Old Brains in New Places

Is moving beneficial for people our age? Applying the principles of new brain science seems to suggest that it can certainly help us stay young and sharp.

Moving, especially to a different part of the country, forces us to change some of our habits. Old people are “set in their ways”, a quality that psychologist Ellen J. Langer calls “mindlessness”. It's not just a feature of age; most people, she says, live their lives mindlessly, on automatic pilot; but those who choose to become “mindful” stay youthful longer.

A woman in my women's group who just moved here from Tucson asked, "Isn't it too late to get established in a new place?" Not at all! Brain research in the last twenty years has shown that the brain’s ability to change, called “neuroplasticity”, persists as long as we live. It’s never too late to change!

The brain creates neuronal connections that are reinforced by habit, like those well-worn pathways in the carpet created by repeated trips back and forth to the kitchen or bath; these connections are reinforced by habit. But we can change the imprints if we choose.

It’s a case of use-it-or-lose-it. Just as muscle tone rapidly deteriorates when we don’t exercise, a brain that relies on ingrained or “mindless” behavior is an under-utilized organ, and little by little it stops producing new neuronal tracks. People who sit home in front of the television, endlessly repeating old behaviors, are letting a good brain to go to waste.

This is why we are advised to learn something new every day, like a new language, or how to play a musical instrument. Neuroscience has shown that stimulating mental activities with lots of repetition are just what we need to keep our brains healthy. Now that we are living longer, pushing back the 70 forms of dementia that confine more and more elders to nursing homes is a primary goal for most of us.

Age provides limitless opportunities for new kinds of activities, ones without the stress associated with jobs and child-rearing. The trick is to choose a challenging activity, the more difficult the better. Diane Ackerman writes in her book, A Hundred Names for Love, which is about her husband’s aphasia (brain damage resulting from a massive stroke): 

“A colossal number of brain cells (hundreds to thousands) are born each day but most die within weeks unless the brain is forced to learn something new. Then more neurons revive and sprout connections to their brethren. The harder the task, the more survivors.” 

Ackerman's husband, Paul West, an accomplished writer, lost the ability to communicate; but with constant daily effort to write and to speak, and his wife's constant support, he regained many of his verbal skills. In the five years after the stroke, he actually published three books and dozens of articles! 

You have to try. Moving to a new place challenges us to adopt new habits, but without application and repetition, we’ll simply transport the old ways to the new location.

We have to think to change the pathway, and that’s the whole idea. The more attentive we become to what we are doing, the more the brain benefits from the effort.

Yesterday in an aquatic yoga class that I enjoy, one woman alluded to her “challenged directionality.” It’s like a kind of dyslexia, she said. She can’t follow directions that rely on left and right because her brain can’t figure them out.

I don’t have that problem exactly, but I definitely have a poor sense of direction; and if I come to a dead end and have to turn around, I sometimes can’t figure out how to get back where I was going.

Living in a new town, driving into new areas to shop or attend an event, requires a fair amount of effort on my part. I have to look up the directions, study the map, print out the steps I’ll need to take; I have to allow enough time so that I don’t get into a panic; and then I really have to pay attention to where I’m going.

When I go back a week later, I have to review all these pointers, and pay careful attention to landmarks along the way. When I recognize that I am going the right way, I'm proud of my success. 

I did live in this region before, so it’s not completely overwhelming, but one place I now visit frequently, Santa Rosa, I now approach from the opposite direction. Instead of coming from the west, I now arrive from the southeast. At first I was totally confused. 

I could not figure out how to get to one congested, busy street, Santa Rosa Avenue. I had to get on the freeway! But last week, when I visited the Peace and Justice Center on Sebastopol Road, I saw where Santa Rosa Avenue begins. Suddenly the pieces fell into place. Of course! This is the way we used to go to Toys R Us! Now I know how to get to all the Big Box stores that we don’t have in Sonoma.

As I tromp into the kitchen to get a glass of water and reach – again! -- for the wrong cupboard, I notice that if I pause to remember where the glasses are, I can feel my mind come into focus, with improved results. Like an absent-minded professor, I’m always thinking about something else. I have to pay attention to what the body is doing, to remember where the glasses are now. 

Like absent minded professors, many older adults are not necessarily senile; they are just focusing on what they are doing. Langer’s research has shown that even very old people can behave more youthfully if they practice paying attention in this way.

Moving to a new place is more disorienting at our age; but it can have this unexpected benefit. It forces us to be more mindful of what we’re doing, carving new pathways into old brains grown lazy from habit. We can do the same thing without relocating, just by taking a new route to the library, or even rearranging the furniture.

Either way, we have to be willing to try.

[NOTE: This blog is the second in a series about my recent move from Santa Fe to Sonoma. To read them in order, start here]

To Move Or Not To Move

Moving to a new location is challenging at our age. I know. I just moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Sonoma, a medium sized town in Northern California. Even though I used to live on the other side of this county, and spent 36 years of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's been quite an upheaval.

Of course it has not been as challenging as when I moved to New Mexico in the first place! The two places are dramatically different. I had never lived in the desert, and I missed water so much I literally cried when I stepped up on a viewing platform on Sandia Mountain and saw a little watering hole that I couldn't approach!

California is a big, busy, bustling state with the country's largest population, and New Mexico is a big state with very few people. I had been living in the country; now I was in the middle of New Mexico's biggest city, Albuquerque, an appallingly flat town with six-lane avenues criss-crossing its sprawling breadth, and an unvarying bright blue sky that produced very few cloud formations, certainly none of those thick coastal fog banks, or buckets of rain all winter long. What passed for cuisine was almost always meat with chili and a pile of unsalted pinto beans, and there was no such thing as medical marijuana. California, the vanguard of America, is on the cusp of the future, while New Mexico cherished its history and seemed to cling to its lingering past, even though it's riddled with colonialism, racism and poverty.

But the biggest challenge was my state of mind: I was at my wit's end. My children were both embarking on lives of their own. Real estate values were about to plummet and I was afraid my house would end up under water. I had lost my job as editor of a small paper and there were no new jobs around. My life had hit a wall and it felt like I was about to die if I didn't do something else.

So, I went to New Mexico, with a very unclear picture of what I was going to do there. During the first months I longed for everything about my old home: my kids, my house, my dog who had passed away, the cats I had left behind, the friends I had known for forty years.

It was strange that nobody knew me, not even a clerk at the grocery store. I didn't like the feeling of being unknown and uprooted, and many mornings I cried.

When I moved to Santa Fe, things picked up a bit, but then my health fell apart. I stayed in the City Different for six years, much longer than I had anticipated, always thinking I needed to go back where I came from and somehow being stopped. Suddenly last April, everything came together, and in May I had an apartment all approved. I had only to -- shudder, shudder -- dismantle my life and leave. Yikes! What had sounded great was suddenly overwhelming. I would have welcomed any excuse to stay put, but the gods seemed to beckon me west. It would have been ungrateful to refuse.

This move was a return, not to the same house or even the same town, but back. I had roots in this land -- I remember when I grew them, but that's a story for another time -- and the land of golden hills had not let go of its hold on my heart, no matter how much Santa Fe had become a cloak that well suited me.

It was hard. Some people called me "courageous." It was nice to hear, but on some deep level this wasn't about courage. It was something I had to do. Leaving after so many years was hard but it was definitely good for me. I'll tell you more about it in my next post, which by the way you can also view at my new blog, Moving Right Along, at wordpress.com/ as soon as I set it up.

Wherever you are, have a great day!