Are aging brains destined to decline, or can you actually keep yours sharp and strong?
We all experience changes as we age—we may notice them first in the knees and eyes, but by middle age and older we can usually detect changes in the brain as well. We have trouble retrieving words, or we take an extra minute or two to remember a name.
It happens, and it’s normal. Those cognitive changes can be worrisome, as the truth of aging mixes with the fear of dementia. It may help to understand that most of the cognitive changes we start to see in mid-life are not cause for concern, and there are strategies that can help us harness wisdom and experience to compensate for normal changes.
First the bad news: yes, the brain undergoes normal, if daunting, age-related changes. Quite simply, it shrinks, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. The atrophy is most pronounced in the frontal lobe and hippocampus, which are the areas involved in cognitive control and making new memories. Blood flow to the brain also decreases, as blood vessels stiffen and become less efficient.
Then there are changes in the white matter—underneath the deep folds of gray matter—that’s in charge of communication. The nerve fibers of white matter are sheathed in myelin, which carries nerve signals between brain cells and which shrinks with age. That results in less speed and efficiency of communication between brain areas, experienced as thinking slower. You still have all that knowledge in your brain, but you’re going to be slower at answering trivia questions.
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Compensating for the Changes That Come With Age
Even with that bad (but normal) news, you still have so much brain power at your disposal. You can learn to use your skills and experiences to compensate for age-related changes.
When my patients complain about a decline in processing speed, we work on some basic strategies for compensating for it. These may feel awkward at first, but as they become habit you will see they are remarkably effective.
Strategies For Aging Brains
1. Practice a priori filtering
This refers to zoning in on important information in advance of an experience. Experiences that provide a lot of new information—whether it’s making a phone call or reading a book or visiting a friend—require your brain to do a lot of work figuring out what’s important.
Using a priori filtering, you go into the situation having already thought about what might be important to remember. If you’re going out to dinner with a good friend, ask yourself in advance, what are the five things I want to remember about what this person has to say? You might remember more, but if you choose five important things to remember, you’re offloading some of the cognitive load.
2. Write and repeat. And repeat.
Writing brief, bullet-pointed notes about what you heard or read creates a cognitive filtering system. When you write down main points, your brain is focused on processing those points and filtering out the rest. Small bits of information are much easier to process than long narratives.
The same goes for repetition: The more you rehearse or repeat information, the more you allow for deeper processing within the brain. If you write five bullet points that are important for you to commit to memory, you rehearse that information until it’s solidly in that short-term memory bank. That is purposeful, effortful use of frontal lobe functioning. What’s great about writing is that it freezes that information, so it doesn’t go anywhere.
3. Organize information
Remember learning all those mnemonics—rhymes or funny phrases to recall information, like Roy G. Biv for the colors of the rainbow? They work because they give the brain a way of making sense of information and relating it to something that’s already solidly encoded or solidly inside our memory bank.
We can make creative or funny phrases about anything. If you take the time to do it, you’re organizing that information so that you have more efficient recall of it. When we don’t give ourselves time to rehearse or organize information, we pay the price, because those frontal lobes are not working as well as they used to.
4. Give yourself cues
It’s important to give yourself cues rather than relying on spontaneous recall, which is also less reliable in an older brain. When you make plans to meet a friend for lunch, for example, you may think that of course you’ll remember—she’s your closest friend, you’re looking forward to seeing her.
But remembering to meet her at the Old Stone Café for lunch at Monday at noon—that’s multiple pieces of information you may not remember spontaneously. Put that in your daily planner, and add an alert in the phone. Spontaneous recall does not work as well in older brains and can be one of the most frustrating parts of aging. Try not to do that to yourself! Put those cues in place because they will help you bypass the diminishment of the frontal lobe functioning.
5. Be in the present
Present-mindedness means being aware of your state of mind as you’re doing something cognitive. If you’re doing anything that requires you to pay attention, performing any task that requires cognitive effort, you don’t want to be distracted by anxiety, fatigue, or anything else that pulls you out of the moment.
Those are not good times to take in other information! If you do find yourself in such a situation, it’s definitely time to write things down. It’s time to ask for information to be repeated. It’s definitely the time to use all of the strategies here.
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There Is More You Can Do for Your Brain
In addition to these strategies, it’s important to be aware of long-standing negative self-narratives that can wear on the brain. Chronic self-criticism, diminished self-confidence, and a pessimistic view of the future often operate in the background of brain health efforts and undermine your efforts to implement these strategies. It’s important to recognize these factors, counter the negative thoughts, and open space for your brain to age in good health.
Building cognitive reserve is another important part of maintaining long-term brain health. Cognitive reserve refers to the brain’s ability to remain resilient in the face of aging or neurological changes. This reserve can be strengthened throughout our lives by engaging in activities that involve learning, processing new information, and challenging our thinking.
The strategies discussed here are intended to help you stay mentally engaged and continue building cognitive reserve over time. In many ways, cognitive reserve acts like a cushion against some of the cognitive changes that can occur with aging, helping the brain maintain flexibility and function for longer.
Written by Amanda Sacks-Zimmerman, Ph.D.
This article was originally published on Psychology Today
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