WHY IS YOUR GRANDFATHER INCREASING “ACTING LIKE A BABY?”


WHY IS YOUR GRANDFATHER INCREASING “ACTING LIKE A BABY?”

So, I have this elderly relative. For most of his life, this was a driven professional focused on ‘big picture’ issues including leading large teams successfully.  I noticed that in his 80s his attention became increasingly focused on seemingly smaller issues – “Why is my dinner late? I want my carrots boiled and not roasted”….The man of the world who was looked up to by so many was now more interested in ensuring that the rice was placed precisely in the same part of the plate each day!

At the summit on Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness that I attended in London last week, the clouds parted!  I finally heard a scientific explanation from a nuero-surgeon about how our brain grows and decays over our lifetime.




As the picture shows, the brain continues to develop as we age. As a new born and as a little child, only that part of the brain connected to our senses is developed. Hence, babies focus on the basics – food, sleep, touch etc. These are the vertical lines in the picture. As we grow older, the brain starts to grow horizontally making connections and thereby we are able to have more complex thoughts and perform subsequent actions. Towards the golden years, these horizontal branches drop off/don’t fire and the brain is back to almost where it began – mainly connected to the senses.

Basically as we age, the 'filter' that we learn and use over our adult years, starts to become increasingly porous and therefore the responses tend to be overtly self-centred, focused on basic needs (food, recognition, rest, etc). 

Understanding the physical transformations that happens in the brain made me more at peace and accepting.


This is how I understood it. Those of you who can explain it better AND simpler, I look forward to your comments.

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