Directions: There are 4 passages followed by some questions or unfinished statements, you should answer the questions or decide on the best choice on the Answer Sheet.

Passage 2

The greatest devastation of old age is the loss of mental facilities and with the near doubling of life expectancy in the past century has come the mixed blessing of living longer and losing more. A few great thinkers and artists remained productive in their later years—Galileo, Monet, Shaw, Stravinsky, Tolstay—but even they were not what they had been in their primes. In science, the boom falls sooner still “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so. ” said Einstein.

Imagine if we could transplant old brains into younger bodies: would our minds stay young, or would we be senile teenagers scaling mountains and skate boarding at 120, but forgetting where we put the car keys? Is the brain uniquely vulnerable to the ravages of time? Can anything be done?

Incontrovertible evidence from many students shows that a higher level of education and greater mental activity throughout life correlate with lower cognitive losses in old age. These benefits apply to all sorts of cognitive losses, including those associated with Alzheimer’ s. Some researchers believe that mental application in early life produces complex neural connections that provide a reserve later on; others argue that education merely gives people the means to cope with and compensate for their losses.

K. Warner Schaie, a professor of human development and psychology at Pennsylvania State University, has studied age-related change in more than 5000 people, some for more than 40 years. Comparing earlier with later recruits, Mr. Schaie concludes that the rate of mental decline is slowing, a chance he attributes to better education, healthier diet, lessened exposure to serious disease, and more mental activity. “You’ ve got a practice. ” Mr. Schaie says, “If you don’ t solve problems, you no longer can solve problems. ” Retirement can be particularly hard, he adds, because for many people, work is their most challenging activity. “Retirement is good for people who’ ve had routine jobs—they may find something more stimulating. But it’ s disadvantage for people in high- level jobs, who are less likely to find something as stimulating as the job they had. ”

K. Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor at Florida State University, confirms Mr. Schaie’ s emphasis on the virtue of practice. Initially interested in expert performers like musicians, he found that many ostensible geniuses aren’ t really so different from everyone else— they just practice longer and harder, benefiting from sheer labor, rather than from some special gift. Professional musicians who continue to practice assiduously as they age continue to play well, while amateurs who just play for pleasure show age-related declines.

Mr. Ericsson’ s studies failed to show significant generalized benefits from mental exercise. If you play tennis, you improve your general fitness, but the greatest improvement is specific to tennis, not to other sports. It’ s the same with cognitive exercise. You have to look at your life and pick what you want to improve.