The Good News About Your Brain

Senior moments. middle-aged spread. midlife crisis. It’s no wonder Americans have a dim view of what awaits us past our “prime.”

But research shows that, contrary to popular belief, the brain does not peak in our 20s and then start a slow slide to decrepitude. Brain cells don’t just die off, as once believed. In fact, not only do healthy brains retain and produce new cells into middle age and beyond, but people get much better at using their brains. What’s more, we know of ways to help us stay mentally healthy and alert.

“We’ve all heard of senior moments—walking into rooms and forgetting why we’re there, losing our car keys, delayed retrieval of the correct word. We associate that with normal aging and think those things are just going to happen, no matter how hard we try [to fight it],” says Lee Memorial Health System Chief of Psychology Mabel Lopez, a neuropsychologist with Florida Spine and Brain. “For the majority of people, that is true,” she says—not because it’s inevitable, but because of the lifestyle choices Americans make. “Our foods are too processed, we’re too overweight, there’s a pandemic of diabetes and obesity. Those health factors will affect your cognition, your thinking. It does not need to be that way.”

Barbara Strauch, deputy science editor and health and medical science editor at The New York Times, has written a book debunking many of the myths about midlife. The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind focuses on research showing that by middle age, we’re “smarter, calmer, happier.”

“We have a modern middle age—age 40 to 65, 68—and there are a lot of people now going through [it],” she says. The length of this midlife period is new, and researchers have found that negative stereotypes about it are just wrong. “In a number of areas, including some pretty sexy ones, like inductive reasoning, our brains continue to improve—in fact are better in our 40s and through our 60s than when we were in our 20s.”

It is true that the middle-aged brain processes data more slowly, and it’s harder to focus and remember things such as names or what we had for breakfast. Strauch says she wrote the book partly to find out what happens to those lost names, and partly in response to fears about dementia among (now middle-aged) baby boomers.

“I think that people are worried about this silently. But when you sit down and talk to people who are middle aged, these are people who are highly competent. In midlife now in a complex world, we have brains that are set up to deal with complexity,” she says. “We’re better at getting the big picture, the gist of an argument, we’re better at social expertise—judging good guys from bad guys—so in many cases, we find that a sense of well-being increases and in some cases peaks at age 65. The idea that midlife is gloom and doom and John Updike forlorn-and-everything-is-over is not true.”

Stereotypes such as midlife crisis, empty nest and increasing grumpiness grew out of questionable science, Strauch says. Most parents, far from becoming depressed, are proud and thrilled when kids successfully head out on their own, she says, and although midlife often involves transition, people who experience it as a crisis likely have experienced most transitions as crises.

Says Lopez, “Midlife crisis is a cultural phenomenon. It doesn’t occur in all cultures, like teen rebellion doesn’t occur in all cultures. It’s very American.”

A recent Gallup poll echoed Strauch’s reporting that people actually become happier as they age. “The science is pretty solid, and it’s been there for a while,” she says. “It shows clearly that a sense of well-being and an optimistic view are pretty typical.” Brain scans, in fact, show that the mind responds less to negative and more to positive inputs as we age, and “as we get older, we know what to pay attention to and what to not pay attention to.”

HOW THE BRAIN CHANGES

The brain actually reorganizes over the years, and people in midlife begin to use two sides of the brain rather than one. Scientists also have found that it’s possible for the brain to continue producing new cells and neurons as we age, and that myelin, a substance that helps neural connections and signals develop, continues to grow, so our brains can handle more complex skills. Scientists think it’s those connections and networks that enable the brain to learn. “People thought that was over by the time we were in our 20s, and now they see the brain continues to develop as long as it’s healthy,” says Strauch.

Data showing that brain cells continue to be produced is just beginning to make an impression, says Naples neurologist William Justiz. “Five years ago, virtually every neurologist in the country would say, ‘No way.’”

The net effect is that people do lose some brain function, so certain mental skills, such as learning, are more difficult. “If you already have a kind of knowledge, adding to it isn’t so hard,” Justiz says. “But the brain is not as flexible as it was. Learning something new is harder.”

Still, those in midlife have an advantage over younger people in situations they’ve experienced before, where they have “well-trodden” neural pathways, he says. “You’ve got a mental framework to fill in gaps, whereas a 20-year-old has to learn them.”

“UNDERRATED”

Despite the common quips that “60 is the new 40,” society doesn’t get it, says Strauch, who deplores seeing middle-aged intellectual capital being pushed out of workplaces, especially during the recession. “Retirement ages are out of date. Hiring practices are out of date. I think our whole culture needs to catch up with what science really shows.”