Picture yourself at 80. Where did that picture come from? You’ve never been 80, so your brain built it out of parts: things you’ve lived, people you’ve watched get older, and every joke and offhand comment about old people you’ve absorbed along the way.

In part three of our four-part series on memory and the aging brain, I look at research showing the brain uses the same memory system to remember the past and imagine the future. We talk about a short exercise that boosted detail in both, older adults included, and why every acting coach who ever told you to “bring yourself to the character” may have been describing how the brain works.

Then we get into beliefs about aging. A 2023 analysis of 107 long-term studies found that how people interpret their own aging predicts later health and longevity, while experiments show that a reminder of the “forgetful old person” stereotype can cause a small, temporary dip in performance. I’m upfront about which findings come from experiments, which are observational, and where the evidence is weaker than the headlines.

Next month we close out the series with superagers.

Sources:

• Schacter, Gaesser & Addis (2013). Remembering the past and imagining the future in the elderly. Gerontology. https://doi.org/10.1159/000342198
• Addis, Wong & Schacter (2008). Age-related changes in the episodic simulation of future events. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02043.x
• Madore, Gaesser & Schacter (2014). Constructive episodic simulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034885
• Rubin & Berntsen (2006). People over forty feel 20% younger than their age. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193996
• Levy, Slade, Kunkel & Kasl (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.2.261
• Westerhof et al. (2023). Longitudinal effects of subjective aging on health and longevity: An updated meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000737
• Kwak, Kim, Chey & Youm (2018). Feeling how old I am: Subjective age is associated with estimated brain age. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2018.00168
• Lamont, Swift & Abrams (2015). A review and meta-analysis of age-based stereotype threat. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038586
• Armstrong, Gallant, Li, Patel & Wong (2017). Stereotype threat effects on older adults’ episodic and working memory: A meta-analysis. The Gerontologist. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnx056
• Sun & Jiang (2023). Metacognitive illusions: A positivity effect in judgments of learning for older but not younger adults. Journal of Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11030040
• Huberman Lab podcast, episode with Dr. Alan Castel (UCLA)

The Cognitive Performer is produced by Many Voices Media.