Education for Mental Fitness: “A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond”

JAN 19, 2012

By: Alvaro Fernandez

Kudos to Patri­cia Cohen for one of the best arti­cles I have read in The New York Times in a long time: A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond, by Patri­cia Cohen. These are a few quotes — please do read the arti­cle in full, it is worth it.

• “Some peo­ple are much bet­ter than their peers at delay­ing age-related declines in mem­ory and cal­cu­lat­ing speed. What researchers want to know is why. Why does your 70-year-old neigh­bor score half her age on a mem­ory test, while you, at 40, have the mem­ory of a senior cit­i­zen? If inves­ti­ga­tors could bet­ter detect what pro­tects one person’s men­tal strengths or chips away at another’s, then per­haps they could devise a pro­gram to halt or reverse decline and even shore up improvements.”
• “As it turns out, one essen­tial ele­ment of men­tal fit­ness has already been iden­ti­fied. “Edu­ca­tion seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind through­out adult­hood and even a longer life,” says Margie E. Lach­man, a psy­chol­o­gist at Bran­deis Uni­ver­sity who spe­cial­izes in aging. For those in midlife and beyond, a col­lege degree appears to slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade, adding a new twist to the cost-benefit analy­sis of higher edu­ca­tion — for young stu­dents as well as those think­ing about return­ing to school.”
• “Many researchers believe that human intel­li­gence or brain­power con­sists of dozens of assorted cog­ni­tive skills, which they com­monly divide into two cat­e­gories. One bunch falls under the head­ing “fluid intel­li­gence,” the abil­i­ties that pro­duce solu­tions not based on expe­ri­ence, like pat­tern recog­ni­tion, work­ing mem­ory and abstract think­ing, the kind of intel­li­gence tested on I.Q. exam­i­na­tions. These abil­i­ties tend to peak in one’s 20s.”
• “Crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence,” by con­trast, gen­er­ally refers to skills that are acquired through expe­ri­ence and edu­ca­tion, like ver­bal abil­ity, induc­tive rea­son­ing and judg­ment. While fluid intel­li­gence is often con­sid­ered largely a prod­uct of genet­ics, crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence is much more depen­dent on a bou­quet of influ­ences, includ­ing per­son­al­ity, moti­va­tion, oppor­tu­nity and culture.
• “At a time when the prospect of a longer life is shad­owed by the fear of men­tal decline, the pos­si­bil­ity that the aging can have some con­trol over their men­tal fit­ness is an idea even William Osler would support.”

Full arti­cle: A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond, by Patri­cia Cohen.