Is it who I think it is?

"Is it who I think it is?"
"I don't know ....who do you think I am?" is the ironic reply I've often whispered back.  But not any more. That funny in others but not in yourself senior's syndrome of insisting you recognise a stranger has now smitten me. Fortunately the lady at the checkout yesterday was good natured about it. Not so sure about her husband?
So I've been looking for a cure and it could be that help is on the way. 
In some collaborative research at Pennsylvania Uni's Penn Memory Centre (how many ironic remarks must they get in a day) they've established that memory decline is related to ageing.
Well yes I knew that - although I had forgotten?
All the evidence suggests that our anterior temporal lobes are critically involved in the retrieval of people's names.  And in experiments with photographed faces the recall level of the participants was significantly improved by passing a small electrical current through these lobes.
The scientists do point out that this is not the electro-convulsive therapy famously depicted in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest!"  Be that as it may - the equipment still won't be available for £25 alongside the tens machines at my local Llloyds Pharmacy.
So - interesting but not immediately helpful!
However, of more immediate help is an excellent workbook available from http://www.mindtools.com/ which gets you practicing the association technique for remembering faces and names. Hopefully that will cure me of calling Oz "Joe" when I'm in the office on Friday - and save me from that understanding look he gives!
I also like the help suggested by some research carried out in 2008 at the University of Michigan http://tinyurl.com/236d4d that showed that talking to people can significantly improve memory.
In one of the studies a  sample of 3600 people of representative ages, demographics etc were classified according to their frequency of social contact - how often they got out and connected with people. The participants completed the mini-mental state examination and the results clearly show improving levels of success commensurate with increasing levels of social contact. The study also reports that social isolation can have detrimental effects that are both emotional and intellectual - something referred to as the "Bowling alone" syndrome.

So there's a clear message for us here my fellow OnWeGo'ers - especially those of us in the work-from-home fraternity  - get too isolated and you may not remember your own name.
Get back out there and all those hazy and forgotten facts will come clear again.
I knew my frequent coffee breaks down at Costas were for a good reason.
I wonder if Carol Vorderman will be there again tomorrow?