Wisdom and Aging

The title of this post is identical to the title of a chapter in a book titled Wiser by Dilip Jeste, MD with Scott LaFee. This chapter begins with two quotes:

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. EPICURUS

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you have been.

MADELEINE L’ENGLE, American author

Dr. Jeste writes, “One of the most exciting discoveries in neuroscience during the past two decades has been the revelation that brains continue to evolve through life, provided there is appropriate physical, cognitive, and psychosocial stimulation. My friend and colleague Fred “Rusty” Gage, a distinguished neuroscientist at the Salk Institute and UC San Diego, and his colleagues have shown that even in old mice, physical activity accompanied by psychosocial simulation can increase not only the number of synapses (connections between neurons) in the brain but also neurons in specific brain areas, such as the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus and areas around brain ventricles. Other researchers have replicated these results in various other animal species.

Brain imaging and neurophysiology studies have shown that physical exercise as well as mental stimulation and socialization have positive biological effects in older people. People who stay alive physically, cognitively, and socially tend to maintain their vocabulary; their ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, and people; and skills learned during early childhood, such as swimming or bicycling. Their brains are less likely to show atrophic or wasting-away changes that may characterize the brains of sedentary, lonely, inactive seniors.

In a 2011 paper, Lisa Eyler, Ayesha Sherzai, Allison Kaup, reviewed 550 human studies of structural brain imaging. We found that the vast majority of reports showed at least one significant association of successful cognitive aging with bigger structures and stronger connections in the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe. It’s not known what makes these structures larger or connections stronger, but animal studies have shown a beneficial impact of environmental enrichment on brain function and structure. Being physically and mentally active builds better brains throughout life, positively influencing adaptive neuroplasticity and reducing neurodegeneration.

With age, generally speaking, several components of wisdom become stronger, more refined, and second nature in many people. Despite a decline in fluid intelligence with age, social reasoning tends to improve, which includes the general ability to think abstractly, to identify patterns, discern relationships, and solve problems in the moment. Multiple neuroimaging studies have shown that older rains learn to compensate for the effects of advancing age. Different regions of the brain take up duties performed elsewhere. Some circuitry grows bigger and stronger even as other circuitry weakens or shrinks. In other words, the older brain finds work-arounds.

There are also some intriguing studies that suggest how an aging but active brain activity tends to shift from the back of the brain (the occipital lobes) to the front of the brain (the prefrontal cortex, which is critical for development and enhancement of wisdom). Also, more of he brain is involved in a mental activity in an active older person than in a young adult or in an inactive senior.

In youth, many brain functions are localized. We tend to talk about activities in terms of right brain and left brain. But in older people who keep busy both hemispheres tend to be involved in most functions. By engaging more of the brain, an active older adult may be able to do almost as well as a younger person in cognitive tasks, such as learning new things.

Older brains change in terms of emotional responsivity. The emotional highs and lows of youth flatten out. Research using functional MRI (fMRI) has shown that, with aging, the amygdala become less sensitivity to negative or stressful stimuli, such as the photo of a gruesome car accident. This type of change increases emotional regulation and positivity, aiding wisdom in later life. There is also less functional connectivity between the amygdala and the hippocampus, another part of the brain involved in emotion and memory, but contained strong connectivity between the amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which may effectively reduce negative memories while enhancing positive ones. The amygdala of an older person is as sensitive to positive stimuli, like the photo of a smiling baby, as that of a young adult. In other words, positivity of emotions and memory does not decode with age, only negativity does.

In a 2013 paper, Hannes Shwandt at the London School of Economics and Political Science described assessing more than 130,000 ‘life satisfaction expectations” made by 23,161 Germans polled in waves between 1991 and 2002 and then again five years later. The participants ranged in age from 17 to 85. Younger people tended o be more regretful and pessimistic than older people, who more easily let go of feelings of disappointment an remorse. Older people also felt less unhappy about things they could not change.

Young people just have more negative feelings Cornell professor Elaine Worthington old Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic. They struggle more than older people to find balance and context. With advancing age comes a gradual change in attitude. Older people try to do fewer things because they’re already been there, done that. There is a greater acceptance of one’s physical limitations, more happiness with past accomplishments, reduced preoccupation with peer pressure, and a more realistic appraisal of one’s own strengths and limitations. David Almeida at Penn State University has noted that compared to younger and midlife adults, seniors don’t get stressed out by their stressors.

Rick Hanson, a psychologist and senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, has written extensively on this topic. He asserts that our brains are naturally wired to focus on the negative. It’s a consequence of evolution. Our ancestors needed to pay particular attention to negatives, such as hungry predators or natural hazards. It was a matter of day-to-day survive. Positive experiences such as finding food, shelter, or mating opportunities were great, but unlikely to determined whether Homo erectus or Homo neanderthalensis lived to see tomorrow, a point even more emphatically for Homo sapiens these days.

Thus our brains develop a negativity bias, a bent for paying particular attention to threatening stuff, though the result is feelings of stress and unhappiness. That’s why bad news is more memorable than good—and political attack ads are effective. Age and wisdom are antidotes to such negativity. Young minds are like Velcro when it comes to negative emotional experiences and memories, which stick easily. Older minds are like Teflon: the bad stuff tends to wash off.

Carstensen, the Stanford psychologist, has shown that in older age, with a growing awareness of limited time left in life, people tend to take great emotional satisfaction from where they have been and spend less time freeing about where they think they must go.

Young people are miserable at regulating their emotions Carstensen told Rauch, who subsequently recalled his own experience: Years ago, my father made much the same point when I asked him why in his 50s he stopped having rage, which had shadowed his younger years and disrupted our family. He said I realized I didn’t need to have five-dollar reaction to nickel provocations.