Litigium

My uncle lived to 96 – almost. His body just shut-down but right until the end, his mind was crystal clear and razor sharp. In the last decade of his life, he’d often say (of people not older than 75) “take these senile old folks away! I want to talk to young people.” And young people always came away from such a chat with something they could keep. But he was an exception that proves the rule. The slowing-down of the brain (in the absence of an actual degenerative disease) after you’re 40 is not a disorder: it’s physiological. Considering you will have learned about 75 percent of everything you will ever learn by the time you are eight, after 30-odd years of making neurological connections, if you have the odd “senior moment” at 45, you needn’t panic and suspect early onset Alzheimer’s. Accepted opinion today is that your brain will have been “slowing down” since your 30s but experience might have compensated for it until now.    Nieuwjaarsduik, Wijk-aan-Zee, 01 Jan 201...