Your brain. Now that you have made it to 50, your brain has never been better! How can that be, you ask? Here are a few reasons why this is true.
First, your reasoning skills are still going strong. Due to Crystallized intelligence, which refers to your ability to use learned knowledge and experiences, you are able to solve problems better than when you were younger. So thanks to all those crazy adventures you had in your 20’s and 30’s, your brain learned how to process solutions to situations that occur in your life now. Research shows that we continue to stay strong in this form of thinking as we age.
Second, your memory center is also holding steady. As we age, it’s a known fact that our brain loses 5% of its volume per decade starting in our 40’s. But on a happier note, our hippocampus, a key memory center in the brain, holds firm in its size, as does your brain’s white matter, which houses the crucial nerve bundles that carry signals throughout our brain. Research has even shown that women ages 45-55 years old outperformed men of the same age group in a series of memory tests. Researchers believe this is due to our level of hormones prior to menopause. Unfortunately, after menopause, when women’s estrogen levels decrease, our memory starts to decline as well.
Third, embrace your dreams again. Our brains need sleep to be able to rebuild and repair what has happened to it during our awake time. By the time we hit 50, our night’s sleep gets an overhaul of what happens while we sleep. Generally, we have less deep sleep and memory-consolidating REM sleep and more time spent in light stages of sleep. Making sure that we get good sleep is very important when it comes to brain health.
Finally, we don’t freak out about the things like we once did. The brain of older adults processes emotions in a healthier way. As the prefrontal cortex and amygdala work together, they help us respond less strongly to negative situations and more energetically to positive ones, allowing us to be more relaxed. Thanks prefrontal cortex and amygdala!
So as you can see, getting older is not so bad after all. At least not for our brain, as long as we take care of it and give it what it needs, such as rest and relaxation.
