How Aging Affects Memory, Intelligence, and Wisdom

September 2024

By Richard Fleming

Photo courtesy of Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra

(In this post, I am not addressing cognitive problems from dementia, which are sad and crushing. My focus is on what happens in the course of “normal” aging.)

To be honest, there are often times when I don’t feel “older but wiser.” Older, yes. Wiser, not so much. And I think many seniors feel similarly.

So what does the cute phrase which sits atop this blog really mean?

To understand, it may be useful to look at how memory, intelligence, and wisdom evolve and as we grow old. These three characteristics are closely interconnected. But they are also distinct. The normal aging process produces changes in all three.

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Let’s start with memory. All seniors begin to have trouble remembering things. It happens to all of us to varying degrees. And the problem typically tends to worsen as we grow older.

Using myself as an example, I tend to forget names. I often have trouble recalling past events, like where we went on vacation two years ago. Or the location I celebrated my 60^th birthday. Or where I put the stapler. Or why I walked upstairs to the bedroom this morning. These small gaps are frustrating, but pretty much inevitable with increasing age. Sometimes I can dig up the missing information by concentrating and thinking really hard about what I’m missing. But at other times it is more likely to come back if I stop trying and just wait for the missing information to pop into my head.

The memory problems of seniors stem from the same aging processes that affect all organs in our body. Cellular debris from normal metabolism accumulates, making neural connections less efficient. Neurons (our brain cells) shrink and their connections to each other slowly fray. Although the metaphor is inaccurate in many ways, I view my brain as a fixed-capacity hard drive. The storage capacity filled up at age 60 or so, and any new incoming information requires some existing data be deleted. I keep looking for a way to defrag my hard drive to increase its storage capacity, but so far no luck. If anyone has ideas, I welcome them.

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Moving on to intelligence, this brain function relies on a good memory. But it involves more than simply being able to recall facts and data. Intelligence is the ability to process information, learn new concepts, and reason through complicated ideas. Because our memory tends to decline over time, it is not surprising our intelligence will follow a similar trajectory. It is hard to be smart when there are things we don’t know or can’t recall.

But for seniors, intelligence is often better preserved and declines more gradually than memory. Why? It is because a lifetime of making decisions can help us reason through complex situations more efficiently. Our brains benefit from years of experience, and this can offset some of the decline in memory.

An example from my own experience: older physicians often make difficult decisions as ably and reliably as younger docs. Young physicians typically have a larger database of facts readily available in their brains. They are more recently trained and their memories are more facile. But older docs can often navigate complicated clinical problems just as quickly as their younger colleagues. Their long years in practice equip them to understand a patient’s situation and arrive at answers more efficiently.

However, time inevitably catches up. As the years accumulate, the complex neural networks in our brains weaken. We begin to lose some of the efficiencies in neural processing that help counter the attrition in our memory. For those of us lucky enough to live into the upper age ranges, our intelligence will sooner or later fray around the edges. And this slippage will continue.

To apply this to my example above, if I were to develop a serious cardiac problem, I would be perfectly comfortable consulting with a cardiologist in her 60s but would be hesitant to see one in her 80s, even though both have great reputations.

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Finally, let’s tackle wisdom. At first glance, wisdom and intelligence may seem identical. Smart people are commonly viewed as both intelligent and wise. But wisdom is not the same as intelligence. Wisdom is more nuanced and complex. Wisdom relies on understanding, empathy, and emotion. It requires good judgment and an ability to anticipate the consequences of decisions. Wisdom emerges from the ability to integrate intelligence into the complicated reality of life.

People can be very intelligent but not very wise. A high school economics teacher might be whip-smart about a range of economic theories but not wise enough to successfully explain them coherently to a classroom of 16 year olds. A politician may be very knowledgeable about a range of policy details but not wise enough to understand the impact of these policies on the real world, short term and long.

Intelligence tends to be detailed and quick. Wisdom tends to be generalized and gradual.

So how is it that seniors can become wiser as they grow older? Though wisdom benefits from memory and intelligence, it is not determined by them. Declines in memory and intelligence do not necessarily lead to less wisdom.

Wisdom requires a richness and depth of experience and understanding. And seniors accumulate these by the bucketful. Over the years, we live through the good and the bad. We see the impact of our decisions on others and ourselves. We live with how the actions of others affect us, our families, and our communities. With time, we tend to gain empathy, understanding, and judgment. We’ve been down many of these same roads before, and we know what lies around the next bend. We see and understand the world differently than when we were young.

And this enables us to gain a higher level of wisdom, even as our bodies and minds age and grow more fallible.

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For seniors, our journeys into and through old age share many features in common. At the same time, each person’s experience is unique. Memory, intelligence, and wisdom do not change uniformly and follow the same time frame for everyone. Many factors impact whether we can grow older and whether we do become wiser. Your results may vary.

Speaking for myself, I am fortunate to still be growing older. I hope to gain more wisdom by living life as fully as possible. And I trust that at some point I will acquire enough wisdom to know how to grow old with perseverance, acceptance, dignity, and grace.

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