Harvard Health Blog Trouble with crossword puzzles? Improve your semantic memory POSTED DECEMBER 10, 2019, 10:30 AM Andrew E. Budson, MD, Contributor Can you distinguish the taste of a red wine versus a rosé? How about the look of a 1960s muscle car versus a foreign import? Do you prefer to grow lilies or tulips? Would you rather listen to Dark Side of the Moon or “Fly Me to the Moon”? To answer any of these questions, you need to use your semantic memory. Your semantic memory is your store of factual knowledge of the world and the meaning of words. It’s how you know that a fork is for eating (not twirling your hair) and what color a lion is. It’s both the source of your vocabulary and how you know what something does even if you don’t know the name of it. Learn more »

Get your copy of Improving Memory By age 60, more than half of adults have concerns about their memory. However, minor memory lapses that occur with age are not usually signs of a serious problem, such as Alzheimer’s disease, but rather the result of normal changes in the structure and function of the brain. This report, Improving Memory: Understanding age-related memory loss, describes these normal age-related changes and other more serious causes of memory loss — and how to distinguish between them.

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Improving Memory Featured content: • What is memory? • How we remember • Forgetting: What's normal? • How memory changes with age • Memory impairment: Normal aging or brain disease? •  ... and more! Click here to read more »