Books and Articles by American Geriatrics Society (AGS)

Hatice Yardım @ UnsplashReading retention is a big issue in educational circles. Having the ability to read a sentence, pronounce all the words fluently, and have a vocabulary wide enough that doesn't necessitate referring to a dictionary is one thing. But having the ability to remember what you read is something else entirely.

The great news about the steps you can take to improve your chances of long-term cognitive health is that many of them are the same steps you take to keep your body healthy. You need to add just a couple of items to a list that's probably already familiar. And the new items are fun. © Shutterstock.comHere's the familiar stuff: Reduce stress.

Getting older and being sexually active aren't mutually exclusive. Sexual satisfaction is still possible at any age. Although age-related changes may necessitate some adjustments, where there's a will there's a way. For both men and women, physiological changes to the body make having sex a different experience as you age, but different doesn't mean worse; it just means adapting.

Foods, drinks, and chemicals that your brain is exposed to have major effects on your memory. If you eat junk food loaded with sugar, you set yourself up to crash, finding yourself full of anxiety and short of short-term memory. Similarly, if you drink too much caffeine, the liquid anxiety scatters your thoughts and shatters your memory ability.

If you've never thought of yourself as a creative person, it's time for a change of thinking. Each person has the potential to unlock an aspect of creativity. Here are a few suggestions to help you get going. They include tips on simple drawing activities to get you started — but if you feel that you still need more encouragement, why not simply begin by doodling?

Rote learning is the regurgitation of unattached and meaningless facts. These facts are prone to be forgotten because you haven't incorporated them into a body of knowledge. You have no context in which to remember them.Unfortunately, too much of what's taught in school is still based on rote learning. Your job is to deepen the meaning of what you learn and put it in context so that you can remember it later.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that musical training improves memory; musicians tend to remember more information compared to non-musicians, even when you take their education levels and their ages into account. In other words, playing a musical instrument activates part of the brain (the cerebral cortex), which in turn boosts recall of information.

"Is the brain of a creative person different from a methodical person?" To answer that question, researchers looked at the brain activity of those who solve problems creatively with that burst of "Aha!" compared to those who solve problems more systematically.They asked each participant to relax for a few minutes while they used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to record the electrical activity in participants' brains.

Visual-spatial memory skills are how you learn about the world right from the beginning. As a baby, your visual-spatial skills are especially strong. Perhaps because babies haven't yet developed language skills, they're able to quickly take a snapshot of the world and remember certain visual features.Think for a moment about a baby's world.