Your face looks so familiar, but… I just can’t remember your name. What’s happening? Is this an Alzheimer’s warning sign?

After caring for a spouse, parent, relative or friend with Alzheimer’s Disease, an inability to remember names understandably triggers a near panic response. But what are the facts?

Dr. Pat Wolfe of the Wolfe Center in Napa, California recently addressed this question with quite an unusual explanation of this “can’t remember your name” phenomenon.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors were living in primitive tribes in the savannah, face recognition was a critical survival mechanism. She asked us to imagine a small tribe of hunter gatherers. Would you recognize the face a tribal member or would you recognize the face of an enemy or of another tribe?

We all answered with a resounding, “yes.”

“Would you recognize their name, if they had one?” she posed. “Probably not”, we responded. Pat pointed out that our brains are hard wired for face recognition, not for name recognition. In today’s information overloaded society, when we are introduced to someone, we are probably focusing on their face, eye color or facial expression or on what they are wearing instead of on their name. This is where the technique of name association is invaluable. If we attach a meaningful association of any kind with the person’s name, we increase the probability that we will remember their name when we meet again. We have all had the experience of having the name we could not immediately recall popping right into our brain sometime later, not when we needed it!

So relax… difficulty in remembering names are not, and I repeat, not one of the Alzheimer’s warning signals. The reality is, as Alzheimer’s progresses, the face of a loved one cannot be recognized at all. We who have been caregivers can attest to the emotional devastation we feel when this happens. Maria Shriver, in her recent testimony before the House Committee on Aging poignantly reminded us of the wrenching experience with her father, Sargent Shriver, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, when she said, “He doesn’t know me any more.”

So, there is a big difference when you don’t recognize a loved one and you don’t remember a name of someone you’ve met. Get more information from the Alzheimer’s Association.

-Kathleen Ryan