‘The rhythm of life is a powerful beat,’ Sammy Davis Jr used to sing in the seventies.And, if scientists at Boston University are right, getting that rhythm to the right beat in the brains of older people could restore their short-term working memory to that of 20-year-olds.  Our short-term working memory helps us to keep our plates spinning, storing information for around 10 – 15 seconds to allow problem solving, reasoning, planning and decision making, helping us, for example, to keep a telephone number in mind while writing it down.