The Healthy Aging Brain: Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom

Louis Cozolino

Praise for The Healthy Aging Brain...

"Whether you care for the aged or you plan to live beyond the age of 65, you will find reassurance and a call-to-arms against ageism in this reflective work of scholarship. Cozolino distills from his years of experience in the psychotherapist’s armchair and from a neuroscientist’s view of brain structure how we, as a community, can support our aging populations. With insightful vignettes, he shows how these acts ultimately benefit all involved. This work will appeal to all those interested in learning how to extend personal development, and how to value this continued development to promote the sharing of wisdom."
— Tiffany Chow, MD, Rotman Research Institute, University of Toronto, Ontario.

"Everyone always wants to know: ‘What supplements, what diet, how much exercise, and how much social activity and learning do I need to prevent my brain function from declining as I age?’ There are no good and certain answers, but this book gets as close as possible to a prescription for maintaining a healthy brain. ‘Use it or lose it’ is the mantra of neuroscience, and so too this book directs us to search for physical and mental challenges while fostering our social connectedness, all of which maximize our brain’s activity"
— John Ratey, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

"Weaving tales of his own psychology practice with plenty of science and specific exercises for keeping one’s brain pliant, Cozolino has moved the discourse on aging several leaps forward."
— Shift

"I highly recommend reading The Healthy Aging Brain. This book, reassures readers that mental deterioration need not accompany growing old, and to that end, Cozolino even provides an appendix listing 52 different activities to keep older brains vibrant."
— Margaret Guthrie, TheScientist.com

"Any who would desire to live to a ripe old age will find this survey of aging issues a key to understanding the groundbreaking brain research taking place."
— The Midwest Book Review

Overview

Exciting new brain research has shown that our brains continue to grow and change throughout our lives. The notion of neural plasticity—brain change—throughout the lifespan is a radical departure from decades of thinking that our brains are static after early childhood.

In a compelling, neuroscientifically-based account of just how our brains age and evolve over time, Cozolino explores the rationale and implications behind this groundbreaking idea.

By examining the aging brain from the perspective of interpersonal neurobiology—the idea that our brains are closely linked to the brains of others, to our relationships—Cozolino illuminates the deep connection between our neurobiology and our social lives, plumbing the meaning of basic group survival, caretaking, interdependence, and role specialization, all ongoing challenges that allow our brains to survive, thrive, and grow.

As readers will learn from this insightful narrative, the story of healthy aging and longevity is a complicated tale, with numerous variables at play—our attachments to others, our emotional maturation, adaptability, and accumulated experiences and wisdom, and the power of our greater biology, our brains and hormones, to mold and influence how we think and feel.

Now more than ever, with neuroscience discoveries shedding light on how our life courses play out, we need a new, more balanced story of aging to guide us into the decades ahead. The Healthy Aging Brain offers just this, with skills and strategies for maintaining and enhancing a healthy brain throughout our lives.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I: Building the Social Brain
1. The Brain as a Social Organ
2. Creating Attachment
3. Sustaining the Social Brain: A New Look

Part II: The Social Brain Across the Life Span
4. Current Theories of the Aging Brain
5. Growth and Adaptation
6. Hemispheres and Hormones

Part III: Attachment and Wisdom
7. The Emergence of Wisdom
8. The Maturation of Emotion
9. Challenges to Wisdom
10. Stories as Nurturance

Part IV: Body and Soul
11. Nurturing Your Body
12. Nurturing Your Relationships
13. Grandparenting
14. Optimal Challenge and Maximum Inclusion

Appendix 1: 52 Ways to Avoid Hardening of the Categories: A Program of Personal Experiments

Appendix 2: Suggested Readings

From the Introduction

Consumer culture and our prejudices about aging are tightly interwoven. The media bombards us with messages of how bad it is to be slow, wrinkled, and out of shape. Older adults appear in advertisements for arthritis and erectile dysfunction, fret about their Medicare benefits, and maneuver electric carts around pesky furniture. All of this input becomes interwoven into a matrix of "knowledge" upon which we base our understanding of older adults. Given our present cultural values, it becomes "self evident" that aging is undesirable and to be avoided at all costs. Thus, we spend far more money on plastic surgery, beauty aids, and diets than we do caring for our elders.

There are few prejudices in Western technological societies that are more powerful than those concerning aging. And although scientists strive for objectivity, they harbor the same prejudices and biases as everyone else, and search for what they expect to find. Thus, much of what I was taught in school about the aging brain was steeped in untested assumptions and outdated ideas. Because what was known was primarily from the study of dementia, the assumption was that the story of the aging brain was a tale of decline. For generations, neuroscientists taught us that we are born with all the neurons we will ever possess, that critical developmental periods, once passed, and were lost forever, and that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” These assumptions were so pervasive that only recently have scientists begun to even look at healthy aging brains.

About the Author

Louis Cozolino, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University and a private practitioner. He is the author of The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, and The Making of a Therapist. He lives in Beverly Hills, CA.

ISBN 13: 978-0-393-70513-3
ISBN 10: 0-393-70513-7
2008 / 380 pages/ hardcover