My mother recommended this, and she normally doesn't read science books. I guess she's exercising the right side of her brain, keeping her ability to learn new material and patterns strong. I really don't know how to review this because some was 'um, yeah, no duh' and some was over my head - but let's just say I'm glad I read it and if you're interested enough to be reading reviews, I recommend you go for it. It took me a long time because I kept getting interrupted, not because it was all that challenging.

ETA - later the same day I found myself mentioning this book in a group here and saying something that might be helpful about it:

If you agree that our mind is integral with our brain which is integral with our body, and that our brain works better if one has a well-rounded 'exercise' program for it, and that intuition and wisdom are both aspects of good pattern-recognition abilities, you're pretty much all set."" ( )

Delightful book! Explains Goldberg's theories that one can gain wisdom (or its slightly lesser incarnation, competence) as one ages because the left brain (for most people) stores a repertoire of "patterns" which allow one to quickly solve problems related to new problems and situations, as long as there are similar attractors within the new.

He also proposes that the division of function (again, for most people - it is correlated somewhat with handedness) puts "novelty" analysis in the right hemisphere and "pattern recognition / familiarity" in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, positive emotions are associated more with the left, negative in the right. (He theorizes why evolution drove this division along the lines of positive emotions might likely be linked to stable pattern recognition in the animal whereas novelty might be linked to negitive emotions, because it suggests the possibility of something that may be new and therefore "dengerous".)

Hence, as we age, the shift from right to left benefits the left, and provides a sort of "protection" for the left hemisphere which is strongly related to wisdom/competence due to its pattern recognition abiliies to solve problems "already seen" readily and rapidly. And age gives one more time to store such patterns!

Of course, my review does not due justice to the additional details and ways Goldberg builds his cases that I relatively poorly summarize above, but that ought to entice one to read the book!

The subject matter of the book is inherently interesting, so in that regard the book had a hard time going wrong. In most cases all facts allude to research and papers and is generally soundly grounded in science. Goldberg gives an interesting survey of facts pertinent to owners of aging brains, as well as advice for how to weather the years.

Where the book falls short is mostly in presentation. I felt it was a little sloppy, and in some cases became frustrated when he'd veer off the scientific path into the realm of anecdotes. They're always interesting, but rarely useful. Thankfully Goldberg uses them sparingly. In other respects, the areas of neurobiology that he covered seemed to be a little all over the place. At the onset, based on the material he presented I had predictions in my mind of what he'd talk about next, only to see him go somewhere else completely. Effectively, the book stays on topic mostly (in presenting info relevant to neuroscience) but veers a fair bit (in jumping from cellular mechanisms and organization to macrolevel brain organization and function, two areas where methods and findings have progressed to disparate lengths and don't reduce neatly at present).

The book isn't bad, but in terms of fascinating facts and info presented with captivating writing it falls a little short. ( )

Must we resign ourselves to brain power wasting away as we get older, or is there some truth to the concept of a wisdom gained with aging? Goldberg's book, clearly geared to a true beginner audience but with more content than many tomes of a similar level, promises to answer that question. This book is incredibly accessible; I feel confident that someone who has never heard of the hippocampus, a humanities-type rather than a scientist, could gain much knowledge and practical advice from this book. The beginnings of the book are quite basic, but the book doesn't stop with the same ground covered by a million other pop psychology books. Those who have read other popular authors such as Schacter, Damasio, and LeDoux will find that while Goldberg starts out simpler he still manages to add material not covered in those other books, including interesting research of his own.

The author not only busts the stereotypes to separate out the results of disease from normal aging of the brain, but he advances an intriguing mechanism for WHY normal aging and corresponding changes to the brain contribute to some of the behaviors we associate with wisdom. Goldberg is unashamedly honest when he admits that he was drawn to the topic by his own advancing age, and readers of a certain age will find the book both accessible and soothing. Stories of men who were successful despite age, even blatant cognitive disease, are described. Topics covered in many other books are covered here, including the neuroscience of language and of memory. Goldberg's unique contribution, however, is his theory on how the different hemispheres of the brain develop, how the use of each changes through the lifespan, and how these changes relate to the cognitive changes seen in normal aging. Although this is a book for a general audience, the author is careful not to oversimplify the "logical" versus "creative" or to imply that the left and right brain act in isolated fashion, as so many misguided accounts would have it. Because of his discussion, the book is informative in understanding many differences in the ways some "lefties" think as well as the aging.

