On the morning of 1 March 10 I listened to this on NPR's Morning Edition on my way to work and although their is some not so good news about "reaction times" and "multi-tasking" there is some good news regarding the "Vintage" mind. We are better at solving complex problems. There seems to be some wisdom in ancient cultures that respect their elders that make critical decisions for the "tribe".

Click here to hear this report.

Growing brain cells is good news. It shows that learning is a life long experience.

Do you have an opinion about this?

 

Sorry, but I don't buy it.... oh, the slow down I buy. I don't think we know enough about the brain to come to half the conclusions that we do. I believe a lot is self fullfilling - it's what we want to believe. But the good news, for some of you, is 56 and 58 is still middle age according to these brains. They forgot to mention that lots of sex really makes you smart and beats a treadmill.

 

To a large extent that science still admits that the human brain is a mystery. However, with MRI's and other technologies that can watch brain activity I think that we may be closer than ever before as to how it works. That is not to say that we understand how it works as scientist still do not have a handle on long term memory versus short term memory, etc.

 

My dad is always finding new subjects to get interested in (he'll be 94 in May). Right now it's the brain. He watches Charlie Rose a lot, and the brain was a recent discussion.

 

Apparently he has been blessed by having a very active one!

 

Sometimes too active. He doesn't know how to turn it off. Drives my mother crazy.

 

The brain slows down becuase we have more useless crap to filter through to get to the answer were looking for than when we were younger.

 

I saw an interview with Carroll Shelby recently. He is eighty-one years old and has had two heart transplants and a kidney transplant. He claims that he still wakes up once or twice a night with new ideas for his car designs and writes them down so he will remember them the next day.



I would not mind having the new Mustang GT350 as a toy. Although I am not crazy about the newly designed Shelby Cobra V-10 (that was designed by Ford not Shelby)