Excerpt from a spoken presentation by Marianne Williamson (uploaded by T. Harv Eker) describing a recent neuroscientific theory that certain kinds of age-related memory loss may be an evolutionary, not pathological, shift. The brain may de-emphasize specific details (the "dots") to focus on patterns and meaning ("connecting the dots"), and researchers at a conference coined the term "wisdom" to describe this higher-level functioning. The excerpt frames this as distinct from pathological conditions like Alzheimer’s.
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A group of brain scientists from very prestigious academic institutions recently had a conference, and there is a new theory on the table which I find fascinating about memory loss as we get older. Now, obviously, there are some situations, such as old Alzheimer's, where it's indisputably a diseased condition. But there is this theory that certain kinds of memory loss do not represent disease or dysfunction, do not represent a devolutionary impulse, but rather an evolutionary impulse where the brain, not because it's breaking down, but because it's breaking through to a higher level of functioning, knows when it wants to drop attention to certain detail, because it's moving now into a place where its concentration and focus is on developing a sense of what the patterns mean rather than what the particular details represent. It's not so interested in the dots anymore. It's interested in what it would take to connect the dots. So they were all excited about this, these brain scientists, and they were talking about the fact that we should have a name for this. I mean, this is incredible. This is incredible theory. And what would this mean? What would be a name for this new evolutionary plateau on the part of the development of the brain? And this article was so fascinating to me because it said that while they're having this conversation, what would we call it? Well, what would the name of it be? All of a sudden, there was silence in the room because everybody got it at the same time. People just sat back in their chairs, and finally one person said, wisdom.
