Table of contents:
- The ability to imagine decreases with age
- Not because of difficulty speaking, but ...
- Maintaining brain health is the best way
Imagination or imagination is often carried out by children, especially when they imagine what they want to be when they grow up. However, as we get older, will the ability to imagine the same or will it decrease?
The ability to imagine decreases with age
Almost every child to adolescent who can easily imagine what they want to be in the future. Starting from astronauts, doctors, to superheroes, they often imagine happening in their lives.
However, the imagination of the future cannot be enjoyed by adults as much as they did in childhood. According to research from Harvard University, the ability to imagine a person will decrease when he is old.
The study explains that episodic memory, which represents human memory about the past, allows a person to have wandering in the past and future. This is done in a subjective time frame.
If you want to imagine about the future, humans need to remember experiences in the past in detail. Then, the memories of the past are put back together with the imagination and this process is known as constructive-episodic simulation.
The research by psychologists from Harvard interviewed young participants and those who were old, ranging in age from 25-72 years. They were asked to tell personal experiences in the past and the future after seeing the sign words.
The category of telling stories of experiences is then divided into two memories, namely internal and external. Internal memory is almost similar to a film scene, in that there is a subject and takes place over a certain period.
Meanwhile, external memory partly involves general facts about the world, such as the sky is blue or the sea tastes salty. As a result, imagination does appear to decrease when someone is old.
The older participants shared their past experiences with less detail than their younger counterparts. This is also true when they try to explain future imaginations.
Not because of difficulty speaking, but …
In fact, so far there has been no research on why when a person enters an older age their imagination will diminish.
When younger participants were asked to imagine personal experiences with the word machine, it was easier for them to think of things they liked. One participant imagined themselves driving in a car along the coast on the weekends.
Meanwhile, the response from older participants to the same word was to drive in the same car without worrying about expensive gasoline costs.
This condition did not occur because the older participants had difficulty speaking or spoke less. They actually score fairly high on verbal tests and can say a lot about external memory in general.
Finally, the researchers tried to draw the conclusion that personal memory is prone to aging. This is because when the brain tries to recall personal experiences it relies on relational processes.
The relational process in the brain is the ability to mentally recall a memory and combine it with pieces of information that are considered unique. Starting from when and where the event occurred.
It cannot be denied that brain function decreases with age. As a result, trying to combine these scene pieces would be more difficult.
Therefore, it is more difficult for those who are older to combine things that have not happened in their life with facts that are in their imagination.
Maintaining brain health is the best way
Even though your imagination diminishes as you get older, that doesn't mean you don't need to keep your brain healthy. Maintaining brain health is quite important considering that the brain is a place to think, learn, and remember things clearly.
Here are some ways you can keep your brain healthy in order to keep it functioning properly.
- exercise routine
- live a healthy diet
- keep blood pressure, sugar levels, and cholesterol stable
- avoid smoking
- don't drink alcohol to excess
- protect the head from injury
- maintain mental health
Imagination may decrease as you get older. However, maintaining cognitive health is also important from the start so as not to risk experiencing cognitive disorders as you get older.
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