As early as our mid-forties, the brain starts to show signs of aging.

Older brains are smaller, with less blood flow than younger ones.

We can learn to compensate for these normal physical changes with a few practices.

Although you can’t stop your brain from aging, you can keep it functioning well.

Like it or not, the human brain goes through certain predictable changes as we age. Changes start as early as the mid-forties, with the effects becoming more noticeable over time. These changes are often seen as causes for concern—we’re getting old, we’re losing it!—but they don’t have to be. We can harness our experience and wisdom and keep our brains healthy well into later years.

First, the bad news: Yes, the brain undergoes normal, if daunting, age-related changes. Quite simply, it shrinks, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. The atrophy is most pronounced in the frontal lobe and hippocampus, which are the areas involved in cognitive control and making new memories. Blood flow to the brain also decreases, as blood vessels stiffen and become less efficient.

White matter also changes—underneath the deep folds of gray matter—that’s in charge of communication. The nerve fibers of white matter are sheathed in myelin, which carries nerve signals between brain cells and which shrinks with age. This results in less speed and efficiency of communication between brain areas, experienced as thinking more slowly. You still have all that knowledge in your brain, but you’re going to be slower at answering trivia questions.

Even with that bad (but normal) news, you still have so much brain power at your disposal. You can learn to use your skills and experiences to compensate for age-related changes.

When my patients complain about a decline in processing speed, we work on some basic strategies for compensating for it. These may feel awkward at first, but as they become habitual, you will see they are remarkably effective.

Practice a priori filtering. This refers to zoning in on important information in advance of an experience. Experiences that provide a lot of new information—whether it’s making a phone call, reading a book, or visiting a friend—require your brain to do a lot of work figuring out what's important. Using a priori filtering, you go into the situation having already thought about what might be important to remember. If you're going out to dinner with a good friend, ask yourself in advance, what are the five things I want to remember about what this person has to say?........

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