SENIOR MOMENTS A GOOD THING? OLDER BRAIN MAY REALLY BE A WISER BRAIN, SAYS NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

A recent New York Times article, available in their website's Research section, discusses findings that suggest the brains of older people may in some cases only appear to be working subpar, when in fact these seemingly forgetful brains are actually acting wiser:

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.”

So what does this mean for those with older minds?

Jacqui Smith, a professor of psychology and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan ... 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" ... “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.”