The ageing mind

> Staying sharp and alert as we age

THE thought of losing our once sharp minds to ageing can be scary as it controls many of the functions we need for everyday life Ω thinking, remembering, planning, organising and making decisions. However, brain ageing is inevitable. With it comes memory lapses, difficulty in committing new memory or learning something new and problems with multitasking. Though it doesn’t affect everyone the same way or pace. The average elderly constitutes individuals with varying degrees of memory and cognitive decline. In extreme cases, people develop dementia. At the other end of the spectrum, there are the “super agers”, an extraordinary group of individuals over 80 years who have memories as good as middle-aged adults. improvement in vocabulary and language skills as well as general knowledge, usually on the rise. There is also an increase in wisdom accumulated through a lifetime of experience. The other good news is that it is possible for us to slow down brain ageing. brain. However, how well the brain adapts is dependent on how we have led our lives until age catches up. Namely, if we have developed a cognitive reserve, which has been cultivated over a lifetime through education, work and interests that are intellectually challenging. People with less education or a job that requires little mental effort have limited cognitive reserve and can lose their cognitive skills at a sharper rate.

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