[Music]
there are a number of myths about aging
but I can tell you that now is the very
best time in history to be getting old
we're living longer and healthier than
ever before we're living more
productively into our later years there
are a number of reasons for this but a
lot of it is thanks to the ingenious
people in medical research who have
figured out how to keep us alive not
just longer but better and healthier
almost every disease that killed people
a hundred years ago has been eradicated
think about that now we have new
diseases of course that can kill us
because we're living long enough to get
them like cancer and Alzheimer's but the
good news is that there's enormous
progress being made in both fronts I'd
like to begin by exploding a couple of
myths about aging there's a kind of
societal narrative that we share about
what it means to get older and it's just
not consistent with science the science
has changed a lot in the last 10 or 15
years in neuroscience in particular
we've learned a whole lot about the
aging brain and most of that hasn't
trickled down to the average reader one
of the myths is that memory failure is
inevitable now it's true there are some
older adults who experience memory
difficulties in fact that is one of the
the behavioral markers of Alzheimer's
it's what causes people to go to the
doctor but it's Alzheimer's is rarer
than you think and memory impairment is
not a given if you look at older adults
in the aggregate many many older adults
in will have you know very little or no
memory impairment all through their 80s
and 90s it's hard to believe isn't it a
lot of misdiagnosed cases of Alzheimer's
based on patient an individual
presenting with the memory impairment
aren't actually because the person has a
memory impairment it's because they're
sleep-deprived one of the things we've
learned neuroscientists in the last 10
years as the
ports of sleep even among older adults
another myth
older adults don't need as much sleep
not at all true they only get about five
and a half or six hours for a whole
bunch of other reasons but they still
need eight or nine hours like the rest
of us and an hour and a half to two
hours of lost sleep in a night on
several consecutive nights presents his
memory impairment profound memory
impairment you can have difficulty
encoding memories for two weeks after
just one bad night of sleep after age 70
the older adults are more tolerant more
compassionate more accepting of
individual differences and as a
consequence of all these things they're
better at solving a host of problems
especially those that involve
interpersonal problems political
problems social problems because they
have the compassion and the insight born
of decades of experience and interacting
with others so again a myth is that
older adults are less happy not true
older adults are not good at solving
problems not true another domain in
which older adults are great at problem
solving is anything involving what a
cognitive scientist would call pattern
matching this is the ability to extract
from disparate experiences commonalities
common threads to be able to see
analogies to this problem from problems
that have come by before if you have to
get an x-ray read you want the 62 year
old or the 70 year old radiologist not
the 30 year old if you need a surgery
ask your surgeon how many times have you
done this operation if the surgeon says
I've done it five thousand times and
there are plenty of surgeons who have
done surgeries five thousand times
that's the person you want if your
surgeon says oh I've done it I saw it in
school
I saw them do it in school I was
standing right there you know how many
times have you done it well five or six
but I'm learning they have to learn on
someone but they don't have to learn on
you
and even now with robotic surgery
somebody with shaky hands which can
happen at any age can still do the
surgeries I would rather have a 72 year
old with shaky hands guiding the robot
than the 25 year old who hasn't done it
before
we get better with experience part of
this societal narrative that I'm weaving
here
that's faulty is that we look over the
course of a lifespan and we see the
different developmental stages and we
tend to see them as times of growth
along with challenges so infants are
learning to take in the world and
they're just beginning to learn language
toddlers are learning to walk you've got
childhood and pre-adolescents and
adolescents and each of these is marked
by certain cognitive abilities certain
abilities and thinking that expand
you've got young adulthood middle age we
see all of them as phases in which
something about us gets better we tend
to see old age differently
which again is not consistent with
neuroscience but the societal narrative
is at some age at some point we just
start losing everything it's it's all
decline you can argue about what that
point is 70 80 I'm a child of the 60s
and you know we used to sing I hope I
die before I get old and don't trust
anybody over 30 so you know maybe 30 was
the point where everything went down but
it doesn't matter the fact is it doesn't
go down even at 90 not necessarily old
age is accompanied by a number of
compensatory mechanisms that kick in a
number of strengths and new abilities
and yes it's full of challenges aches
and pains the body starts to go
generalized slowing down but every life
phase is accompanied by challenges I
have not yet met somebody who wants to
go back to seventh grade
not a one it was a terrible time for
most people so that was its challenge
and I know a lot of people who don't
want to be starting their first job
again you know at any age you can point
to something that was unpleasant about
it
[Applause]
[Music]