My grandma Mary often jokes that she’d forget her head if it wasn’t “screwed on”. At 81, she’s the same age as Joe Biden, and does not suffer from a cognitive disorder. However, it’s a phrase that has chimed with my millennial self with startling frequency lately as I’ve struggled to recall details of conversations and forgotten to reply to texts.
Forgetfulness is not something one can exclusively associate with older people: although President Biden’s power of recall is a study that has become especially acute of late. Research shows that growing numbers of younger people are suffering from impaired cognition, brain fatigue, distraction and memory problems, as our brains overdose on notifications and the culture of multitasking, which makes it seem implausible to ever fully switch off.
“Brains today are behaving as if they’re wading through treacle rather than air,” says Dr Sabine Donnai, a physician and founder of Viavi, a personalised health longevity service that offers brain mapping and cognitive tests. Overstimulation and chronic stress cause inflammatory responses in the brain. And the symptoms of overstimulation are “getting worse and worse”. She’s keen to stress the difference between a foggy brain and a forgetful one: in the former, the memory still exists, it’s just harder to retrieve. She estimates some 70 to 80 per cent of Viavi’s brain-mapped customers are suffering from inflammatory frazzle.