem-solving skills in the short term, and stave off the loss of mental agility that is an inevitable part of the passing years.
Which is how I come to be sitting nervously opposite Nelson Dellis, 32, the current US memory champion, who can remember 339 digits in five minutes. Due to be launched at the end of January as part of the popular brain-training app Peak, his memory masterclass promises to help us all to remember names, faces and even dreaded passwords.
Dellis begins by writing down a list of 20 random words, which I have three minutes to learn, and then tests me on my recall. I have no system at all, other than pairing the words French and cheese, which both appear on the list. Most of the time I'm staring blankly at the page thinking I'll never remember a single item on it. When Dellis tests me, I'm chuffed to remember 15. Five minutes later, he tests me again and I'm down to 12. I clearly have a way to go.
He then invites me to create a "memory palace" – a time-honoured technique (employed by Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes) that creates unlikely images and pairings of words and places them in a particular environment. Twenty more random words come my way, and, this time, I place them in pairs on various objects around the room. So "dinosaur" and "split" become, in my mind's eye, a dinosaur doing the splits, sitting on a stool in the corner of the office. When I'm tested, I do slightly better than on the first group of words. That evening, back home, I can remember only 11 from the first group, but now I can conjure up images and remember all 20 from the second. And, a week later, I can reel off all 20 from group two in seconds, while recalling only five or six from group one. My memory appears to be improving.
Brain-training apps and online programmes are big business – Peak has been downloaded 15 million times worldwide since its launch in 2014 – because, like crosswords and sudoku, they are challenging, addictive and fun, but with more room for innovation. I quickly find myself hooked. But as my ranking improves, the sceptic in me wonders whether my mental agility and problem-solving skills are really getting better or whether I've just got the hang of the games.
Recent research has proved encouraging. A study of an online brain-training package conducted by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London and involving almost 7000 people over 50 found that online games that challenged reasoning and memory skills could have significant benefits for older people.
Another study, at the University of Sydney, pulled together the results from 17 clinical trials of computer-based brain training and concluded that people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) could improve memory, learning and thinking skills, as well as mood.
Having had a taster of Dellis' memory-boosting technique, I'm busy testing his memory masterclass while doing my daily Peak workout. It seems to me that brain-training apps are like a gentle workout, rather than being destined to bring about big changes. The memory masterclass, on the other hand, supplies techniques that translate to real-life situations.
I still don't know where I've put my glasses, but after counting and visualising all 24 items on my shopping list yesterday, I deliberately left it at home. When I arrived at the supermarket, there wasn't a single item I had forgotten.
Telegraph, London
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