André Fischer

Good news about the middle-age brain

Posted Jun 7th, 2010 at 11:15 AM and seen 5296 times

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Forget version 4 of the iPhone as today’s big news. This is really important. Barbara Strauch, former deputy science editor of The New York Times published a book called The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind. Here’s the paragraph that made my day:

“If you have to learn new information — a new computer system at work — brand new information can take a little longer on average as our brains age. [But] our brains in modern middle age have enormous capacity and are formidable in their powers to get the gist of an argument, to see the big picture. Someone I know who teaches at Columbia says the kids are smart, but they don’t seem to connect the dots. What we have in the middle-age brain is that ability to connect the dots. I’ve had many people tell me, ‘I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, but solutions pop into my head.’”

Now where did I put my iPhone?

Full interview at Boston.com.

I’ve had that very same feeling for quite a while now, this inability to remember trivial things like what I ate yesterday, while getting better at the “big picture” things (something I’ve always been quite good at). So I guess my abilities as Software Architect aren’t due to wane just yet… Hooray!