Older Donors and Brain Shifts

I always thought the fact that many of our major donors are older had something to do with the amount of their disposable income. It turns out it could have more to do with changes in their brains. Check out this article in Science News by Bruce Bower entitled, Older but Mellower: Aging brain shifts gears to emotional advantage.

Advancing age heralds a growth in emotional stability accompanied by a neural transition to increased control over negative emotions and greater accessibility of positive emotions...

In contrast, people under age 50 experience negative emotions more easily than they do positive ones.

This gradual reorganization of the brain's emotion system may result from older folk responding to accumulating personal experiences by increasingly looking for meaning in life...