Goldberg makes his case, and then he lets out the hopeful news. Much as with the rest of the body, "use it or lose it" applies to the brain. Neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, continues into late adulthood, and new synaptic connections continue to form well into old age. This idea, of course, rocketed the book into international bestseller status. Everyone wanted to read about the results of his cognitive health club, with each person assigned a mental trainer and given specific exercises to improve mental fitness.

Overall, I'd consider this an excellent introduction to neuroscience for a true novice, and a pleasant light read for those who have read about the brain before and are interested in development/aging of the brain or hemispheric differences in function. There is a decent but not huge set of references to both popular works and technical literature for those who may wish to pursue the ideas further. Enjoy!

This is the book that got me interested, once again, in neuropsychology and neuroanatomy. Yes, the immediate interest is that business of not wanting "to go gently into that good night." as Dylan Thomas wrote. How much will cognitive delcine affect me as I age (something we are all doing since birth - it isn't only the old who are aging).

I think Goldberg, motivated by his own need to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," used his enormous knowledge of neuropsychology to create a work that should benefit all who want to know what their chances are ( or of relatives/friends) of continuing to lead a useful life despite the inevitable (and many) ways we decline in capacity as we age.

This book is not necessarily an easy read, for a generation used to soundbites, e-mail abreviations, evening news pseudo-profundity, or dumbed-down magazine articles. One has to realize that neurology is the subject medical students fear most. And with good reason. The human brain has been described as the most complex thing we know of. Somehow, in a way not yet fully understood, consciousness emerges from the healthy, mature human brain to give us (finally in human evolution) the ability to study effectively with recent functional brain scanning techniques the very organ system that allows us to smell a perfume and recall a long ago romance, to see a face in the crowd and recognize someone we have not seen for ten years (or fifty years), to freeze with terror as the amygdala (as close as we can come to Freud's Id) brings to mind a terrible incident from childhood, to meditate and find a place of peace where some of our systems shut down like that scene in the film "2001" in which HAL, the space ship's computer gets his memory modules unpluged after trying to kill the crew.

Frankly, I liked Goldberg's making the book not a text, but a personal exploration. Textbooks are the most boring article ever devised by the human mind - but necessary until in some new century slouching up towards Jerusalem we get microchip implants that make us into Borgs, don't snicker, people are having chips placed subdermal just so they can wave their arm at a door and have it open. Think how willing people will be score of years hence to suffer the implant of cerebral devices that give us many terabytes of updatable data storage or like "The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy" Marvin, the robot with a brain the size of a planet, unlimited intelligence. What Faustian deals will we make in centuries to come?

Get out your magic marker and color all those amazing bits of research and speculation about how our brains age. His theory is that we will get by nicely, thank you very much, on the sheer acumulation of left brain (that's not your creative side, sorry) routines which will enable us to be usefull on the job and not too dull in our personal lives. This is despite the loss of some brain capacity (literally, the brain shrinks), memory loss, lessened creativity and such. It helps to have been bright and active using the brain in one's occupation.

However, we still don't know definitively what causes Alzheimer's disease or many other serious forms of cognitive decline. The good news is that we have a better chance than not of living our life to the full without disabling mental decline. It is not a 'neuropsychology for dummies' work. It is not well illustrated - see my review of Rita Carter's "Mapping the Mind" which is - but one keens at Goldberg's expertise in his field (he specializes in the frontal lobes, which, incidentally, is where the part of the mind that seems to be YOU is located - maybe).

With all the babyboomers coming along worried about their senior years, I see a bright future for this book - and many others like it. There are just so many more answers to those questions the artist asked: Ou venon nous. Que sommes nous. Ou allons nous. (Gaugauin, MFA Boston). Goldberg is one of many helping us to understand the latest discoveries and theories in this field. He has some of his own; he's more in favor of the 'distributed processing' theory of brain function, not the highly modular view which has held sway for decades. Incidentally, recent research has shown that the Broca's area and Werneicke's area are less fixed and immutable than formerly thought. ( )