Abstract- 20200201- 2

A Brain Upgrade From Dial-Up To High-Speed

An EcoChi Vital Abstract

The original article, “You’re Never Too Old,” was published in the Special Edition Single Issue Magazine, TIME The Science of Creativity, August 8th, 2018, written by Jeffrey Kluger.

It took Barbara Hustedt Crook an awfully long time to get around to writing her first musical. She started shortly before her 60th birthday. Her friend and collaborator Robert Strozier waited even longer until the age of 65. It's not that they didn't have their creative chops for the job. The two had spent their careers writing and editing in New York City and Crook has a background in performing, singing and piano. But creating a musical always felt just out of Reach until it didn't. “Somehow I have confidence I didn't have before,” says Crook. “I find that my brain makes leaps it didn't make so easily. I can hear my inner voice and trust instincts and hunches in ways I didn't used to.” Risk-taking seniors making daring mental leaps? That's not the stereotype. Indeed, until quite recently most researchers believed the human brain followed a fairly predictable developmental arc. It started out protean, gained shape and intellectual muscle as it matured, and reached its peak of power and nimbleness by age 40. After that, the brain begins a slow decline, sliding up little by little by age 70 or 80, and had lost much of its ability to retain new information and was fumbling with what it had. But that was all right because late life crankiness had by then made us a largely resistant to new ideas anyway. That as it turns out is hooey. More and more neurologists and psychologists are coming to the conclusion that the brain at midlife-a period increasingly defined as the years from 35 to 65 and beyond is much more elastic and supple than anyone ever realized. Although inflexibility, confusion and even later life dementia are very real problems for many people, the aging process not only does not batter the brain, it actually makes it better. Small wonder the likes of Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe and Doris Lessing remained productive well past 70. “In midlife you're beginning to maximize the ability to use the entirety of information in your brain on an everyday, ongoing second-to-second basis,” said George Bartzokis the celebrated UCLA neurologist who died in 2014. “Biologically that's where wisdom is.” It's not just the wiring that charges up the brain as we age; it's the way regions start pulling together to make the whole organ work better than the sum of its parts. There's no question that personalities can calcify with age causing us to become less receptive to new experiences and flat-out crabby when faced with them. But that's not the case with everyone. In fact, for many people the opposite happens. Not everyone achieves the sharp thought and serenity that can come with age. But for those who do, the later years can be the best they ever had.