With the stupefying amount of information people process each day, who hasn't experienced a "senior moment?" But for many older people, poor memory becomes less punch line and more real concern when they forget to take medication or monitor their health.

But creating mental pictures can apparently help those worried about forgetfulness to stay on top of tasks.

Research first published last year in the journal Psychology and Aging found that a three-minute technique, called implementation imagination, effectively boosted the ability to remember to do something by 50 percent in one group of seniors.

"You can make things work better for yourself by doing this simple thing," researcher Denise Park, a psychologist and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Illinois , told HealthDay . "It's not hard, and it's actually sort of fun."

With each passing year, memory becomes more difficult to maintain. "As you age, your ability to engage in what we call controlled or executive functions declines," Park explained. Executive functions involve deliberate, planned actions that are processed in the brain's frontal cortex. "The frontal cortex shrinks with age, and these frontal processes become less efficient," she said.

Because the frontal lobes suffer from deterioration, Park and her team looked for ways to boost other parts of the brain. They focused on enhancing "automatic" responses: those mental activities triggered by visual cues in the environment.

The researchers trained a group of 31 people over 60 years of age to track their blood sugar several times a day using a standard testing device -- much like diabetics do, although the study participants did not have diabetes.

Participants were divided into three groups: a "deliberation" group, which discussed why daily blood sugar testing was a good idea; a "rehearsal" group, which recited instructions for using the testing device; and an "imagination" group, which spent three minutes imagining themselves using the glucose monitor within the home or work environment. The groups were then tracked for three weeks.

The study uncovered a high success rate in those who used imagery. Participants in the imagination group remembered to take their blood sugar readings at a rate 50 percent higher than participants in the other two groups.

According to Park, the strategy works because visual environmental cues trigger action. "We found that if you imagined completing the desired act in great detail, you're much more likely to do it," Park said.

"For example, say you know you're going to have orange juice every single day with your breakfast before you test your glucose," she said. "Suddenly, when you pick up the orange juice, you go, 'Oh yeah, I need to monitor my glucose.' This is a primed, automatic response originating in a part of the brain that's more resistant to aging."