Your Well-Aged Brain: Not Failing, But Adapting?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how natural aging causes changes in the brain: changes responsible for a weaker memory, a less focused-focus and overall perceived loss of mental function. An entire industry of brain-training programs has sprung up, waging war against these age-related changes.

But what if those changes aren’t a sign of a failing neural system?

What if they simply reflect a useful, positive change in how we process information as we age?

Different Doesn’t Mean Broken

The New York Times reported on research supporting this very idea: an older adult’s inability to remember a phone number, name or date may not always reflect a decline in mental function, but a change in how the brain prioritizes and sorts information.

From the Times article:

“… in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. “

So the students read the texts faster (and probably grasped the central points effectively), but the seniors picked up more value from the informational flotsam and jetsam. Interesting, isn’t it?

In another study, students were given a questionnaire that assessed their creativity. Then they were flooded with large amounts of data, and tested to see how much they retained. The result? The more creative students were, the more trouble they had tuning out irrelevant information.

“A reduced ability to filter and set priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute to original thinking.

This fits, since creativite thinking often involves the ability to knit seemingly irrelevant information into new patterns. To a very creative brain, *everything* is potentially relevant.

So yes, adults are more easily distracted than their younger selves, but that distractibility isn’t all bad. They pay more attention to unexpected, new types of information, and they can find meaning in that information, becoming more creative, original thinkers who using different parts of their brain than they did when younger.

The Times article goes a step further, and suggests that the this same mechanism may be responsible for what we commonly call wisdom.

Distracted To Survival

Looking back at Brain Rule #2, (about how our brains evolved to develop social groups as a survival mechanism) this makes some sense.

Maybe the younger members of our ancestral hunting groups stayed strictly focused on their targets, learning and adapting to the movements of prey, forming appropriate neural networks as they go. They’d be very effective at stalking a gazelle, and tracking its every twitch, un-distracted by the buzzing of nearby flies, the odd rustle in the grass, or the birds falling silent.

Older members of the group, their brains already wired by experience to the usual patterns, might respond to the gazelle more automatically, with less attention. Sure, running on autopilot means slower reaction times to prey that suddenly darts left or right - and they might not catch that particular gazelle, while a younger party member might.

But perhaps the “distractability” of senior members brains has benefits to the hunting party.

Maybe the senior members *would* notice the flies, the movement in the grass, the change in the bird song. Maybe their well-aged brains would take in those “distractions”, and put them together in a meaningful pattern. Maybe their “senior moment” of distraction meant they would realize that a lion was feasting on a carcass only feet away from the young hunter, and that said lion was about to add the younger, focused hunter to the meal?

Their increased ability to notice details, and an increased capacity to combine those details into meaningful, creative thought patterns would be a huge bonus to the survival of the group. Maybe these older, wiser ancestors of ours were usually the ones to notice climate changes, new and different food sources, newly developing threats - not just because of their experience, but because their brains prioritized information differently.

Maybe the “wisdom” of our ancestral elders came from the same changes that modern elders curse, and label “senior moments”. Those changes may actually be a plus, when it comes to taking in and making meaning out of larger amounts of information - something increasingly valuable in a world of information overload.

Wisdom In Differences?

Of course, these ideas don’t eliminate the need to train our minds to stay harp, stimulated and focused (no matter what our age.) And we still need to be concerned about actual declines in function that lower quality of life, and worsen the symptoms of disease like Alzheimer’s and other dementia’s.

But maybe, just maybe, we should stop cussing about every little change in mental function as we age, and instead, we should explore and exploit the potential advantages.

Maybe employers should take into account that an older brained employee doesn’t *just* mean experience, or dogged, old fashioned thinking: a well-aged brain may provide an advantageous type of problem solving and perspective that a younger brain won’t be able to supply - and that can be very valuable in a rapidly changing market.

What do you think?

Is the loss of your younger memory and focus for remembering phone numbers and dates balanced by a more creative ability to spot larger, meaningful patterns in life?