Despite evidence, such as research from MIT and Northwestern University, which highlighted that the best entrepreneurs are often older entrepreneurs, ageism remains a significant problem across the workforce. Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this ageism revolves around the notion that older people are less innovative and less able to learn new skills, especially surrounding new technologies.
As we might expect, it’s a notion that is not backed up by a huge amount of evidence. Research from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics also highlights how older people are just as capable of learning new things as their younger peers. The study finds that people who are close to retiring are just as interested in learning new skills as their younger peers, even if there is no strict need for them to do so. It’s an indication that we’re not retiring mentally as we age.
Lifelong learning
Research from MIT reminds us that we shouldn’t rest on our laurels, however. It looks at the neurological changes we go through as we age, and how this might influence our ability to learn new things as we age.
“As we age, it’s harder to have a get-up-and-go attitude toward things,” the researchers explain. “This get-up-and-go, or engagement, is important for our social well-being and for learning — it’s tough to learn if you aren’t attending and engaged.”
The researchers focused their attention on the striatum, which is part of the brain located in the basal ganglia. It’s an area that is linked to habit formation and addiction. The team has focused extensively on striosomes, which are small cells deep within the brain that have largely eluded even functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
They have recently discovered the role they play in the form of decision making known as approach-avoidance conflict. These are decisions whereby we actively consider both positive and negative elements and choose either to take the good with the bad, or to avoid both. Such decisions are often the cause of considerable anxiety.
What happens when we learn
The researchers analyzed what happens in the striosomes of mice as they learned between various positive and negative outcomes. The assessment showed that when mice learned, they experienced higher levels of neural activity in the striosomes than in other parts of the striatum. This underlines the importance of the area for assigning subjective value to outcomes.
“In order to survive, in order to do whatever you are doing, you constantly need to be able to learn. You need to learn what is good for you, and what is bad for you,” the researchers say. “A person, or this case a mouse, may value a reward so highly that the risk of experiencing a possible cost is overwhelmed, while another may wish to avoid the cost to the exclusion of all rewards. And these may result in reward-driven learning in some and cost-driven learning in others.”
The researchers found that older mice experienced lower engagement in this type of cost-benefit analysis, with lower striosomal activity than their younger peers. When striosome activity was boosted by medication, the engagement rose again to match that of younger mice.
All of which is not to say, of course, that learning is impossible in older people, merely that there may be neurological factors that make it that bit harder. The researchers are working on possible treatments that could stimulate the circuit and help us to continue learning as we age.
“If you could pinpoint a mechanism which is underlying the subjective evaluation of reward and cost, and use a modern technique that could manipulate it, either psychiatrically or with biofeedback, patients may be able to activate their circuits correctly,” they conclude.
