25 JAN 2024 by ideonexus
Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin
What’s the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were preternaturally gifted and widely known early in life. Both attained permanent fame posthumously. Where they differed was in their approach to the midlife fade. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he became despondent and depressed; his life ended in sad inactivity. When Bach fell behind, he reinvented himself as a master instructor. He died beloved, fulfilled, and—though less famous than he once had been—respe...Folksonomies: aging profession
Folksonomies: aging profession
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notes
notes09 NOV 2019 by ideonexus
Darwin, Bach, and Professional Decline
What’s the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were preternaturally gifted and widely known early in life. Both attained permanent fame posthumously. Where they differed was in their approach to the midlife fade. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he became despondent and depressed; his life ended in sad inactivity. When Bach fell behind, he reinvented himself as a master instructor. He died beloved, fulfilled, and—though less famous than he once had been—respected.
The less...
1 20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus
Adult Physical Activity Keeps Immune System Young
It is widely accepted that aging is accompanied by remodelling of the immune system including thymic atrophy and increased frequency of senescent T cells, leading to immune compromise. However, physical activity, which influences immunity but declines dramatically with age, is not considered in this literature. We assessed immune profiles in 125 adults (55–79 years) who had maintained a high level of physical activity (cycling) for much of their adult lives, 75 age-matched older adults and ...24 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Different Measure of Intelligence Peak at Different Ages
One potential concern with cross-sectional data is that it may be subject to cohort effects. Our findings in Experiment 2 are consistent with the possibility that people born in 1945 have unusually large vocabularies, people born in 1980 have unusually good working memory, and people born in 1990 have unusually fast processing speed. Such concerns can be mitigated by converging results from cross-sectional datasets collected at different times (Schaie, 2005). Here, we compared results derived... 1 notes
notes08 JUL 2016 by ideonexus
Age-Related Decline in Strength as Decline Neurons
“What we have here is (a) failure to communicate,” said the Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. This line rings true today as it relates to the failure of physiologists to communicate the mechanisms of muscle strength to the geriatrics community, where the lack of muscle strength observed in older adults holds high clinical significance. Similarly, there is a relative under recognition in the scientific community for the potential role of the brain’s failure to communicate with ske... 1 notes
notesAs the neurons controlling muscle fibers die off, those muscles grow weaker. Possibly exercising muscles might keep signals going to those neurons and keep them alive, staving off age-related cognitive decline.
24 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Busyness Correlated with Improved Cognitive Performance
Sustained engagement in mentally challenging activities has been shown to improve memory in older adults. We hypothesized that a busy schedule would be a proxy for an engaged lifestyle and would facilitate cognition. Here, we examined the relationship between busyness and cognition in adults aged 50–89. Participants (N = 330) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (DLBS) completed a cognitive battery and the Martin and Park Environmental Demands Questionnaire (MPED), an assessment of busyness...27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Okinawa Culture as a Blue Zone
We found our second Blue Zone on the other side of the planet, about 800 miles south of Tokyo, on the archipelago of Okinawa. Okinawa is actually 161 small islands. And in the northern part of the main island, this is ground zero for world longevity. This is a place where the oldest living female population is found. It's a place where people have the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. They have what we want. They live a long time, and tend to die in their sleep, very quick...Habits and culture of the people with the longest life-expectancy on the planet.
27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
The Value of the Elderly
A challenge for society is to make use of those things that older people are better at doing. Some abilities, of course, decrease with age. Those include abilities at tasks requiring physical strength and stamina, ambition, and the power of novel reasoning in a circumscribed situation, such as figuring out the structure of DNA, best left to scientists under the age of 30. Conversely, valuable attributes that increase with age include experience, understanding of people and human relationship... 1 notes
notesTheir experience makes them better-skilled for certain professions, such as managing, and teaching.
29 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Learning New Langugages Instills Brain Growth
Even something that has been
traditionally seen as the purview of the
young—the ability to learn new languages
—continues to change the landscape of the
brain late into life. When a group of adults
took a nine-month intensive course in
modern standard Chinese, their brains’
white matter reorganized progressively
(as measured monthly) in the left
hemisphere language areas and their right
hemisphere counterparts—as well as in
t h e genu (anterior end) of the corpus
collosum, that networ... 1 notes
notesAdults who learned Chinese showed white matter reorganization in their brains.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Old Kepler On Reading His Young Work
I myself, a professional mathematician, on re-reading my own work find it strains my mental powers to recall to mind from the figures the meanings of the demonstrations, meanings which I myself originally put into the figures and the text from my mind. But when I attempt to remedy the obscurity of the material by putting in extra words, I see myself falling into the opposite fault of becoming chatty in something mathematical. 1 notes
notesHe has a hard time understanding them, but when he tries to work in easier explanations, he finds himself being verbose.
