By Akshay Syal and Ghael Fobes -
NBC News
Since a report released Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur described President Joe Biden as an “old man with a bad memory,” significant misperceptions have emerged about the cognitive changes associated with aging, according to several neurologists.
The report on Biden's handling of classified documents noted that the president did not accurately remember the period of time in which he served as vice president and had difficulty remembering when his late son, Beau Biden, died.
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The president rejected the report's allegations in a press conference held on Thursday, in which he said: "My memory is fine."
Other recent events in which the 81-year-old president mixed up names of foreign leaders have also come under scrutiny.
However, several neurologists say that forgetting the names of acquaintances or having difficulty remembering dates from the past, especially when under stress, may simply be a normal part of aging.
“If you asked me when my mother died, I couldn't necessarily tell you the exact year, because it was so many years ago,” said Paul Newhouse, clinical chief of the Alzheimer's Research Center at the Vanderbilt Center.
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Almost all elderly patients have trouble remembering people's names, Newhouse said.
“I think it's by far the most universal complaint of all people as they get older,” Newhouse stressed.
In his experience, this type of forgetting doesn't actually predict who will end up suffering from memory disorders.
Only a person's doctor or neurologist can make that diagnosis, not outside observers, brain experts say.
Dennis Selkoe, co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, also said forgetting names doesn't provide much information about possible memory problems.
In fact,
stress and lack of sleep
can interfere with memory, regardless of age.
“Problems remembering names are not an adequate basis for concluding whether an individual has a more consistent and concerning progressive memory disorder,” Selkoe said.
When should memory problems be of concern?
It's normal for older brains to have more difficulty retaining and then retrieving new information, but mental processes like decision-making and judgment can improve with age, according to Thomas Wisniewski, director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at NYU Langone Health. and its Center for Cognitive Neurology.
“Even if raw memory power declines to some degree, perhaps wisdom can increase because the individual has a greater pool of different experiences and situations as to what is best to do,” Wisniewski said.
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The problem is not having difficulty remembering names or calling someone by the wrong name, but when someone's memory is fuzzy about recent or past experiences, Newhouse said.
Problems with episodic memory—memory for events over time or if a person doesn't remember going shopping, for example—can be a sign of a progressive disorder, but not always.
Wisniewski said he worries when people don't even recognize that they are forgetting things.
“They forget that they went shopping and they are not aware that they have forgotten,” he said.
In general, neurologists tend to be less concerned with a patient's ability to remember distant passages from many years ago, and more concerned with the inability to recall more recent events.
This is because dementia first affects the part of the brain responsible for short-term memories, as opposed to long-term memories, Newhouse said.
“What worries me most is: can you remember what happened yesterday?
“Or an hour ago?” Newhouse said.
Although discussions about aging often revolve around a person's decline in memory or functioning, there are cognitive benefits that accompany aging, Selkoe said.
“There is a type of emotional intelligence and ability to handle many different types of experiences in life that come with greater longevity,” he said.
“People can make decisions more carefully and more rationally.”