The aging brain can learn and grow. This new conventional wisdom—based on the latest neurophysiological research—replaces the old conventional wisdom (which was that the brain has only a fixed number a cells set at birth and that older people cannot learn with the flexibility of younger people).
So much for conventional wisdom of any kind. Once, during an illness, one of my doctors gave me a 500 page book on “Psychopharmocology”—a technical text on the effects of drugs on the brain. I read it as best I could—it was quite technical—and returned it to my doctor.
“Interesting!” I said, “what I could understand of it. Why did you have me read it?”
My doctor replied, “So you could see how little we know.”
When I was in rehabilitation for a brain infection, my doctor there told me about the latest research concerning mice and learning. If you make a mouse run a maze to get some cheese, they will over time learn to run it faster. However, if you make a mouse swim in water too deep for it to stand to get the cheese, it will learn three to four times faster. According to my doctor, these results had had revolutionized the way her profession treated people with brain injury. Putting the patient under some stress made their recovery faster.
We now know that the brain retains the ability to regenerate and grow new neural circuits throughout life, and even into old age. This has implications for the spiritual life. While it is true that intense spiritual practices designed for youth (primarily young men) — long retreats, monastic practice, asceticism, and so on – are not so practical as we grow older, there are other kinds of practices that are more suitable for maturity than youth. Among these are meditations on impermanence, loving kindness, and gratitude. In some basic sense it takes a whole life to appreciate a whole life.
Here is another story about the plasticity of the brain. I have a good friend, a psychiatrist, who is 79. He took up studying the piano in his 70s. He loves to play—especially to improvise—and though it is hard for him to learn the theory and technique of the piano, he keeps at it.
“It makes me tired,” he said, “all the music theory and technical details.” He gestured to me, knowing that I have been playing piano all my life. “It must be so easy to start when you’re young.”
I acknowledged that that was so, but also suggested that perhaps he was tired because his brain was busy growing neurons to accommodate his new art. “That’s a good thing,” I said. “It’ll make you live longer.”
He liked hearing that.
Thank you Lew, thank you for all this information and the encouraging way it is written. I will translate it and read it to some of my patients and friends in order to inspire them about all this. Bàrbara
Lew – thanks for your blog and insights. As you know, going back to school in my mid-sixties in pursuit of a new career was a challenge. I learned that I didn’t “learn” as quickly as I think I used to, and that I have to push myself, develop new strategies and be patient. So far, so good.
Your comments about gratitude, loving kindness and impermanence are right on – I would add that it’s also important to find meaning in one’s life. To paraphrase a quote I heard-”it would be tragic to come to the end of your life and realize that you never really lived it at all.”
Thanks for this, Lewis. It is a good antidote to the posts on dementia. Like the others at Tricycle, I fear dementia, but I’m doing all I can about it and my financial circumstances compel me to work. Work provides the stress and the necessity of learning new things. And, most importantly, I seem to have begun a daily meditation practice at age 60. So, I simply have to accept that dementia may happen, despite my best efforts, but until it does I’m grateful for every day.
Lew, I believe that I have been blessed with a financial situation that will require me to work for at least the next 8-10 years, making me 72-74 before I can consider retirement. If it were not for the learning and adapting that my profession requires and the necessity of getting up, dressing, etc for work; I would probably be a vegetable.
I am a profound introvert, yet I know that on my own 24/7, I am lousey company! Being around people stretches my resources mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Just as I need to stretch my body to exercise effectively, I have to get out of my comfort zone to keep healthy in other areas.
I have learned a lot about fear and I agree with Mark Twain: “I have experienced many terrible disasters in my life, most of which never happened.”
Love & Peace – Ajna
Thanks, Lew, for this and all that you do. At 75, post-stroke and occasionally hyper-active but still productive and reasonably happy with no end in clear sight, I can attest personally to the points you raise, all of them. I now find that it was the learning of another language in my 60′s that was so salutary in helping me to retain all or most of my marbles post-stroke
But I also don’t want to lose sight of the belief among many Buddhists that Consciousness, capital C, does not reside in the brain. Some believe that it is a universal constant, like gravity, everywhere and nowhere. What a concept! Hard to get your dualistic mind around. Which is exactly the point.
I loved this post in the Book Club discussion by someone named Kate:
“Perhaps it would help to think about it like this. The egoic self that manifests in the physical body is the way in which we experience the manifest world. This self, however, quickly loses sight of its true Self and misunderstands the nature of the cosmos and gets overly identified with itself and the body. So yes, this self does need to exist to set an intention to return to its true Self, to remember that merely because consciousness is present in ‘separate’ bodies we are not really separate at all.”
Anam Thubten Rinpoche seemed to think this was a super observation. Me, too.
If we limit ourselves to understanding the brain alone, admittedly an astonishing organ whose limits we have not begun to tap into, we may miss understanding the greater point: we exist in spite of our brains, not because of them.
IMHO
Rat’s Ass Sangha rules!
:8-)
metta to all,
John
A Little levity i hope is permitted.
“I’ve been told that the brain is the most important organ in the body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
–Emo Phillips
To John’s comment, to wit:
But I also don’t want to lose sight of the belief among many Buddhists that Consciousness, capital C, does not reside in the brain. Some believe that it is a universal constant, like gravity, everywhere and nowhere. What a concept! Hard to get your dualistic mind around.
I was talking at a party recently to a neurological research professor, an eminent expert in his field. I asked him about the possibility that consciousness might not reside in the brain, or not wholly in the brain, and he said, to my surprise, that some in his profession think of that as a serious hypothesis.
He did.
You are right. I have had two ladies 78 years old among my students. they came from Vietnam, had been through several wars, started a new life here in Canada, and they were the most active, smart and aware students, a model for everyone else. they also had a very good life hygiene, especially concerning their alimentation (sorry for my poor english, I am french).