The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older

Dr. Goldberg's book The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As You Grow Older is ostensibly a novel about the acquisition of wisdom through aging and life experiences. After reading through it, however, I feel that this book is as much an autobiography and a lesson in introductory neuroscience as it is about its stated topic. This is by no means a critique of Dr. Goldberg's writing style; on the contrary, I found his anecdotes made the book more engaging and his asides helped clarify many of his points by providing a scientific backdrop by which to judge them.Dr. Goldberg's stated purpose, and a sizable portion of the book, is to elucidate what enables the elderly to quickly and effectively carry out tasks in spite of the neurodegeneration that should be robbing them of the analytical reasoning skills necessary to function at the level necessary to carry out complex assignments in difficult jobs. Goldberg explains that he believes neural development occurs in three distinct phases which he compares to the seasons of Spring, Summer, and Fall. These seasons correspond to development, maturity, and aging. Development is "when the main cognitive abilities and skills are formed." This "season" begins at gestation when neurons begin to form and continues through adulthood until the brain's neural structure begins to stabilize. This marks the beginning of "the season of maturity." This is the stage of neural development that the most research has been done on and the stage with which most people are familiar. The season of maturity is when people begin to shift their focus from acquiring knowledge towards applying what they have learned for practical purposes. The final stage of neural development is what Goldberg refers to as "the season of aging." In this stage the brain begins to atrophy, losing about 2% of its size per decade. Goldberg questions, and encourages us to question, both what enables elderly adults to continue to function and tackle difficult undertakings that could have disastrous consequences if mishandled. He points out many interesting examples of people, including many historical figures such as Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, who were clearly no longer able to carry out their stately duties towards the ends of their terms. He clarifies this passage by noting that mental decline is a slow, arduous process. The condition that many of these leaders were in at the time they left office indicates that their mental faculties must have been declining for quite some time while they were still functioning as heads of state; in spite of this, these leaders were still able to make appropriate enough decisions to remain in power. He also provide cases of many people, such as Golda Meir and Alan Greenspan, who, while not outstanding in any way in their youth, ended up accomplishing many extraordinary feats in old age. The explanation he gives for these cases is the existence of a phenomena that people have described throughout history: wisdom. The idea of wisdom does in fact have an actual biological basis. Wisdom is actually simply an acquired response to a recognized pattern. Goldberg delves into this issue further and explains what happens in our brain to allow us to have a quality such as wisdom. A typical generic pattern contains all of the shared components of its members. The power of a generic pattern is that it allows individuals to respond to novel experiences using knowledge from different experiences. If, for example, you encounter a dog of a breed you have never seen before, you know what it is and in general how to behave around it because you have encountered other dogs before. Goldberg also devotes a section to what he calls "attractors." Attractors are basically neural nets which will respond to multiple stimuli. In a similar fashion to generic patterns, this allows individuals to deal with newly encountered situations. Additionally, pattern recognition allows the brain to use up less resources to accomplish tasks. By using PET scans, doctors have found that patients who were well trained in a task actually could complete the tasks with less glucose, essentially lowering their brain's metabolic requirements. As we age, such a skill becomes increasingly useful. The reason for this is that as we age our blood vessels become more narrow. This means that it becomes harder for oxygen to reach the brain. People whose brains have smaller metabolic needs will be less affected by this decreased blood flow. In this way, pattern recognition actually allows people who have acquired and strengthened certain generic patterns to continue to function at a normal level by diminishing the impact that reduced blood flow has on their cognitive capabilities. I felt that this section of Goldberg's book was his strongest. He explained what interested him in this field and in doing so managed to also catch my attention. He also used multiple analogies to and provided illustrations for his points. I felt that this made the material, some of which seemed like it could be entered into an actual neuroscience textbook, accessible to a layperson who was interested in learning about the advantages of aging without actually having to learn arcane facts to develop the background in neuroscience that would be necessary to understand some of the concepts that Goldberg covered. After covering what he believes comprises wisdom, Goldberg begins to go more in-depth into what exactly makes memories and a general overview of how the functioning of the brain results in the processes of the mind. I thoroughly enjoyed this section; I felt that it gave me a much stronger sense of how the parts of the brain work together to accomplish mental processes. Goldberg used many analogies to clarify his descriptions. He used a computer to explain a misunderstanding that occurred in the neuroscience community and to establish how difficult it is to specify what the responsibilities of one specific portion of the brain are. In his example, Goldberg describes a computer which has a defective power supply. This computer would be unable to store data. This does not mean that the power supply is responsible for storing the data; that is the job of the hard drive. A person who was presented with this case without any knowledge of computers, however, may be mislead by what he perceives as cause and effect. A situation very similar to this arose in neuroscience with the hippocampus. Previously, the hippocampus was thought to be the site of memory storage. Recent research indicates that memory is actually stored in the neocortex, and the hippocampus simply plays a role in memory formation. Another interesting comparison Goldberg presents is between brain functioning and a symphony orchestra. He describes the frontal lobes as the conductor of the orchestra and various brain parts as the sections of the orchestra. The role of the frontal lobe also confused scientists for quite a while. For a long time, it was thought to not have a function at all, leading to procedures such as lobotomies. It is now understood that, in a similar fashion to a conductor, the frontal lobe coordinates brain activity. A conductor does not actually contribute musically to the orchestra, but without one the symphony would not be presented in as complete a manner. Similarly, the frontal lobe is required for the brain to function but does not actually perform any clear neural function. These two analogies, among many others, helped me to understand how various parts of the brain worked. Comparing the brain to a computer also gave me a better understanding of how interdependent the parts of the brain are. A hard drive is useless individually but serves a very important role in the proper functioning of a computer just as the hippocampus, for example, serves a very important function in the brain but does nothing meaningful on its own. The latter portion of the book is devoted to Goldberg's own professional work. This starts out in a promising fashion but ends flatly. Goldberg shows research he is doing on the roles of the left and right hemispheres. The work he is doing seems promising. His findings seems to indicate that the left brain plays a role in learned, acquired patterns while the right brain plays a larger role in acquiring new patterns. As could be expected, the right brain is more affected by aging than the left brain. He also provides interesting information relating emotional responses to brain regions. Unfortunately, the final portion of Goldberg's book turns what I felt to be the book's greatest strength into a glaring weakness: Goldberg's tendency to incorporate his own life into his writing. Towards the end of the book, Goldberg shamelessly plugs a learning center he is developing for the elderly. The the goals of his center seem admirable; he and some of his colleagues are attempting to devise mental exercises to improve and cognitive function in the elderly while also improving their mood and outlook on life. Sadly, the way he presented these aims in the book was not tasteful. I almost felt like I was reading an ad in a magazine for his center, complete with testimonials and examples of happy clients. I was extremely disappointed that he chose to place such a tacky section towards the end of such an interesting and enlightening book. I barely felt like reading the epilogue after getting through it. Nevertheless, I felt that overall this book was enjoyable and, for a book which went so in-depth into very specific neuroscience topics, very straightforward and easy to read. I would highly recommend it to any layperson interested in learning more about how their brain works.

