Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...metaweird movie that Steven Soderbergh once wrote, directed, photographed and starred in (playing two roles, of course). It might also be the name of the artistic fiefdom he has created. Few Hollywood directors have such a distinct signature--or, rather, two of them. One part of Soderbergh's brain makes can't-miss caper films and weepie dramas (Ocean's Eleven, Erin Brockovich) with the town's priciest talent. Another part is indelibly indie: he will shoot an ad-lib HBO series about lobbyists (K Street), or remake a mystical Russian sci-fi art film (Solaris). Not everything works...
...that is so is still unclear, but Cabeza doesn't believe the brain is programmed to get stronger as it ages. Rather, he acknowledges, in many ways it gets weaker, with neurons processing information less efficiently. The bilateralization may be a trick the brain uses to compensate for the decline, sometimes integrating the hemispheres so efficiently that our thought and reasoning processes are actually better than they were before...
...just the wiring that charges up the brain as we age, it's the way different regions start pulling together to make the whole organ work better than the sum of its parts. For all its plasticity, the brain is a specialized machine, with specific regions handling specific operations. The greatest divergence comes between the left and the right hemispheres, which often work almost independently of each other. That is not such a bad thing because one hemisphere can be busy writing a grocery list or solving an equation while the other scans the environment and tends to other basic...
...similar to the way you need both hands to lift a weight that you could lift with one hand when you were younger," Cabeza says. "In the brain, there's a nice, natural distribution of resources. You get more neural tissue to support the task...
...brain's flexibility improves, so too may the temperament we bring to our work. There's no question that personalities can calcify with age, causing us to become less receptive to new experiences and flat-out crabby when faced with them. But that's not the case with everyone. In fact, in many people the opposite happens...