Finally---Good News About Aging!

This whole dreary business of aging has been getting me down lately. Up to this point the only positive aspect seemed to be the comparison with the alternative. But now I have been cheered up a bit by a study described in Medicne World at http://medicineworld.org/stories/lead/1-2010/older-brains-make-good-use-of-useless-information.html This research shows that what might be thought of as a defect in older brains, the loss of the ability to filter out seemingly irrelevant information, appears to have an upside. The older learners bond items that younger brains do not and this may give them additional ability in making decisions. Perhaps this is one of the sources of wisdom, an attribute traditionally associated with age and experience. Of course, one might argue that this like what is sometimes said of flaws found in software, i.e. "it's not a bug, it's a feature." But, at least on the surface, these new findings seem to make sense.

Bring on the wisdom!