Does Aging Improve Brain Function?

The New York Times reported recently that researchers have discovered significant differences in the way young people and middle-aged people process information and solve problems. When young people undertake a cognitive task, the part of the brain they activate tends to be "highly localize." Older people draw upon a broader spectrum of cognitive facilities when approaching the same task.

The researchers—who probably wish they were still young, so they could be doing something  more fun than looking at brain scans—have come up with a perversely inaccurate acronym for this phenomenon: HAROLD. This stands for "hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults." According to the article, most researchers agree this phenomenon represents "a general reorganization and weakening of the brain’s function with age."

Weakening? I'm afraid it represents nothing of the kind. Unless it can be established scientifically that the solution arrived at most rapidly, and using the least amount of brainpower, is invariably the best, which I doubt. I think it's more often the other way around. Young people tend to have plenty of energy, but they often mistake their own infinitesimal corner of the world for the world itself, and as a result, they make snap judgments that often prove to be inaccurate and can sometimes be personally harmful.

Older people, tempered and enlightened by years of experiences, are much better at seeing the connections between things, reserving judgment, pondering alternatives. Due to these qualities--which, prior to the age of acronyms, went collectively under the name "maturity"--older men and women often become adept at charting a safe, effective, creative, and reliable course between A and B.

Rather than burdening older folks with yet another dreadful syndrome, HAROLD, researchers ought to be studying, and celebrating,  HEART—this is, Hemispheric Equilibrium and Reflective Temper.

(And by the way, have you notice how this gray weather has been bringing out the muted brilliance in the multicolored leaves, especially when a bit of sunlight makes them glisten with moisture?)

On the methodological level, the study once again reminds us that it isn't easy to design experiments involving the complex tasks that people typically have to deal with, where one of the options might be wait, or to ignore the task altogether.

I've become adept at such delayed responses. For example, a few weeks ago the "check engine" lit up on the dash of our 2015 Corolla. Our go-to mechanic tracked it down to an aging carbon canister, and proposed a $700 replacement. "You don't really have to do it," he told me, "if you don't mind looking at that light."

The "occulus" in the new Vesterheim visitors' center.

We pondered the expense all the way to Lanesboro, and on to Decorah, Iowa, to see the new visitors' center at the Vesterheim Museum. On the way back, somewhere near Zumbrota, the light went out. It stayed out. Problem solved. (For now.) 

Meanwhile, it may also be worth pointing out that the brain does lots of things besides solving problems. The "hemispheric asymmetry reduction" that the researchers refer to as a defect might be just the thing that many of us are looking for. Books appear almost daily giving us advice as to how to find serenity and inner peace. Centuries ago Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius followed the same track. It's matter of learning how to see the world, and our place in it, as an ensemble of more or less harmonious elements rather than the interminable series of crises that the purveyors of news are so good at describing hourly.

But there is one thing to avoid: it would be a mistake to become too adept at counterbalancing this and that, adjusting to every situation, putting things off, staying "in the moment," while slowly sinking into a quietistic stupor.

On some occasions, there really is something wrong with the car. And there are always more than a few things wrong with the world.