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| Front walk and one of the flowers' tenders 20.Aug.2015 |
This week Krista Tippett interviewed Rex Jung, an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Here are some parts of the interview I thought you'd enjoy.
"Dr. Jung: [. . . ] I've described myself as an existential neuropsychologist. When I treat patients, I really try to figure out with them how to find meaning in their life. So these are patients that have suffered brain injuries and usually they're not going back to that great brain that they had before their traumatic brain injury, before their tumor, before the diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. So it's often — the task is to start a new chapter in this book that is their life. And that's a very existential question to really figure out how to find meaning in one's life. And I research about half the time and I do clinical work about half the time. And my patients really bring meaning to my research work and my research work, I think, brings relevance to my patients.
And this work with creativity, I think, is important because I think it is a uniquely human characteristic that provides meaning in one's life and that provides value and ultimately meaning, whether it's spiritual, personal, familial. It really hits all those buttons, regardless of which one you want to hit. I think it's an important capacity that, again, if my hypotheses are correct and as our brains start to unravel as we age, it's something that could only be increasing in terms of our capacity to engage in as we age, as opposed to trying to hold onto this intelligence which will be slipping away.
Ms. Tippett: You could think of making meaning out of whatever the raw materials of your life is really the creative work of the everyday and of a lifetime.
Dr. Jung: Yeah, it is, and being, you know, kind of deistically oriented, I think this is it. So what we leave here as the residue of our life and our creative works is it. So, if we're able to leave some sort of residue of our life behind, our creative works is an important part of that. So I put great stock in creativity for that reason on a personal basis, if not for a spiritual basis.
Ms. Tippett: I mean, I wanted to ask you about — we've just wandered into this, you know, what you can measure and what you can't. Because even when you talk about that residue, it's often the relationships you leave behind, right? The love you leave behind or the lives you've helped form. That too is a successful relationship. It takes every bit as much creativity as intelligence, maybe more.
Dr. Jung: I'll say [laughs].
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Jung: Yeah, and it is a creative work and you're constantly, hopefully, not just doing the same thing over and over, but trying new things, trying different things, hoping that they're useful. And it's an interactive exchange between two people at the most basic level, between members of a family at a broader level and between members of a community at the broadest level. You know, this community is created that leaves a residue behind that is incredibly meaningful forever potentially.
Ms. Tippett: Right, right.
Dr. Jung: That is as close to immortality as you're going to get. . .
Ms. Tippett: I want to come back to something you said a minute ago that was so intriguing about your sense of aging. So tell me again. So you think we lose some capacities. We certainly lose capacities. What do we lose and what can we gain?
Dr. Jung: Well, it's pretty well known from neuroanatomists that our brains are myelinating. The wires that connect up different regions of our brain are myelinating as we develop. And that peaks in our frontal lobes in our early 40s, and that thereafter it starts to unwind and de-myelinate, gradually starting at the front of the brain and working to the back of the brain.
Ms. Tippett: When you say "de-myelinate," what does that mean?
Dr. Jung: The insulation around the wires. So if you think of the myelin as the insulation around the wires that keeps the electrical current from leaking to other wires, you know, it's the same thing as the blue stuff around your Internet wire. It keeps the signal going down the wire instead of leaking from side to side. So the myelin allows the electrical signal to transmit faster and more efficiently. So that myelin completes its developmental trajectory up in our mid 40s and then thereafter reverses. And so, I think that we might be able to take advantage of that. Everyone — I don't know how old you are, but I'm 47, so I'm on that downward trajectory.
Ms. Tippett: I'm a little older than you.
Dr. Jung: So on that downward trajectory, and I work with a lot of patients who are worried about their cognitive decline in their 50s and 60s and want to have that brain of their 20s and 30s. And that is frankly unrealistic. Our memory is going to start getting spottier. We're not going to have that word quickly at the tip of our tongue. And that's just the way of the world and that's the way our brain winds down before we die. However, this capacity of our brain as it changes can be co-opted for creative capacity.
If transient hypofrontality is true, this is more conducive to that hypofrontal state. And there's lots of apocryphal stories about older people and, you know, they're retired and that may be the reason, but older people picking up a paintbrush, picking up a musical instrument and being creative, undertaking volunteer activities and getting more engaged in doing things. My mother started quilting in her 60s and is now winning prizes at quilt shows. I mean, she is enjoying herself immensely in her early 70s. This is something that makes sense in terms of the time she has, the abilities she has, and the way her brain is winding down as she ages."
If you want to listen to the interview or read the transcript, here is the link.
As my brain de-myelinates I'm thinking of you & hope you find ways to be creative and find meaning today and every day.
