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The author
says Rubbish to the idea that the brain after 40, or even 50, is all about
depreciation and reduction. Older brains tend to be dense with learning, and
use both sides, as opposed to younger brains that use more of the left or right
hemispheres. Enjoy! kwc The
Myth of the Midlife Crisis By Gene
Cohen, M.D., PH.D., Newsweek, Jan.
16, 2006 I was taken by
surprise several years ago when my colleagues started to worry that I was going
through some sort of midlife crisis. I was in my late 40s, and after two
decades as a gerontologist I was pursuing a new passion: designing games for
older adults. My first game, a joint effort with artist Gretchen Raber, was a
finalist in an internationally juried show on games as works of art. Though I
still had a day job directing George Washington University's Center on Aging,
Health & Humanities, I was now working hard on a second game. "Are you turning
right on us?" one friend, a neuroscientist, kidded me. He wasn't talking
about politics. He was asking whether I'd scrapped the logical, analytical
tendencies of the brain's left hemisphere to embrace the more creative, less disciplined
tendencies of the right brain. But I wasn't scrapping anything. As a
researcher, I had spent years documenting the psychological benefits of
intergenerational play. Now I was using both sides of my brain to create new
opportunities for myself. Instead of just measuring and studying the benefits
of mental stimulation, I was finding creative ways to put my findings to work.
What my friends perceived as a crisis was, in truth, the start of a thrilling
new phase of my life. In thinking about this
experience, I realized that our view of human development in the second half of
life was badly outmoded. We tend to think of aging in purely negative terms,
and even experts often define "successful" aging as the effective
management of decay and decline. Rubbish. No one can deny that aging brings
challenges and losses. But recent
discoveries in neuroscience show that the aging brain is more flexible and
adaptable than we previously thought. Studies suggest that the brain's left and
right hemispheres become better integrated during middle age, making way for
greater creativity. Age also seems to dampen some negative emotions. And a
great deal of scientific work has confirmed the "use it or lose it"
adage, showing that
the aging brain grows stronger from use and challenge. In short, midlife is a
time of new possibility. Growing old can be filled with positive experiences.
The challenge is to recognize our potential—and nurture it. Until recently,
scientists paid little attention to psychological development in the second
half of life, and those who did pay attention often drew the wrong conclusions.
"About the age of 50," Sigmund Freud wrote in 1907, "the
elasticity of the mental processes on which treatment depends is, as a rule,
lacking. Old people are no longer educable." Freud—who wrote those words
at 51 and produced some of his best work after 65—wasn't the only pioneer to
misconstrue the aging process. Jean Piaget, the great developmental
psychologist, assumed that cognitive development stopped during young
adulthood, with the acquisition of abstract thought. Even Erik Erikson, who
delineated eight stages of psychosocial development, devoted only two pages of
his classic work "Identity and the Life Cycle" to later life. My own work picks up
where these past giants left off. Through studies involving more than 3,000
older adults, I have identified four distinct developmental phases that
unfold in overlapping 20-year periods beginning in a person's early 40s: §
a midlife re-evaluation (typically encountered between 40 and 65) during
which we set new goals and priorities; §
a liberation phase (55 to 75) that involves shedding past inhibitions to
express ourselves more freely; §
a summing-up phase (65 to 85) when we begin to review our lives and
concentrate on giving back, and §
an encore phase (75 and beyond) that involves finding affirmation and
fellowship in the face of adversity and loss. I refer to "phases" instead
of "stages" because people vary widely during later life. We don't
all march through these phases in lock step, but I've seen thousands of older
adults pass through them—each person driven by a unique set of inner drives and
ideals. What sparks this
series of changes? Why, after finding our places in the world, do so many of us
spend our 40s and 50s re-evaluating our lives? The impulse stems partly from a
growing awareness of our own mortality. As decades vanish behind us, and we
realize how relatively few we have left, we gain new perspective on who we are
and what we really care about. This awakening isn't always easy—it often
reveals conflicts between the lives we've built and the ones we want to
pursue—but only 10 percent of the people I've studied describe the midlife
transition as a crisis. Far
more say they're filled with a new sense of quest and personal discovery. "I'm looking forward to pursuing
the career I always wanted," one 49-year-old woman told me. "I'm
tired of just working on other people's visions, rather than my own, even if I
have to start on a smaller scale." While changing our
perspective, age also remodels our brains, leaving us better equipped to
fulfill our own dreams. The
most important difference between older brains and younger brains is also the
easiest to overlook: older brains have learned more than young ones. Throughout life, our brains encode
thoughts and memories by forming new connections among neurons. The neurons
themselves may lose some processing speed with age, but they become ever more
richly intertwined. Magnified
tremendously, the brain of a mentally active 50-year-old looks like a dense
forest of interlocking branches, and this density reflects both deeper
knowledge and better judgment. That's why age is such an advantage in fields
like editing, law, medicine, coaching and management. There is no substitute
for acquired learning. Knowledge and wisdom
aren't the only fruits of age. New research suggests that as our brains become
more densely wired, they also become less rigidly bifurcated. As I mentioned earlier, our brains actually
consist of two separate structures—a right brain and a left brain—linked by a
row of fibers called the corpus callosum. In most people, the left hemisphere
specializes in speech, language and logical reasoning, while the right
hemisphere handles more intuitive tasks, such as face recognition and the
reading of emotional cues. But as scientists have recently discovered through
studies with PET scans and magnetic resonance imaging, this pattern changes as we age. Unlike young adults, who handle most
tasks on one side of the brain or the other, older ones tend to use both hemispheres. Duke University neuroscientist Robert
Cabeza has dubbed this phenomenon Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults—HAROLD for short—and his research suggests it
is no accident. In a 2002 study,
Cabeza assigned a set of memory tasks to three groups of people: one composed
of young adults, one of low-performing older adults and one of high-performing
older adults. Like the young people, the low-performing elders drew mainly on
one side of the prefrontal cortex to perform the assigned tasks. It was the
high-scoring elders who used both hemispheres. No one knows exactly what this
all means, but the finding suggests that healthy brains compensate for the
depredations of age by expanding their neural networks across the bilateral divide.
