Focus: The Aging Brain: The Nostalgia Factory

With a style that is informative without being overwhelmingly scientific, The Nostalgia Factory provides an enlightening view into the aging mind, and reassuring knowledge to those who feel that their minds are not what they once were. Douwe Draasima takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining the changes to memory that occur with age. In each chapter, he discusses a different aspect of aging and memory, from the complaints of the elderly mind, to the tricks and games sold to appease a fear of dementia, and to the reminiscences most likely to be encoded and replayed. His brief descriptions of scientific studies are complemented by anecdotes and interviews that place a younger reader into the reminiscent state of an older mind, and placates the older mind with reassurances that it is not alone in its experiences. Draasima focuses on not only the increased tendency to forget daily tasks and “to-dos,” but the “parabolic pattern” of memory that describes the tendency of older brains to connect normal, daily occurrences with long-dormant memories. Parabolic memory comes up time and again as he explains the trope of loquacious grandparents and the histories of nostalgia and homesickness. It surfaces again as Draasima discusses the joy brought to the aging mind by the resurfacing of childhood, and in his interview with Oliver Sacks, 72, whose childhood memories and experience with the parabolic pattern of memory were the focus of both his autobiography and the interview. The Nostalgia Factory is an appealing read for scientists and nonscientists alike, and for readers throughout the stages of memory described by Draasima.