Positives:(1) Reviews some neuroscience.(2) In a nutshell, the book's message is that people who have experience are quicker to get to the point in their area of expertise. You'll hear the term 'pattern matching' more times than you'll care to, as if that's all he gets about neural networks. However, it is unclear that, although "experts" may make snap judgements in their field, whether these judgements reflect the most balanced perspectives. This critical aspect, Dr. Goldberg seems less concerned about.Negatives:(1) Each point is proceeded by a lengthy historic discourse during which he almost always mention Luria (his teacher for the tenth time) and himself as if to insinuate himself into every neuroscience breakthrough of the past 50 years.(2) Essentially, having recognized his own preoccupation with loosing his marbles, he recognizes an opportunity to capitalize on the fears of others relating to senility, particularly the aging affluent population of Tudor City and the vicinity of the NYU Hospital. To capitalize on this market, this book serves as an advertisement of his business venture. He has organized a set of mental brain-twisters he guesses may preserve mental functions; a guess which has little scientific basis in case-control research. But he is not as concerned with this as that he is doing pretty well financially, as he reminds the reader several times. The majority of his affluent aging clients lack the background to assess the venture critically, but like the company. Like many unproven cancer treatments, one can always play on the fears of individuals who have no other alternatives regarding staving off the mental changes of time resulting from past significant bumps on the cranium, persistent neuronal pruning, autoimmune processes, and less fortunate genetics.The real problem with the book, it's lack of focus and substance, results because, despite it's title being "the Wisdom Paradox", he does not really ever define wisdom. Over and over, he seems to suggest that coming to rapid decisions about things is the equivalent of wisdom when speed of processing (snap judgements) is not necessarily related at all to wisdom. Wisdom relates to a capacity to weigh various alternatives and to finally commit one's resources in a manner that is the most balanced with regards to one's most significant interests/purposes. Anybody can come to a decision that responds to something that works for some limited consideration. That's what eating disordered individuals and heroin addicts do all the time, make snap judgements that respond to their immediate needs. Whether this commitment of resources comes in a moment or over an expanse of time, it is the quality of decision making that matters most; responding to short term and long term goals as best as possible. There are processes involving perspective switching and other essential features of making capable deliberations that are not even mentioned.In some ways, this book reflects the kind of snap decision he regales in this incredibly verbose and grandiose tome. The experience of reading this book was akin to being stuck with one's tedious grandfather boring his subordinate with self-indulgent tales of his own heroics that are impossible to relate to. It took so long for this guy to get to the point I could actually feel my own dendritic trees shriveling throughout the read. I cried tears of boredom!!!

I found this book informative and fascinating. The idea of the left hemisphere of the brain being utilised for pattern recognition, and the right side for novelty, and the effects these functions have as we age along with our individual experiences, is rather illuminating. At 27 years of age, I'm yet to find myself in a profession that has kept me 'grounded' (More choice than circumstance), so as to increase my pattern recognition capabilities in some field or another. But I guess at present, the novelty seeking capabilities in my right hemisphere are taking precedence over the former.

One of the best books I've read! Despite limited knowledge on the subject of neuroscience the book was very easy to understand and read. Good starting point if you want to read more about our brain and our mind.

In my opinion this book has a thin premise; that ageing brains lose various powers, but do get better at seeing patterns (being 'wise'). However his SharpBrains joint authored book is excellent; a great current survey of 'brain training going mainstream' developments and interviews. I hope Goldberg really focuses now on developing his brain training, and produces a book with exercises for each aspect of keeping brains well trained and in tip-top form as they age - veyr best wishes to him.