The Grown-Up Brain: Better Than The Younger Version? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

The Grown-Up Brain: Better Than The Younger Version? - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

The Grown-Up Brain: Better Than The Younger Version?

Whew, dodged another bullet with good news for the over-40 set. Our brains don't lose 30% of their mass and are surprisingly similar to teenage brains in that they are still developing. Yes, that's right, unlike the mythology floating around out there, middle age brains are not stagnating in formaldehyde. In fact, "on the whole, they are better (than in our 20's)".

Or, as Barbara Stauch puts it, when referring to the middle-aged brain (modern middle age as defined by ages 40-65) in a The New York Times interview today: "It's not some static blob that is going inexorably downhill." I think we all know this instinctively when we compare an older dynamic person who is involved and sharp as a tack, compared to a much younger counterpart who by juxtaposition, appears like a slug, which is counter-intuitive. So what are some of the key things that make the difference?

Stauch, author of teenage brain development book,"The Primal Teen," has many surprising revelations in her new book we've been anticipating, "The Secret Life Of The Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents Of The Middle Aged Mind" (click this link to go to Amazon). As advocates of life-long learning
and development outside of formal classroom
studies, we are happy to
see research supporting the necessity
of creating a culture of learning and growth, at
all times in one's life.

The bad news? Well, there are issues with short-term memory processing speed in middle aged brains . . . so we are little slower in that department.

Excerpts from interview:

Q. So what kinds of things does a middle-aged brain do better than a younger brain?

A. Inductive reasoning and problem solving - the logical use of your brain and actually getting to solutions. We get the gist of an argument better. We're better at sizing up a situation and reaching a