At twenty, the brain processes information faster than it ever will again. In middle age, the same brain may read other people’s emotions more accurately than it ever has. By the late sixties, its voc

The human mind is often described as if it had one summit. Youth is treated as the fast, bright peak, and everything after it is cast as a slope downward. That story is simple, memorable, and wrong in the way simple stories about ageing often are. A ... [7610 chars]