O-kay who hasn’t had one of those OMG moments? Like, I can’t remember the
name of that movie I just saw or that song I want to hear. The recall is not as quick as it once was,
but the pistons seem to still be firing. We call it getting older. I prefer to think of it as my brain
is so full of useful and useless information that it just takes a little longer
to shuffle through the files.
Research tells
us that contrary to what we think,
in some ways our brain improves with
age. They call this crystalized intelligence.
This is the ability to use your ever growing storage of knowledge, skills and experience for situations as they
rise. And guess what? It doesn’t start to peak until your mid-sixties to early seventies!
Crystalized intelligence is not memory, but it is our ability to quickly access our memory, evaluate a situation
and apply our knowledge to solve problems and make decisions.
So while younger
brains may have speed, older brains
are more efficient; meaning they can take
shortcuts to solve a problem. We’ve been there and done that before. So we
simply reach into our stockpile of information
for solutions and take the path of least resistance. This means as we age we’ve
been through a lot in life and this
allows us to go from one point to the next in a quick and logical manner. We
can discern between what is important and what is basically useless in a relatively
short amount of time.
There’s a simple term for this; wisdom! So let the young brains run fast. Someday
they’ll catch up to us! In the mean time we can just watch them run with the
full knowledge that they may be able to
create an app a day, but we’ve got
crystalize intelligence on our side!
Here’s to the wise!
Doctor Lynn
follow: Doctor Lynn's Proactive Anti-Aging Blog
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