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Why old dogs won't learn a new trick

Research shows that if we let our brains get lazy - and rely too much on experience - we are less tolerant of unfamiliar things.

By Tom Valeo, Special to the Times
Published November 6, 2007

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Everything in our body, including the brain, ages, but in the absence of disease, our brain gets stronger in one crucial way - we accumulate experience.

And experience, which involves remembering solutions to past problems, confers a greater ability to solve current problems. The result is something known as wisdom, but wisdom poses a paradox, according to New York neurologist Elkhonon Goldberg. As we get older, experience enables us to recognize solutions with less mental effort - which has a tendency to make the mind lazy and set in its ways, says Goldberg, born in 1946 in Riga, Latvia.

"Wisdom is the good news," Goldberg says in his book, The Wisdom Paradox. "Wisdom is the precious gift of aging."

Unfortunately, the "neuroerosion" that comes with aging sometimes overwhelms that precious gift, Goldberg says, but wisdom can accumulate even in the presence of neuroerosion. In his book he recalls how, after watching an interview with then-president Ronald Reagan, he excitedly called a colleague to announce, "Reagan has Alzheimer's!" Yet the presidentcontinued to govern effectively despite the gradual onset of dementia because of his storehouse of accumulated experience and wisdom.

In addition, the frontal lobes, the seat of this wisdom, seem to age in a way that promotes a sense of well-being. The right frontal lobe, which tends to react more vigorously to novel situations, generates anxiety and worry, according to Goldberg. The left frontal lobe, in contrast, tends to handle routine activities and generates feelings of well-being. Buddhists who have meditated for years show much stronger activation of their left frontal lobes, for example, and one study demonstrated that people who practiced meditation for just a few weeks showed greater activity in the left frontal lobe, and experienced less anxiety.

As we age and react to novel experiences with solutions drawn from accumulated experience, the right frontal lobe gets less of a workout. That may have certain benefits, according to Goldberg.

"We become less concerned with worry, and we develop a certain feeling of equanimity," he said. "I notice it in myself. I am less neurotic than I was when I was younger."

The tradeoff, however, tends to be less tolerance for novelty. Dealing with new situations by relying on experience, Goldberg said, is like taking a taxicab - it's certainly faster and more efficient than walking, but if you take a taxicab all the time "you get fat and your muscles atrophy."

So the trick, in his opinion, is to balance the accumulated experience of age, which seems to be the province of the left frontal lobe, with greater exposure to novelty.

"When you do the same things over and over you're less challenged by novelty," he said. "As a result, the right hemisphere ages more rapidly; it benefits less from the experience-based effects of neuroprotection. The use-it-or-lose-it principle applies to the brain."

That's one of the reasons he wrote The Wisdom Paradox.

"I felt I needed to introduce some novelty into my life," he said.

Write to freelancer Tom Valeo in care of Pulse, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail features@sptimes.com.

 

[Last modified November 5, 2007, 17:46:22]

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