As time passes, day after day, society begins labeling us—shifting us from one category to the next. Then one day we may find ourselves in our mid-60s, with words like “old” and “senior” becoming the labels attached to our identity.
Now imagine being blessed to live into your 90s—only to carry these labels for the next 30 years, with people around you dismissing you simply because of your age and quietly waiting for you to fade away.
I remember my mom, in her 90s, wishing she were still in her 80s, when her body was stronger. Her mind, though, stayed sharp—she could work out bills and balances in her head without a calculator or even a pen—well into her 90s, right up until her last year of life. I was always amazed by her memory—and by the sound of her voice over the phone. If you didn’t know her, you’d think you were speaking with a young, full-of-life woman.
I thought of my mom when I came across research by neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who studied how our brains age. She discovered that some people in their 60s and older had brain scans that looked just like those of 25-year-olds. And not because they’re biologically “lucky.”
It turns out, the key is how we live and whether we keep learning. Dr. Barrett’s research suggests that the brain remains plastic, capable of change, growth, and even rejuvenation, far beyond what we once thought. People who continue to engage deeply with life, who stay curious, build new skills, challenge themselves, and stay socially, emotionally, and mentally active, are literally shaping their brains in ways that defy the number on their birth certificate.
Their scans reflected how fully they continued to live not how many birthdays they’d celebrated. These findings challenge a lot of our assumptions about aging. We’re told that the older we get we’re supposed to slow down, become less sharp, less relevant. When none of that is actually true.
This doesn’t mean we all need to start solving complex math problems or run marathons—unless that excites you. It could simply mean taking up a new skill, learning a new language, or having deeper and more meaningful conversations. Dr. Barrett reminds us that the brain is not a fixed organ in decline, but a living, changing part of us that reflects how we live.
Her research reminded me of Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Nobel Prize winning neurologist who continued to work well past 100. She said, “The body does whatever it wants. I am not the body; I am the mind.” Like Barrett, Levi-Montalcini believed that our engagement with thought, purpose, and connection is what keeps us alive in the deepest sense.
Aging doesn’t have to mean decline. It can mean growth of thought, of purpose, of how we choose to live. Maybe aging is about gaining clarity. And maybe the real challenge isn’t time itself, but the story we’ve been told about what time is supposed to do to us.
Interested to dive deeper into how the brain works? Lisa Feldman Barrett’s book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain challenges the idea that the brain is fixed or doomed to decline, reminding us that we are constantly shaping our brain through what we do, feel, and focus on at any age.