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Recently in this paper, Jean Cochrane made the observation, How wonderful is memory!. She was describing how, though not having touched a piano keyboard for 50 years, she was able to pick up almost where she left off playing Mozart sonatas and the easier works of Beethoven. A couple of others also reported a similar experience playing a tricky Chopin mazurka and a nocturne posing the fascinating question as to how skills and memories from the distant past are laid down to be retrieved decades later.

This is just the sort of issue that might be clarified by those sophisticated brain-scanning techniques that allow neuroscientists to observe the brain in action from the inside lighting up when performing one task or another.

Indeed, two types of memory are stored in discrete parts of the brain. Scanning the brains of volunteers asked to distinguish between photographs of famous people and the obscure identified a small area of the frontal cortex specialised for facial recognition.

Scanning the brains of Londons taxi drivers as they rehearsed their routes across the capital, meanwhile, reveals hot spots in the hippocampus involved in memorising spatial topography.

But beyond that the phenomenon of memory becomes much more inscrutable. So when, for example, volunteers are asked to recall two very different kinds of explicit memory for autobiographical events (being the Christmas star in a nativity play) or for facts (the names of different types of apple) both tasks involved billions of neurons across large and overlapping tracts of the brain.

More astonishing still, it would appear that over time memories are reallocated from one part of the brain to another. Whereas in the young the predominant area of brain activity when memorising is located in the left frontal cortex and then its subsequent recall is in the right itself an amazing finding the same functions in the elderly are distributed equally between the two hemispheres.

The capacity for human memory is a deep mystery notes Robert Doty, a neurobiologist. The facility to sort with alacrity through the experiences of a lifetime and their cascading associations defies credible clarification.

Further to the recent news of the potential merits of the sunshine Vitamin D in protecting the dark-skinned against the respiratory complications of Covid, consultant rheumatologist Dr Geoffrey Clarke points out that similar considerations apply to the elderly.

When tested, Vitamin D deficiency is one of the commonest things we find in this age group, writes Clarke, due to their limited exposure to sunlight. This can be corrected by taking a supplement of at least 10 micrograms (400 International Units) daily, particularly in the winter months.

While the primary role of the vitamin is facilitating the absorption of calcium necessary for healthy bones, low levels are also implicated as a cause of weakness of the muscles of the lower limbs.

Logically, then, taking Vitamin D supplements might also help to reduce the risk of falls and fractures by almost a quarter according to one study, though overall the evidence is equivocal.

More importantly, Dr Terry Aspray, of Newcastle University, pointed out that older people should ensure they get adequate sun exposure and take regular exercise to keep their bones and muscles as strong as possible.

Finally, this weeks medical query comes courtesy of Mr KC, from Perth, who has of late been troubled with bouts of palpitations two or three times a week, which are usually brought on when lying on his left side in bed at night.

These episodes last a couple of hours and are associated with the repeated need to pass what feels like bladder-fulls of urine, and the disturbed nights also leave him feeling exhausted the following day. His family doctor has arranged for him to have a 24-hour recording of his heart rhythm.

In the meantime, Mr KC wonders if anyone can account for these prodigious feats of urination and what to do about it.

Read more:
The mechanics of memory are a mystery of the mind - Telegraph.co.uk