That maddening “senior moment” when the topic at hand slips away and you assume your brains are leaking out along with it? According to a growing number of studies, this gloomy assessment is wrong-headed. Instead, older brains are sifting through the store of information accumulated over a lifetime, filtering, placing information in context — and often coming up with a better answer or solution than younger respondents.
After arthritis forced her to give up embroidery in her 70’s, the renowned American folk artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka “Grandma Moses”) took up painting. She lived to be 101. Coincidence? Not if Gene Cohen, the eminent evangelist of good news about the aging brain, is right.
The Knight Seminar ended almost a week ago, but I’m just beginning to digest all the information that came at me from experts in fields ranging from demography to neuroscience to end-of-life care. Here are eight quotes that struck me as particularly relevant to this project:
1. “We have gained on average 10 biological years of life since our grandparents’ era.” — Abigail Trafford, Washington Post health editor
I'm an author whose books include Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well (HarperCollins,1997). I'm on the board of the Council on Contemporary Families, and a staff writer at the American Museum of Natural History. While researching this project I've received fellowships from the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, the New York Times, and the Yale Law School's Information Society Project.
-- Ashton Applewhite
