Wisdom is Better Than Details

By Bruce Shawkey

New study sug­gests that as we get older, wis­dom, not details, is pri­or­it­ized

Have you ever walked into a room and for­got­ten why you’re there? Or struggled to recall where you left your keys?

These memory lapses aren’t unusual, espe­cially as we age, but a new paper pub­lished this month in the journal Per­spect­ives on Psy­cho­lo­gical Sci­ence sug­gests there may be an over­looked bio­lo­gical reason for it.

Research­ers at the Uni­versity of Ari­zona argue that changes in the brain asso­ci­ated with aging aren’t a sign of decline, but a new phase of devel­op­ment that sup­ports per­spect­ive, emo­tional reg­u­la­tion, and passing on know­ledge to the next gen­er­a­tion.

“What the goals of an older brain are are quite dif­fer­ent than the goals of a younger brain,” said Fabian-xosé Fernan­dez, a pro­fessor of cog­ni­tion and neural sys­tems at the Uni­versity of Ari­zona and an author on the new research.

He said we should think about the aging brain not as a young per­son’s brain in decline, but as one spe­cific­ally adap­ted to pri­or­it­ize wis­dom.

Aging as a devel­op­mental phase

Fernan­dez and his col­leagues point to a body of research show­ing that older adults’ brains rely less on the hip­po­cam­pus, which is respons­ible for form­ing and recall­ing new memor­ies, includ­ing details like names and places and spa­tial nav­ig­a­tion.

Instead, dur­ing memory tasks, older brains are rely­ing more on the frontal cor­tex, the area asso­ci­ated with higher-level think­ing and syn­thes­iz­ing inform­a­tion.

Some sci­ent­ists have argued that aging brains rely on the cor­tex to com­pensate for decline in the hip­po­cam­pus, which shrinks over our lives. But Fernan­dez offers a dif­fer­ent the­ory: In later adult­hood, we need wis­dom more than we need to retain every new detail we come across.

“It’s this abil­ity to melt away that which does not mat­ter and get to the essence of an issue,” Fernan­dez said.

Other research has sug­ges­ted that healthy aging could be simply another phase of the brain’s devel­op­ment, bring­ing new strengths and weak­nesses. Chil­dren, for instance, have an extraordin­ary abil­ity to learn lan­guage but might have more dif­fi­culty than adults with emo­tional reg­u­la­tion and impulse con­trol.

For someone in their 70s, 80s or older, it might be help­ful to focus less on mem­or­iz­ing minu­tiae and more on under­stand­ing a big­ger pic­ture.

A takeaway for older adults is that memory changes might be bene­fi­cial in later phases of life, accord­ing to Daniel Nation, a pro­fessor of geron­to­logy and neur­o­logy at the Uni­versity of South­ern Cali­for­nia who was not involved in the study.

"There may be some cog­nit­ive bene­fits to older adults that come from cog­nit­ive changes we nor­mally think of as purely neg­at­ive,” Nation said of the new paper.

He noted the “grand­mother hypo­thesis,” a the­ory about the wis­dom and per­spect­ive of older mem­bers of the com­munity when it comes to mak­ing decisions and impart­ing know­ledge to younger people.

How to help your brain age well

Regard­less of whether sci­ent­ists believe that the older brain is adapt­ing to a new phase of life or com­pens­at­ing for decline, they sug­gest that there are ways we can all age bet­ter.

In Fernan­dez’s paper, he and his col­leagues write that older people who “engage in lifelong learn­ing, com­plex occu­pa­tions, or high social activ­ity” tend to have more flex­ible brains. That means they can con­tinue to nav­ig­ate com­plic­ated tasks even as the hip­po­cam­pus shrinks.

Patri­cia Reu­ter-lorenz, a pro­fessor of psy­cho­logy and neur­os­cience at the Uni­versity of Michigan who con­duc­ted some of the stud­ies cited in the new paper, agreed that life­style factors are key.

“Solid fit­ness, a good diet and sleep are all very import­ant. And main­tain­ing an act­ive social net­work and cog­nit­ive engage­ment,” she said. “Those are the pil­lars.”

Reu­ter-lorenz also emphas­ized that the upsides of aging should con­tinue to be acknow­ledged by research­ers, espe­cially since hav­ing a pos­it­ive view of aging seems to help people age bet­ter.

“There are treas­ures in aging that can be cher­ished,” Reu­ter-lorenz said. “And that may only come with age.”

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Well said. I think the gist of this article can be summed up in this sentence from the article: In later adult­hood, we need wis­dom more than we need to retain every new detail we come across.