Wish your powers of recall were as powerful as this elephant's? Here are nine mind-sharpening strategies that can help.

By Alice Oglethorpe

Memory lapses can be both embarrassing (what's my neighbor's kid's name again?) and troubling (is senility coming on?). But a few slipups don't necessarily doom you to a future of utter forgetfulness. A memory is made by linking two or more of the 100 billion nerve cells in your brain, called neurons, then solidifying the connection so you can use it later, says Neal Barnard, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, in Washington, D.C. And "your brain continues to develop neurons and build new connections to strengthen memory as you age, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity," says Brianne Bettcher, a neuropsychology fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, Memory and Aging Center. "So it's never too late to improve your powers of recall." That's where these nine strateg

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