How Your Mind Improves With Age

We have been taught that our minds decline with age. We become more forgetful, find it harder to learn, cannot focus as intensely, loose our creative powers and cannot master new technical specialties.  Our brain cells die off, new connections don’t form and our brains shrink. A dark picture of increasing cognitive decline.

Fortunately, a growing number of studies show that some of these ideas are false and that we actually improve in certain aspects of cognitive performance as we age.   We keep most of our brain cells and can form major new connections through something called neuroplasticity much later into life than previously thought.    We develop greater abilities in drawing conclusions from examples, making judgement, seeing the meaning of situations and many other aspects of mental functioning.

In a recent blog post, Barbara Strauch, deputy science editor and health and medical science editor at The New York Times writes:

“Over the past few years, neuroscientists have begun to zero in on the brain’s changes in middle age, and what they’ve found is encouraging. Results of long-term studies show that — contrary to stereotypes — we actually grow smarter in key areas in middle age which, with longer life spans, now stretches from our mid 40s to our mid to late 60s.”

She expands on this point in her fourth coming book, The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind.

The importance of this type of research for improving our minds and brains is  significant.  Why?

The assumptions we  make about our own cognitive abilities strongly determines how well we perform.

For example, assuming you are forgetful, less creative, unable to master a second language or that math is impossible to learn all lower cognitive performance.  Changing self-limiting assumptions about our own minds and the social stereotypes about aging brains mentioned above will take a long time. But it is a powerful means for improving cognitive performance and will be a frequent topic on the Next Brain Blog.

Source:  Image of  Older Adult