by Eva van Loon
In her fifties, despite numerous achievements and competencies, Sam is angry with herself over career failure, imperfect spelling, inability to enjoy reading, and declining memory. Educational history reveals early-childhood trauma; the assessment shows that her brain sorts sounds the way a toddler’s brain would. Is it all water under the bridge by now, or can a brain change its ways in its sixth decade?

Forty-three-year-old Janice suffered a car accident halfway through university and never became a teacher. Fibromyalgia flooded her with brain fog, impaired memory, headaches, sensitivities, and pain. Unemployable for long stretches and unimpressed by the jobs she does get, Janice feels she’s paddling in the shallows of life. Assessment shows a profile promising of success—if she were a kid. But can a brain in its forties really get into the swim of competence?

A healer to the rich and famous, Mellor runs a tastefully decorated bodywork clinic. Shelves of books contribute to the atmosphere of quiet thought and good work. Mellor chose them as appropriate for a clinician who should have a master’s degree, but he cannot read them. He is skilled at having others do his reading: “I forgot my glasses.” Or his chequebook—he can sign his name, but that’s all. “I’ve got a bit of a headache.” “Read me that bit again?” Assessment shows virtually no relationship with the auditory processor. He’s drowning in the sounds of a cacophonous world. Can this brain be resuscitated?

Cassie is desperate to pass the PRAXIS, a timed test that would finalise her Master’s degree in Special Education and get her a teaching job, too. She’s flunked the test twice, and there are only so many chances. An undiagnosed dyslexic until her own Bachelor’s degree, she knows the pain young dyslexics suffer only too well and it is her dream to help them. Her grades are great—she has always worked three to ten times as hard as she should have had to. School feels like a swimrace—she’s windmilling arms and legs through the water but getting nowhere—because she can’t understand what she reads unless she drinks it in word by word. On top of that, numbers are meaningless to her. Assessment shows a huge deficit in both auditory and visual processing. Can Cassie start over—and catch up—in her thirties?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I finally know the answer.

These questions about older learners have haunted me since I became a cognition therapist and shortly discovered that plenty of adults suffer from learning deficits very like those of their children. They’ve just learned to cope—sort of. Underlying deficits don’t go away; they just put on disguises. So I wondered: would older brains respond to cognition therapy, or is it just too darned late?

Linda Schaumleffel of Victoria demonstrates with her Power Brain Fitness course that growing brain cells is possible at any age, after any injury. Linda’s work suggests that routine physical drills of certain kinds keep memory stronger. A very recent study showed that dementia and Alzheimer’s occur far less in older people who lead active lives. (Think about the older people you know—it’s hard to imagine an active senior who isn’t well oriented and highly alert, isn’t it?) Other studies suggest that memory is linked to factors like good sleep, good food, and meditation habits. Personally, I’ve found that memories are best laid down in a peaceful, joyous atmosphere, and when proprioception (the automatic knowledge of when to put your body parts where, as in walking) is something you don’t have to think about.

The brain is, after all, part and parcel of the body. If you can build a six-pack at sixty, why not balance it with mental muscle?

It all makes so much sense!

Forget all that medical-model stuff. If you “had” ADHD as a young one and it went away, chances are, according to Dr. Elizabeth Kapp, it was an allergy—or perhaps you were just an energetic boy. If you “had” dyslexia, you still “have” it—you’ve simply found other ways to cope. If you couldn’t grok math, chances are, you still can’t. If “lousy memory” is handicapping you, maybe you’re simply not laying down memories because something’s in the way.

From Sam, Janice, Mellor and Cassie, I’ve also learned that if the auditory processor takes a direct hit from trauma early in life, it can’t get up and function again without help. Take heart: Cassie is teaching Special Education, Mellor can write his own cheques, Janice has found her métier, and Sam is embarking on retraining and thinks of herself as a woman of substance. What a difference a working brain makes!

The good news is that auditory-processing deficit is not only the most common deficit today—and the most devastating to one’s ability to read with comprehension—but also the most fixable.

Why go through the rest of your life with an underemployed auditory processor?

An older brain is slower to fix. The rule of thumb is that adult brains need to complete a drill some 42 times to make the skill a habit (automatic), compared with just a few times for kid brains. Waaah! But, hey, 42 times is a heckuva lot easier than another several decades with a brain that’s not pulling its weight.

These days, when so many of us are faced with having to re-invent our working lives after we thought our education and work was just so much water under the bridge, it’s good to know our brains that never lose interest in building cognitive bridges to the upside of skill and confidence.