Low mood can make you more forgetful, but many other things like lack of sleep, stress, depression and vitamin deficiency can affect memory too.
Researchers at the University of Aberdeen monitored how reliable people were at carrying out tasks and whether their mood affected the chances of them completing it, and found that feeling blue can make people less likely to remember to perform everyday tasks like posting a letter or returning a call.
Dr Katharina Schnitzspahn, who co-led the study, says: "Our results suggest a clear relationship between our emotional states and our cognitive performance and highlights the need to reduce stress and negative feelings in order to help us remember and perform our planned intentions."
And feeling low is not the only reason you may be more forgetful than normal. Here is a list of 10 potential explanations...
1. Low mood
Schnitzspahn says: "Our study, and previous work in the laboratory, show an association between mood and remembering intentions - the better the mood, the better we remember our tasks."
2. Stress and anxiety
If you're feeling stressed or anxious, it can make it harder to concentrate and lock in new information or retrieve old memories. "Acute stress is negatively related to prospective memory - our ability to remember and perform delayed intentions," says Schnitzspahn. "This was also true for stress experienced during the pandemic."
3. Depression
You may be more forgetful if you're depressed, and studies show depressive symptoms have an adverse effect on the immediate recall of new information. Schnitzspahn says: "Not surprisingly, research suggests memory is reduced in different patient populations, for example those with depression."
4. Drinking too much alcohol
Having too much booze can interfere with short-term memory, even after the effects of alcohol have worn off. Obviously how much is too much varies from person to person, but the NHS recommends men and women don't drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis, and spread your drinking over three or more days if you regularly drink 14 units a week.
"Alcohol or other drug use, such as ecstasy, has been shown to reduce prospective memory," confirms Schnitzspahn.
5. High blood pressure
Studies suggest physiological factors like high blood pressure are linked to reduced memory.
6. Lack of sleep
Most of us have experienced how being tired can dull your memory, and studies have confirmed that sleep deprivation causes short- and long-term cognitive impairment, affecting memory as well as thinking and attention. "Sleep does seem to have a small benefit on memory," agrees Schnitzspahn.
7. If it's exciting you're more likely to remember it
It's no great surprise that if something is boring, you're much less likely to remember it, and Schnitzspahn explains: "Important tasks are generally better remembered in all age groups. Even in young children, making the task exciting, for example reminding the experimenter to give them a present, can boost their performance - or, to put differently, boring or unmeaningful tasks are remembered worse."
8. Emotional meaning helps you remember
If something is not necessarily important but is emotionally meaningful or positive, it's especially well-remembered in older people, says Schnitzspahn.
9. Pregnancy can make you forgetful
If you're forgetting things more than usual, maybe you're pregnant! Australian research has found pregnant women are significantly impaired on some, but not all, measures of memory, and Schnitzspahn says: "Pregnancy may be associated with increased difficulty in implementing delayed intentions in everyday life."
10. Vitamin B-12 deficiency
Some studies suggest vitamin B-12 deficiency is linked to impaired cognition and memory, and have even suggested low vitamin B-12 levels may be associated with an increased risk of dementia.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here