Spotlight

FY12 Spending Debate Comes to a Close

Congress completed, and the President signed into law, the FY12 appropriations bill. The $915 billion spending bill wraps up the remaining nine appropriations measures. The bill provides funding for programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National
Read more
 

Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Editorial in Most Recent Science

Science 16 September 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6049 p. 1549
DOI: 10.1126/science.1211494
EDITORIAL:

Dueling Visions for Science

Rush Holt
Rush Holt is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District and has a doctoral degree in physics.

A
Read more
 

Does Aging Bring Wisdom? - 9/16/09

PrintE-mail

Dr. Shelley Carson
Harvard University

In her briefing for the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus, Dr. Carson examines the deterioration of memory in older adults in a new light — not that of a mind being ravaged by dementia, but instead a mind widening its ability to process more details than that of a younger brain. For decades, cognitive research on the older brain has focused on the decline of thinking abilities. Newer research, however, suggests that much of this observed decline may actually result from lifestyle changes or illness rather than from inevitable brain atrophy.

Dr. Carson highlights how scientists are now beginning to focus on ways that cognition can actually improve with age. Research suggests that brainpower is not declining but that more information is being processed. Dr. Carson reviews the research on age-related brain changes and brain plasticity, and discusses how these changes affect wisdom and creativity. She also discusses initiatives to maintain and even improve cognition in later years.