dr-goldberg
dr-elkhon
home
clinician
scientist
author
educator
books
events
contacts
cv
links
forum
services
training
Home  :   Forum
To post your thoughts click a topic below. You must login to post a comment - login here  

Forum  > The Mind and the Brain  > The New Science of Wisdom
The Aging Brain
Author Message
AuntyBev
posted on October 6, 2006 02:02:58 AM
(This same post is in three forums. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of response (if any) I get in each forum. :-) ) Background Last night, thanks to the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s excellent television show, Catalyst, I became acquainted with the works of Professors Goldberg (New York), Williams (Sydney) and Bartzokis (Los Angeles). The full transcript is at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1756331.htm What these new heroes of mine have shown is that “science has found three parts of wisdom – pattern recognition for thinking shortcuts, fluency and emotional control for better decision making, and high speed connections to what you know.� Age-related improvement in pattern recognition, and fluency and emotional control are measurable by cognitive testing while the formation of high speed connections is measurable by brain scans showing an increase in white matter as we age, peaking in the fifties. (YES!!!!!!!!) (“If grey matter is the brain’s computers, white matter is the internet cables connecting them. As we age, these cables are coated in more and more myelin – which speeds up brain conductance 100 fold – creating fast brain superhighways.� “Wisdom is having a really fast internet that’s on-line and with a huge band-width. That’s what comes with age.�) Although “memory for factual information does decline quite significantly.�, “the brains ability to generate new nerve cells does not stop early in life� and “ the more vigorous our mental activities are, the more we stimulate new brain cells.� Of course this is great news for me. Decades ago I abandoned formal studies and specialization in Behavioural Sciences in order to become a ‘tribal wise woman’, or ‘Aunty’ as they were known in Western Societies: I had two excellent sources of inspiration in Aunty Doss who lived across the road from me as a child, and Professor Walter Victor Mac Farlane, a celebrated polymath of his era who pioneered some very interesting studies in Brain and Behaviour and was kind enough to allow me to hang out with him. Thus I combined traditional Auntying methodology and practices with scientific research, but I didn’t stop there. I also mixed in methodology and practices of traditional fictional detectives from Sherlock Holmes to Miss Marple, and anything else I found useful (eg Edward De Bono and Kepner and Tregoe) to get where I am today… …which is up shit creek without a paddle… …and that brings me to my first point… The Lack of Understanding and Appreciation of Wisdom While many cultures still value wisdom, Western Societies tend to equate age with uselessness. This is particularly the case where the older person has spent his/her life motivated by curiosity rather than ambition, and has actively resisted the narrow, vertical path of expertise in a particular area. Both my husband and I are excellent cases in point. As indicated earlier, my particular field of interest is human behaviour, and while some people acknowledge that I have achieved some of the wisdom I have actively sought in this particular area, my abandonment of my formal studies in Psychology, Social Science et al decades ago has left me devoid of credibility. As a stand alone example, one of the observations I made while studying the remote outback Australia mining town in which I live was that there appeared to cyclic variations in behaviour. I wondered if there was some type of SAD at work – after all, if unaccustomed low levels of light could cause SAD, and relatively low increases in light could help SAD and jet lag, perhaps unaccustomed continuous high levels of sunlight could also have a detrimental effect which could help explain the increases in negative behaviours, accidents and incidents which I seemed to be observing in both the workplace and residential communities. It took me years to find the research to back up my ideas and, even though reverse, or summer, SAD has been acknowledged, nobody with any credibility has thought to consider what effect this might have in remote mining communities where the majority of people come from somewhere else and are accustomed to regular low levels of light during the winter months. Reverse SAD might have a considerable economic effect on workplace and residential communities, but it won’t be properly studied until some expert gets hold of the idea and follows it through – an Aunty like myself can’t even get hold basic statistics like police reports, workplace accident and incident reports, hospital records, school records etc to see if there’s anything in the idea. My husband is not faring any better. His particular interest is science research combined with the type of ‘shed bloke’ practicality often found amongst Australian rural blokes who were brought up to ‘make or mend’. He only got his current position because there was a national search for a particular set of knowledge and expertise and he achieved nearly a perfect score on a purpose built test (missing out on an acronym). At the time, he was informed that people of his age group were seldom employed unless they had an established (and narrow) area of recognized expertise. In the beginning, we both thought that all our Christmases had come at once and that we had, at last, come to an area where our own particular areas of wisdom could shine and, given the money around the place, be modestly but suitably rewarded. However once we had committed to living and working here, we found the opposite to be the case. My husband’s particular brand of wisdom relates to simple and practical innovations and problem solving backed by decades of scientific and shed bloke observations and pattern recognition, and the phone still rings hot when he’s off shift because when a problem turns up and there is nothing in the set procedures that deals with it, then he’s the one most likely to come up with some possible solutions – however although his age has given him useful wisdom, it has also provided the means to imprison him. All those who have come into his particular area after him are on much higher salaries – even a relatively young person who recently joined the section was put on a much higher salary because ‘otherwise he might leave’, but that’s hardly necessary in my husband’s case because everybody knows that, being in his early fifties, he can hardly uproot his family and move to better job elsewhere. Unfortunately six years of being increasingly undervalued to the point of financial distress in an isolated town with no cheap alternatives has taken it’s toll and I believe that the resultant stress and depression will soon start to irreversibly erode wisdom. …which brings me to my second point… What is the Price Western Societies Pay for the Undervaluing of Wisdom? Once again, I emphasize that I’m particularly interested in those older people who have followed the path of curiosity rather than ambition and expertise – the people who have have followed informal studies in an unusual combinations of interests and who can therefore extrapolate from patterns in a combination of areas – the unrecognized and uncelebrated polymaths or, ‘Jacks/Jills of all trades.’ In tribal societies these people tend to be valued as wise people, sages, teachers and philosophers, but Western Societies tend to throw them on the slag heap. This new Science of Wisdom indicates that we’re making a huge mistake because the brains of these people are capable of feats that simply aren’t possible in a younger brain and we’re missing out on a lot of problem solving ability and innovation. And, what is worse, maybe we’re compounding the cost by making these people feel useless to the extent of it becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. Could we be adding to the numbers of dementia sufferers by our generally held opinion that people over fifty are useless? There seems to be a number of factors indicated in Alzheimer’s, could one of them be a feeling of worthlessness? What’s the correlation between multi-infarct dementia and stress/depression? Are there significant differences in percentages of dementia sufferers in societies which value the wisdom of age and constantly make full use of it and those which don’t? How much could we really save if we took wisdom off the scrap heap and put it to use instead? ……………………….. Being over fifty, I obviously have some personal bias here. I reckon I’m at my peak and the decades I’ve spent in pursuit of the attainment of wisdom, and practicing my own particular brand of mental gymnastics, have led me to a point where I have formulated a somewhat eccentric yet entirely sensible set of universal behaviour management theories (based on behavioural patterns) which could save companies and communities millions. But I also reckon I’m before my time and, even once I’ve written them up with supporting evidence, it’ll be my daughter who makes money out of them – not me.
spacer