Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Wayne Lin feels most alive when writing poetry.
Originally from Taiwan, Lin came to the United States in 1970 as a graduate student. Decades later, after raising three children, welcoming eight grandchildren and building a career as a physicist, he still sees himself first and foremost as a student.
“In retrospect, I’ve just been a student all my life,” said Lin, who has spent the past decade taking poetry courses through Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes in the Bay Area.
As America’s population ages, researchers are increasingly examining whether that kind of continued learning can help older adults be independent, confident, and increase social connection and purpose. A growing body of research suggests that challenging the mind with new skills, ideas and experiences helps support brain health, build cognitive reserve and promote healthy aging.
Rachel Wu, a psychology professor and aging researcher at the University of California, Riverside studies how people learn across the lifespan and whether strategies that help children learn can also promote cognitive growth in adulthood.
When people take on new challenges, she said, different regions of the brain become engaged, strengthening existing neural pathways and forming new connections. The effects vary depending on the activity. Learning to juggle engages motor systems, while studying a language relies more heavily on memory networks.
The benefits extend beyond the brain itself. In one of Wu’s studies, published in Aging & Mental Health, researchers taught older adults how to use smartphone translation applications. Participants who previously struggled to navigate English-speaking environments became more confident.
“Learning something new can increase independence,” Wu said.
Wu said active learning appears to provide greater cognitive benefits than passive activities. While people can absorb information from television and other forms of entertainment, learning tends to be more effective when they actively engage with the material by taking notes, reviewing concepts or testing themselves.
Her findings challenge a common misconception that the brain loses its ability to adapt in later life.
“You don’t need much brain power to learn,” Wu said. “Newborns can learn.”
Susan Hoffman, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Berkeley, said advances in neuroscience have fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of aging.
Researchers now know that the brain can continue to develop new neural connections and create alternative pathways throughout life, she said, echoing Wu. Those adaptations contribute to what scientists call cognitive reserve: the brain’s ability to compensate for age-related changes and solve problems using different neural networks.
Building that reserve requires novelty and challenge. A lifelong reader might take up a musical instrument. Someone who typically learns through reading might experiment with hands-on learning.
Research also suggests that the social dimension matters. Loneliness has been linked to poorer cognitive outcomes, while meaningful social engagement can provide emotional connection, mental stimulation and exposure to new ideas.
“Social connection and learning content reinforce each other powerfully,” Hoffman said.
At Seven Trees Community Center in San Jose on a recent Thursday morning, the social side of learning filled the room: chatter over tables covered with yarn, hooks and half-finished projects. Members of the Yarnicorns knitting and crochet group worked yarn through hooks and needles.
The group’s leader Joyce Taylor, 83, has been knitting and crocheting since she was a teenager and has led the group since 2019. As she worked on a pair of fingerless gloves, she helped teach a newer member how to hook a loop of yarn to make a crochet stitch.
Beyond socializing, the group’s projects serve a larger purpose. Members crochet toys that are donated to police officers to give to children who have witnessed crimes, and they knit hats and scarves for service members and others in need.
“These ladies, they all got stories,” Taylor said, explaining the joy she gets from leading the class and connecting with members each week.
Continued learning is a public-health strategy that helps people remain intellectually engaged and connected to others, said Jannie Dresser, an instructor at Cal State East Bay and a longtime advocate for lifelong learning.
During one discussion group focused on aging, she expected participants to spend most of their time reflecting on the past. Instead, they wanted to discuss technology and the future.
“They informed me not to back off technology,” Dresser said. “You realize, ‘Whoa, these are really active minds.’”
For Lin, the retired physicist turned poet, the benefits are both intellectual and personal. As some physical activities become more difficult with age, poetry remains available. He writes poems on his iPhone whenever inspiration strikes and continues taking courses on writers such as William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe.
“Writing poetry is internal,” he said. “You can always look into your soul and search for something meaningful.”
After decades of learning, Lin has no plans to stop.
“I can be chairman of the board. I can be a CEO,” he said. “But I’m always a student. There’s always learning, and for me, that’s a happy life.”