Age and wisdom beats youth and judgement every time is not just a saying but a proven scientific fact
It is the evidence parents have longed to arm themselves with in
disputes with their children – getting older really does make you wiser.
The
over-55s use their brains more efficiently than their younger counterparts, as
they are much more likely to shrug off mistakes, say scientists.
And
while they may take more time to come to a decision, they are simply conserving
their energy.
Younger
people, by contrast, give the impression of being sharper, simply by coming up
with answers more quickly. But this, say the researchers, may be a sign of
inexperience rather than wisdom.
The
Canadian scientists set two groups of participant’s tasks that involved sorting
words into pairs, and scanned their brains as they completed them. The
tasks included pairing words according to category or initial letter and
picking out words that rhymed.
Initially,
they were not told what sort of pair to look for. Instead, the game helped them
work it out by telling them if they had made the right choice or not. Over
time, the categories were changed.
Neuro-imaging
scans revealed striking differences between the brains of the older and younger
participants when they made a mistake. In
the younger ones, the error instantly activated several different parts of the
brain to help them decide what to do next.
The
older people, however, held their fire until the game restarted. Only then did
they start thinking about what they were going to do.
Study
author Dr Oury Monchi, of the Institute of Geriatrics at the University of
Montreal, said: ‘When the young participants made a mistake and had to plan and
execute a new strategy to get the right answer, various parts of their brains
were recruited even before the next task began.
‘However,
when the older participants learned that they had made a mistake, these regions
were only recruited at the beginning of the next trial, indicating that with
age, we decide to make adjustments only when absolutely necessary.’
He
added: ‘The older brain has experience and knows that nothing is gained by
jumping the gun.
‘Being
able to run fast does not always win the race – you have to know how to best
use your abilities'
'We
now have neurobiological evidence showing that with age comes wisdom and that
as the brain gets older, it learns to better allocate its resources.
’
Dr
Monchi compared the results to Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare,
saying: ‘Being able to run fast does not always win the race – you have to know
how to best use your abilities. However, when the older participants learned
that they had made a mistake, these regions were only recruited at the
beginning of the next trial, indicating that with age, we decide to make
adjustments only when absolutely necessary.’
He
added: ‘The older brain has experience and knows that nothing is gained by
jumping the gun.
This
adage is a defining characteristic of ageing. It is as though the older brain
is more impervious to criticism and more confident than the young brain.’
Overall,
the older group, who were aged between 55 and 75, took longer to complete the
game but did roughly as well as those aged 18 to 35, the journal Cerebral
Cortex reported.
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