SCENES FROM SCIENCE
Progetto Memoria
THE upshot of complaining to any person younger than oneself that one's memory is deteriorating with age invari- ably draws the response, `So is mine.' Well, there's deterioration and de- terioration. The conversational ex- change only makes sense if the degree of deterioration can be estimated; and efforts to do that have so far only come up with the exceedingly loose estimate that between the ages of 30 and 60 most adults lose 60 per cent of their ability to recognise names and places.
Progetto Memoria is the Memory Research Centre of an Italian phar- maceutical company, and its aim is to establish what it calls base-line Measurements of memory loss, with statistical errors of no more than 2 per cent. There is an associated American Institution but the essential work will be done in Italy. Why Italy? Because, especially compared with the American population, the Italian population is stationary: immigration apart, Italians Stay put. So the scientists are in a position to study a cross-section of Population which is both stationary and stable. (This is the crux of the metho- dology — the basis for reckoning on a low statistical error.) It happens that Italy has a national health care system and regularly brings its census up to date; most of the preliminary skir- mishing round the project by statisti- cians is thus already done for them.
The project team has a handsome mobile testing laboratory in which it travels from one centre of population to another, advertising in advance where it is going to be and what it is aiming to do, and generally whipping up enthu- siasm — with some success; so far only 10-15 per cent of the population of a place refusing to take part in the survey, and the scientists expecting to end up with at least 75 per cent. The tests are of course designed to be as little depen- dent as possible on the bias of culture, education, economics — for example, participants being tested are shown videos of people introducing themselves and their towns of origin, etc; and then, on being shown just the faces of these people, asked to put names to them. In another test, guaranteed to stir a pang in many a Spectator reader, they are asked to remember where such objects as spectacles or keys are located. The plan is to test the memory of 1,600 normal healthy Italians between the ages of 20 and 79 by the end of the year.
William Cooper
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