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of Imaging Neuroscience at the Institute of Neurology in London showed that the left angular gyrus—an important language center of the brain—contains more gray matter in bilinguals than in people who speak only one language. Building on his own earlier studies, Arne May, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Hamburg, reported in The Journal of Neuroscience in July 2008 that older healthy adults who learned to juggle a three-ball cascade over three months of practice showed a selective increase in gray matter similar to that of twenty-year-olds. May’s studies have also demonstrated that the increases vanished when practice ceased.

5 Goal setting, challenge, and follow-through are fundamental: In their instructive book Mental Fitness for Life (Boulder: Bull Publishing, 2005), gerontologists Sandra Cusack and Wendy Thompson write, “It is the goals in our lives—personal and career goals—that drive success.”

8 at age seventy-four, she wrote the first of several books: Virginia Marsh Bell’s first book, A Dignified Life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care, was coauthored by David Troxel (Baltimore: Health Professions Press, 1997).

10 wisdom may be the result of cognitive processes: In The Wisdom Paradox (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg acknowledged his surprise in finding that it is “not all downhill” for the brain and that some “important mental gains are attained as we age.” Initially dubious, he has become a strong proponent of the idea that engaging an aging individual in vigorous mental activities may improve her resistance to brain decay. His message is twofold: that those who live vigorous mental lives attain a valuable mental coat of armor, but that its continuing power to protect depends greatly on ongoing mental effort as we age.

Dana Dakin

75 Strictly speaking, maternal mortality is when: The rate for Ghana, of 560 deaths per 100,000, was reported in the 2007-2008 United Nations Human Development Report.

Robert Iadeluca

69 As reported online by the Washington Post on October 23, 2008, the economic tsunami of 2008: was the pregnant phrase former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan used when he appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He also acknowledged a “flaw” in his economic ideology—that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shock.”

Thomas Dwyer

133 In 2003, a twenty-one-year study of 469 senior citizens: In the Einstein Aging Study, researchers found a significant association between higher levels of participation in leisure activities and decreased risk of dementia. Frequent social dancing, however, was in a class by itself among leisure activities in appearing to offer protection to the aging brain. The study was authored by Joe Verghese, M.D., Richard B. Lipton, M.D., Mindy J. Katz, M.P.H., Charles B. Hall, Ph.D., Carol A. Derby, Ph.D., Gail Kuslansky, Ph.D., Anne F. Ambrose, M.D., Martin Sliwinski, Ph.D., and Herman Buschke, M.D.: “Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly,” New England Journal of Medicine 348 (2003):2508-2516.

133 McGill University researcher Patricia McKinley, found that older adults who learned the Argentine tango: For the study, funded by the Drummond Foundation, Professor McKinley and other researchers recruited thirty healthy seniors, aged sixty-two to ninety, who had experienced a fall within the previous year and developed a fear of falling. The seniors were divided into two groups, one that took tango lessons and one that walked. Each group met twice a week for two hours. The tango group showed more improvement in balance, posture, and motor coordination.

134 neurogenesis within the region known as the dentate gyrus: Ana C. Pereira, Dan E. Huddleston, Adam M. Brickman, Alexander A. Sosunov, Rene Hen, Guy M. McKhann, Richard Sloan, Fred H. Gage, Truman R. Brown,