The Myth of the Midlife Crisis

June 14, 2006 by  

The Myth of the Midlife Crisis: "

It’s
time we stopped dismissing middle age as the beginning of the end.
Research suggests that at 40, the brain’s best years are still ahead.

(Via Newsweek Health for Life.)

While changing our perspective, age also remodels our
brains, leaving us better equipped to fulfill our own dreams. The most
important difference between older brains and younger brains is also
the easiest to overlook: older brains have learned more than young
ones. Throughout life, our brains encode thoughts and memories by
forming new connections among neurons. The neurons themselves may lose
some processing speed with age, but they become ever more richly
intertwined. Magnified tremendously, the brain of a mentally active
50-year-old looks like a dense forest of interlocking branches, and
this density reflects both deeper knowledge and better judgment. That’s
why age is such an advantage in fields like editing, law, medicine,
coaching and management. There is no substitute for acquired learning.

Knowledge and wisdom aren’t the only fruits of age. New
research suggests that as our brains become more densely wired, they
also become less rigidly bifurcated. As I mentioned earlier, our brains
actually consist of two separate structures—a right brain and a left
brain—linked by a row of fibers called the corpus callosum. In most
people, the left hemisphere specializes in speech, language and logical
reasoning, while the right hemisphere handles more intuitive tasks,
such as face recognition and the reading of emotional cues. But as
scientists have recently discovered through studies with PET scans and
magnetic resonance imaging, this pattern changes as we age. Unlike
young adults, who handle most tasks on one side of the brain or the
other, older ones tend to use both hemispheres. Duke University
neuroscientist Robert Cabeza has dubbed this phenomenon Hemispheric
Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults—HAROLD for short—and his research
suggests it is no accident.

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