Are Older Brains Wiser?

By Dr. Bernard Croisile, posted on January 27, 2010 at 2:13 am

A new study announced Jan 22nd,  has found promising evidence that the older brain’s weakened ability to filter out irrelevant information may actually give aging adults a memory advantage over their younger counterparts!

When older adults “hyper-encode” extraneous information – and they typically do this without even knowing they’re doing it – they have the unique ability to “hyper-bind” the information; essentially tie it to other information that is appearing at the same time.

This seems that this could be a silver lining to aging and distraction. This type of knowledge is thought to play a critical role in real world decision making. Therefore, older adults may be the wiser decision-makers compared to younger adults because they have picked up so much more information along the way.

Read the full article at Medical News Today

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