Science Forums 2

[TZK]

I once read something talking about what happens to a person's brain as they age. It was talking about how free radicals eventually damaged a certain portion of the person's brain (I think called the hyptholomus or some such) responsible for storing long term memories.

The study seemed to indicate that it was not known what the precise effects of this would be and that people with such damaged brains still appeared to be able to function in every day life.

We are all familiar with the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", and that older people are often considered stubborn compared to younger people. It seems likely that there is some kind of connection.

What if it was simply the case that as people get older they become less able to learn complex new ideas and adapt to new ways of thinking? I mean to some degree it seems to be accepted that this is true, but the question is how severe is it really?

What if older people could only make minor inferences from things that they already knew, and when exposed to new ideas they were forced to straw man them into something that already made sense to them?

Imagine the irony of debating with an older person who became angry and frustrated when you persisted in trying to explain a new idea (perhaps one that is superior to their thinking, but that they failed to understand while their brain was still intact) only because he was physically in capable of understanding what you were trying to say... ie you were fighting a lost cause...

Imagine how impaired we would be as a race if our buisnesses and governments are being run by people physically incapable of adaptation?