Review nº 2

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán
Source: www.nytimes.com
Date of publication: May 20, 2008


Review nº 2: Article ‘Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain’

Is it true that wisdom comes with age? An American scientific research found out that elderly wisdom is not an urban myth but a real feature of older people.
The article ‘Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain’ from a New York Times publication, explains that not remembering names is not a sign of brain power declaining but all the contrary. Ageing brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. Some brains deteriorate with age, but for most ageing adults much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact. In studies made where subjects were asked to read passages which were interrupted with unexpected words, adults 60 and older worked much more slowly than college students. That results indicate that elder people are taking the extra information 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. Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important.
This article is quite interesting because it would help many elderly people to understand and overcome the changes that their mind will experience. Because as the author states “Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful”. And as professor Jacqui Smith said “there is a word for what results when the mind is able to assimilate data and put it in its proper place – wisdom”. So contrary to general thought getting older is a mental advantage.
To conclude, yes, it seems to be true that wisdom comes with age as the American research has reciently found out. The alarming forgetting of single items is not always a sign of memory problems, but a sign of the natural development of elderly people’s brains. It is not other thing that the so far unproved process of getting wiser with age.