Dr. David Eagleman

So critical thinking and creativity.

Goethe, the German philosopher, had said there are two bequests that a parent can give a child.

One is roots and one is wings.

And my interpretation of that has always been critical thinking and creativity.

Seek novelty.

That's the whole game is you got to continually challenge the brain.

And this is something that as we get older, it's more important than ever.

It's finding new things that we haven't done before.

You always have to keep yourself between the levels of frustrating but achievable.

And as long as you're trying new things.

So yes, a new instrument is great.

Speaking a new language is great.

You know, obviously we're in a world that's moving very fast.

So just keeping up with the technology and figuring out, well, there's this new opportunity here with this piece of software, whatever.

All that stuff is great.

This is the critically important part.

You may know these studies.

There's been this study going on for decades now called the Religious Orders Study up in Chicago area where there's a whole bunch of nuns and priests that agreed to donate their brains when they passed away.

and then when they donate their brains the researchers uh you know examine them do autopsies on what the researchers found is that some fraction of these nuns had alzheimer's disease but nobody knew it when they were alive nobody saw any cognitive deficits why it's because these these women died in their 90s and to the day they died they lived in these convents and in the convents

They had social responsibilities.