Brain doesn’t have to grow old. It can grow better and smarter
By: Tomáš Klvaňa
Tags: Neuroscience, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Ageism, ICO

Brain doesn’t have to grow old. It can grow better and smarter

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Joe Biden was elected as the oldest President in U.S. history. He just turned 78. Despite the enormous challenges of the pandemic, his campaign was near flawless and well executed. And yet, you need not look especially hard for comments related not to his performance but age, and his supposedly lost spark.

It is ts well known that Biden used to stutter and had to overcome the impediment, largely successfully. Likewise, we know that Biden is not among best orators. His qualities as a politician lie somewhere else. But much criticism he faces relates to his age in spite of the fact that these supposed or real shortcomings have nothing to do with it. Rather they all have to do with ageism, the last tolerated form of social injustice.

Biden is the perfect illustration of the most important trend of the century, human longevity. In the November election, he defeated a septuagenarian sitting President, and in the primaries another septuagenarian U.S. Senator. Biden’s generational peers populate U.S. Congressional leadership. You may disagree with many of these leaders on substance and policy, but it is difficult to argue that they do not exhibit a remarkable skill and competence; almost all of them do and that is why they are where they are.

From the Rebel without a Cause to the Quiet Power

Upon expiry of the cult of youth launched by the Baby Boomers in the late 1950s, we will be entering a new era with more older people than the young. The demographic change is going to transform globally significant cultural trends. The young world was epitomized by the Rebel Without a Cause. While we do not yet have a suitable label for the older world, my candidate is the Quiet Power.

Like all prejudices, ageism thrives on lack of information. Up until recently, science even supported it. We believed that as we get older, our brain cells die, and our cognitive abilities necessarily decline with age. And then over the last 15 years tremendous amount of money and effort was invested in brain research. We found out that we were wrong. Brain cells in healthy people do not disappear and we may even grow new ones in the process called neurogenesis.

Brain definitely does change as we grow older and certain functions worsen. We get slower learning new things, become less adept at storing large volumes of fact, our recall memory experiences glitches, and it becomes harder to suppress background noise. But there are three pieces of good news vastly outweighing the negatives.

These slippages are not a given and can be mitigated, slowed and halted. All the same, they are not important to our successful functioning in the market, society and life in general. There are more important cognitive skills that get better with age.

Human brain is flexible. It evolves in response to stimuli from the environment. Decline is not preordained. Our behavior, what we expose the brain to every single day, determines how it is shaped. You become what you reflect: Neglect and laziness are sure ways to cognitive slippage, but in healthy people these are conscious choices and as such can be reversed at any age. Decline can be avoided by training the ability to think strategically.

For ages we have lived under the misconception that he who remembers tons of fact is the smart one. Science shows that while relevant facts are certainly important, rote learning and rote behavior might be slowing down our brain potential.

The Most Important Cognitive Skills Peak Later in Life

In her book Make Your Brain Smarter, Sandra Bond Chapman, a neuroscientist from University of Texas at Dallas, distinguishes two kinds of intelligence. Fluid intelligence is anchored in a dynamic flexibility and is about how nimbly we use and apply learning to new situations. Crystallized intelligence on the other hand exhibits accrued experience and knowledge. Simply said, it is not just about what you know, but also how quickly, creatively and productively can you apply what you know to unpredictable events and contexts.

“[T]he more you practice deeper thinking, the easier and more efficient your brain operates when taking on more effortful thinking,” writes Chapman. Deeper thinking refers to skills that improve with age, some of which peak after sixty. “Problem solving, synthesizing big ideas, and innovative thinking, can actually improve with advancing age,” says Chapman. Based on her research and observation, she notices that the majority of seniors aged eighty-five and older manifest a potential for well-preserved intellect, capacity for new learning, and sound decision making.

Recently George P. Shultz, the 100-year-old former U.S. Secretary of State, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post on the importance of trust in society. One can hardly find a better example of crystallized intelligence used properly by fluid intelligence to the state of American politics these days.

The core misconception of ageism is judging older people on wrong criteria. Are they suddenly unable to recall someone’s name? It is irrelevant and says nothing about their smarts, productivity, innovative thinking and competitiveness. Instead let’s focus on their strategic abilities, problem solving, innovative cognition and integrated reasoning.

Ageism is not just morally misguided, but also counterproductive. Older employees can be and will be an important asset. In the Age of the Quiet Power, we need to break the cycle of prejudice by empowering older people and helping them develop into their bests for the sake of everyone. Think of it this way: When you get older, do you want to be an asset or liability? The answer is clear.

Tomas is the EMR Co-founder and senior international management consultant.

Extend My Runway (EMR) is a Singapore-based startup developing a revolutionary brain-based approach to enhancing productivity and performance. It combines leading research insights and machine learning to reshape choices and create new behaviors.