My own work suggests
that, besides keeping us sharp, this neural
integration
makes it easier to
reconcile our thoughts with our feelings. When you hear someone saying, "My head tells me to do
this, but my heart says do that," the person is more likely a 20-year-old
than a 50-year-old. One of my patients, a 51-year-old man, remembers how he
agonized over decisions during his 20s, searching in vain for the most logical
choice. As he moved through his 40s and into his 50s, he found himself trusting
his gut. "My decisions are more
subjective," he said during one session, "but I'm more comfortable with many of the choices
that follow." As our aging brains
grow wiser and more flexible, they also tend toward greater equanimity. Our
emotions are all rooted in a set of neural structures known collectively as the
limbic system. Some of our
strongest negative emotions originate in the amygdalae, a pair of almond-shaped
limbic structures that sit near the center of the brain, screening sensory data
for signs of trouble. At the first hint of a threat, the amygdalae fire off
impulses that can change our behavior before our conscious, thinking brains
have a chance to weigh in. That's why our hearts pound when strangers approach
us on dark sidewalks—and why we often overreact to slights and annoyances. But
the amygdalae seem to mellow with age. In brain-imaging studies, older adults
show less evidence of fear, anger and hatred than young adults. Psychological
studies confirm that impression, showing that older adults are less impulsive
and less likely to dwell on their negative feelings. An editor I know at a
New York publishing company provides a case in point. He was in his 60s, and
contemplating retirement, when he realized that he had finally matured into his
job. Despite a sharp intellect and a passion for excellence, this man had spent
much of his career alienating people with brusque, critical comments and a lack
of sensitivity. Now, he told me over lunch, he was finally beginning to master
interpersonal communication. As his emotional development caught up to his
intellectual development, he morphed from a brilliant but brittle loner into a
mentor and a mediator of conflicts. "I feel like a changed man," he
said with a bemused smile. His best work was still ahead of him. Clearly, the aging
brain is more resilient, adaptable and capable than we thought. But that
doesn't mean we can sit back and expect good things to happen. Research has
identified several types of activity that can, if practiced regularly, help
boost the power, clarity and subtlety of the aging brain. Exercise
physically.
Numerous studies have linked physical exercise to increased brainpower. This is
particularly true when the exercise is aerobic—meaning continuous, rhythmic exercise that uses
large muscle groups.
The positive effects may stem from increased blood flow to the brain, the
production of endorphins, better filtration of waste products from the brain
and increased brain-oxygen levels. Exercise
mentally.
The brain is like a muscle. Use it and it grows stronger. Let it idle and it
will grow flabby. So choose something appealing and challenging—and don't be
surprised if, once you start, you want to do more. One of the programs I
co-chair, the Creativity
Discovery Corps,
strives to identify unrecognized, talented older adults in the community. A
93-year-old woman we recently interviewed advised us that she might find
scheduling the next interview difficult because she was very busy applying for
a Ph.D. program. Pick
challenging leisure activities. Getting a graduate degree isn't the only way to keep your
brain fit. An important 2003 study identified five leisure activities that were
associated with a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline. In order of
impact (from highest to lowest), the winners were dancing, playing board games, playing musical
instruments, doing crossword puzzles and reading. Risk reduction was related to the frequency of participation. For example, older persons who did
crossword puzzles four days a week had a risk of dementia 47% lower than
subjects who did puzzles only once a week. Achieve
mastery.
Research on aging has uncovered a key variable in mental health called "sense of control." From middle age onward, people
who enjoy a sense of control and mastery stay healthier than those who don't.
The possibilities for mastery are unlimited, ranging from playing a musical
instrument to learning a new language to taking up painting or embroidery. Besides improving your outlook, the sense
of accomplishment may also strengthen the immune system. Establish
strong social networks. Countless
studies have linked active social engagement to better mental and physical
health and lower death rates. People who maintain social relationships during
the second half of life enjoy significantly lower blood pressure, which in turn
reduces the risk of stroke and its resulting brain damage. Social relationships
also reduce stress and its corrosive effects, including anxiety and depression. The brain is like the
foundation of a building—it provides the physical substrate of our minds, our
personalities and our sense of self. As we've seen, our brain hardware is
capable of adapting, growing and becoming more complex and integrated with age.
As our brains mature and evolve, so do our knowledge, our emotions and our
expressive abilities. In turn, what we do with those abilities affects the
brain itself, forging the new connections and constellations needed for further
psychological growth. This realization should embolden anyone entering the
later phases of life. If we can move beyond our stubborn myths about the aging
brain, great things are possible. Successful aging is not about managing decline. It's about
harnessing the enormous potential that each of us has for growth, love and
happiness. Cohen
is founding director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George
Washington University Medical Center. This article is adapted from "The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging
Brain," published this month by Basic Books, a member of the
Perseus Book Group. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753221/site/newsweek/ |
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