WHY DID I COME IN HERE? –
July 10th, 2025 – It happens from time to time: You start telling a story, only to lose your train of thought halfway through. Or you walk into a room and can’t remember what you went in there to do. Mental glitches like these happen to everyone and are understandably scary, but aren’t necessarily a sign of cognitive decline. “The feeling of your brain short-circuiting is often more likely due to psychological processes,” says Sarah Garcia-Beaumier, Ph.D. Increases in stress, distractions, multitasking, anxiety or depression can be contributors. “A common consideration we have to make clinically is whether cognitive symptoms are due to early dementia, or rather due to a depressive or anxiety disorder,” Garcia-Beaumier says.
Cognitive decline typically involves a worsening of performance in areas such as memory, attention or language.
Common signs include forgetting to call someone or struggling to recall the right word. When those symptoms appear much more than they did previously, so much so that others are starting to notice, “that’s typically an early red flag for cognitive decline beyond what we expect for the normal aging process,” says Garcia-Beaumier. Normal aging may cause minor delays in memory retrieval, like struggling to remember a name but recalling it later. These are not signs of dementia or cognitive impairment, per Thomas Hammond, M.D. “Forgetting conversations or important appointments, or feeling lost in familiar places, are more worrisome and concerning for significant early cognitive impairment,” Hammond explained.
