Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

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Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) gunk up brains. Low carb

diets was inhibit AGEs. The combo of Alpha Lipoic Acid, Acetyl

L-Carnitine, and Benfotiamine, along with sufficient vitamin C has

done wonders for me in giving my brain the limberness to no ideas

which I had back 30-40 years ago. Do a google on " rats Macarena

Glycation " (without the quotes) to get to technical info.

 

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On 5/21/08, Desert Sky <desertskynm wrote:

> Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

> Yarek Waszul

>

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/research/20brai.html?em & ex=1211428800 & e\

n=c4ac9065a0b095ec & ei=5087%0A

>

>

> By SARA REISTAD-LONG

> Published: May 20, 2008

>

> When older people can no longer remember names at a

> cocktail party, they tend to think that their

> brainpower is declining. But a growing number of

> studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

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>

> Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply

> taking in more data and trying to sift through a

> clutter of information, often to its long-term

> benefit.

>

> The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a

> neurology book, " Progress in Brain Research. "

>

> Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer's

> disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans

> 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors

> say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus

> of attention that makes it more difficult to latch

> onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number.

> Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

>

> " It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad

> thing, " said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology

> researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the

> book. " It may increase the amount of information

> available to the conscious mind. "

>

> For example, 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.

>

> " For the young people, it's as if the distraction

> never happened, " said an author of the review, Lynn

> Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of

> Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research

> Institute. " But for older adults, because they've

> retained all this extra data, they're now suddenly the

> better problem solvers. They can transfer the

> information they've soaked up from one situation to

> another. "

>

> Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real

> world, where it is not always clear what information

> is important, or will become important. A seemingly

> irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on

> new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra

> details that stole your attention, like others'

> yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the

> speaker's real impact.

>

> " A broad attention span may enable older adults to

> ultimately know more about a situation and the

> indirect message of what's going on than their younger

> peers, " Dr. Hasher said. " We believe that this

> characteristic may play a significant role in why we

> think of older people as wiser. "

>

> In a 2003 study at Harvard, Dr. Carson and other

> researchers tested students' ability to tune out

> irrelevant information when exposed to a barrage of

> stimuli. The more creative the students were thought

> to be, determined by a questionnaire on past

> achievements, the more trouble they had ignoring the

> unwanted data. A reduced ability to filter and set

> priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute

> to original thinking.

>

> This phenomenon, Dr. Carson said, is often linked to a

> decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Studies

> have found that people who suffered an injury or

> disease that lowered activity in that region became

> more interested in creative pursuits.

>

> Jacqui Smith, a professor of psychology and research

> professor at the Institute for Social Research at the

> University of Michigan, who was not involved in the

> current research, said there was a word for what

> results when the mind is able to assimilate data and

> put it in its proper place — wisdom.

>

> " These findings are all very consistent with the

> context we're building for what wisdom is, " she said.

> " If older people are taking in more information from a

> situation, and they're then able to combine it with

> their comparatively greater store of general

> knowledge, they're going to have a nice advantage. "

>

>