I read in an article recently that, in contrast to general assumptions, our brain’s mental processing speed does not slow down incrementally from a peak at the age of 20. While it may once have been thought that, much like a rusty old locomotive, we all shudder to a cognitive halt as we mature, apparently we don’t.
Not, that is, until at least after the age of 60. I’m going to ignore that inconvenient metric, however, and focus on another salient point of the article, which is that while older people might take more time to complete neuro-cognitive tasks, they also make fewer mistakes. It seems that in the past the scientific community may have misinterpreted this efficacious caution as decline.
I quite like the idea of becoming more cautious as I catapult into a new decade. I’d be happy to take up caution like other people take up knitting. Yep, as the restrictions lift I’m going to invite caution to take centre stage and orchestrate my heretofore baggy and unscientific decision-making processes.
If, for example, caution is telling me to stay at home with the cat and a Horlick's to watch Home of the Year, then caution shall prevail!
I’m hoping that, with a healthy dose of circumspection, my days of cognitive disintegration in taxis at 2am will be over. And I’m quietly confident that with a more mature and judicious approach I’ll manage to painstakingly unearth my keys in the moonlight without first falling over the plant pot they’re hidden under.
No longer will I then have to slump at the kitchen counter with my coat on, eating stale bread and my own liver, half-remembering conversations I had while throwing glasses of Sauvignon down my apparently parched throat.
If, for example, caution is telling me to stay at home with the cat and a Horlick’s to watch Home of the Year, rather than pack myself into a pair of jeans (which used to fit without me lying on the floor to zip them up) and head out for the evening, then caution shall prevail!
Why, caution might inquire, would you spend time and money shouting at weary pals in a noisy bar when it’s scientifically proven that at your age you should be prudent enough to be at home in your pyjamas applauding someone’s hand-drawn wallpaper?
Cautious or incautious, brain activity was also the focus of a recent accidental discovery by an American scientist, who just happened to record the last neurological dance of an 87-year-old man on his deathbed. His observations have led him to conclude that our brains may remain active and co-ordinated even during our transition from life to death.
Just before and after the dying man’s heart stopped working, the neuroscientist spotted brain oscillations that are involved in memory retrieval, leading him to posit that the brain may have been playing a slideshow of significant life events. This would perhaps confirm similar stories told by people who have survived near-death experiences.
Witnessing your last moments snag on your memories could be, I imagine, a bit like watching a jerky scroll-through of chart-topping numbers in the idiosyncratic hit parade of your life. (In at number 10, the day he met his wife Anjelica; and holding steady at number one after all these years, the afternoon he netted a flounder in the Catskills.)
A dose of caution on the part of at least one ageing autocrat would make the world a far better place
Someone I know extremely well suffered, or maybe I should say survived, a near-death experience as a result of a cardiac arrest. After the dust had settled on that particular event, I asked him what, if anything, he remembered about regaining consciousness.
He said that he’d had the sensation of being at the bottom of a deep lake, weighted down by the density and depth of the reedy water. Far above him he could dimly make out a light – narrow, weak – and he knew, he said, that everything depended on mustering the will to push up towards the surface and swim through the rushing current to that light.
All in all I might have to give caution a lash even at the expense of a spills-and-thrills slideshow. In future I’ll try to listen when caution tells me to desist from crawling around hopelessly among the moonlit plant pots while the supercilious cat eyes me with disdain through the living room window.
Yes, with the weight of winter still in my bones, I’ll try to swim carefully towards the light and see what it has to offer.
And, in relation to the past couple of desperate and momentous weeks, it kind of goes without saying that a dose of caution on the part of at least one ageing autocrat would make the world a far better place.