Confusing Wisdom and Memory

Musings from a Virtual Hammock

My personal hero for the day: SARA REISTAD-LONG of the NY Times, for her article on the aging brain, creative thinking, and wisdom. My friends know that my memory challenges terrify me. Reistad-Long, quoting researchers at Harvard, the University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan, reported on new paradigms of memory, attention, problem-solving, and wisdom. I took the good news as three bullets:

*Older people have a larger collection of accumulated knowledge than younger people -- and, therefore, have more information to store and manage.

*Younger people may appear to be more flexible in retrieving packets of information, but they are less flexible in being able to make creative connections between these packets.

*Older people access these collections to problem solve, and do so in a more holistic manner than younger people.

My favorite quote from the article:
“It may be that distractability is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”
My little ADHD brain magnetized to that one.

Isn't this what we 50-somethings have long suspected? My friends, seeing the panic on my face when I realize that I have completely forgotten what should be so easily remembered, reassure me that I "have too much on my mind". I do. BUT, I always fear that the real reason that I don't remember is that I knocked myself unconscious while disassembling a swing set about 15 years ago. While that fear may be correct, the same injury could have made creative thinking more likely. Thank you for sharing, Ms. Reistad-Long.

Related article: For a Sharp Brain: Stimulation