HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MEMORY

Dr Alexandra Nicole Trelle, a memory researcher at Stanford University, is in the middle of explaining why dozens of research centres around the country are feverishly trying to understand the most effective ways to prevent big memory problems. “There are huge studies in parts of Europe as well, so the scope is really . . .” she says, leaving dead air where more words should be.

“International?” I fill in.

“It’s an international effort,” she says.

It’s a minor lapse, Trelle’s inability to come up with the word international – nothing like the time I blanked on my next-door neighbour’s name when I was introducing her to a friend. But the fallibility and fragility of memory are precisely why so many incredible minds are striving to find effective ways to protect and even augment one of the brain’s most vital functions.

There’s some seriously stuff in the works. Neuroscientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, for instance, recently completed the first-ever human trial of an implant that delivers electrical