Along with other body functions, your brain activity slows down as you age. A seventy year old, even if she has a huge storehouse of knowledge, has zero chance of beating a 35 year old at Jeopardy, simply because she won’t be able to process the information in her brain and punch the buzzer quickly enough.
But is there a compensating factor for this slowing of processing speed in the brain? Do we gain wisdom as we age?’
This is a question that has intrigued philosophers throughout the ages. It’s a tricky question, because it’s hard to even define wisdom in a meaningful way.
Yet neuroscience can now begin to provide an answer to this question.
One of my valued patients sent me a link to an insightful article authored by Anil Ananthaswamy that was printed online in Nautilus. In addition to beginning to answer some of the age-old questions about wisdom, the article also forges a link between the activity of meditating and the type of wisdom that can sometimes visit us in our older years.
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