Here’s a link that I was going to use for my July Rambling except I forgot. OK, I didn’t forget, but it got buried in my e-mails: I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Seniors’ moments vindicated.
Ever walk into a room, stop halfway in, and wonder why you were there..in that room?
Sure you have.
Or forgotten a word for a few minutes? Even a whole phrase?!
These times are laughingly called “seniors moments” or “brain farts” and they happen to most older people. They are, however, damned annoying and embarrassing when they happen…
You begin to worry about dementia.. how long do you have left before one of your loving relatives calls your doctor and tries to have you committed to a “old folks home” or the funny farm? How long before you can’t remember what your name is?
Well, worry no more.
The story is based on a post in the New Old Age Blog in the New York Times, citing an article in Topics in Cognitive Science, titled… I just read it and I still don’t remember it. Oh, yeah: The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning.
The bottom line is that we of a “certain age” know so much, generally, more than younger people, “simply by virtue of having been around longer,” an older brain has to go through more stuff – suddenly, Black is Black by Los Bravos pops into my head from a K-Tel Records ad! – to retrieve information. Factor that in and “the aging ‘deficits’ largely disappeared.”
In other words, we’re just too darn smart!
Next time you get some snark from some (relative) youngster, let him or her know, “Hey, it’s just a curse of my superior wisdom!” Or whatever sentence you can memorize easily without blocking other data.
***
Emoticons are changing how our brains function. (But maybe in good ways.)
LISTEN to The Police – Too Much Information