Use it or lose it: ageing and the politics of brain training

Millington, Brad

doi:10.1080/02614367.2011.589865

Cited by 15 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…This is made explicit in the work of Millington (2012: 438) who establishes the connection between biological citizenship and the ideal of active ageing which he sees as existing inside brain-training technologies. Millington (2012: 430) describes how companies operating in the field of brain training ‘trade on ageing-related anxieties and exacerbate the pressures on older persons to demonstrate an obvious “will to health” through ongoing consumerism’. As Millington (2012: 442) points out, under such regimes the older adult comes to be conceptualised as an ‘at-risk’ (consumer) citizen who is empowered and capable of sustaining his or her identity into later life.…”

Section: The Success Of Brain Training and Its Relation To The Dividementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Millington (2012: 430) describes how companies operating in the field of brain training ‘trade on ageing-related anxieties and exacerbate the pressures on older persons to demonstrate an obvious “will to health” through ongoing consumerism’. As Millington (2012: 442) points out, under such regimes the older adult comes to be conceptualised as an ‘at-risk’ (consumer) citizen who is empowered and capable of sustaining his or her identity into later life. Through mentioning the notion of the ‘will to health’, he points out the fact that marketing campaigns attempt to input a social value into consuming brain-training products (Millington, 2012: 442).…”

Section: The Success Of Brain Training and Its Relation To The Dividementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As stated earlier, neuroplasticity plays a key role in this narrative as a mechanism through which individual action is supposed to act in order to achieve these outcomes. In analysing the ‘will to health’ in the face of cognitive decline, Millington (2012: 442) reminds us that this will is ‘evidently both enabling and constraining’. Drawing on Gilleard and Higgs (2010, 2014) again, we can see the reinforcement of the divide between third and fourth age, and the pressure that there is on older individuals to maintain elevated norms of cognitive capacity, or at least demonstrate that they are attempting to do so.…”

Section: The Discourse Of Brain Training and How It Enables The ‘Willmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive decline and distinction: a new line of fracture in later life?

2019

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Cognitive decline and dementia have become major concerns for many individuals reaching later life within contemporary Western societies. This fear of decline is central to the social divide between the third age embodying ideals of maintained health, activity and lifestyle choices, and the fourth age, a social imaginary encompassing the irreversible decline associated with ageing. In this article, we explore how brain-training technologies have become successful by relying on tensions between the third and fourth ages. We review current debates on the concepts contained in brain training and examine the emphasis on the moral virtue of ‘training the brain’ in later life as an extension of fitness and health management. We underline the limited consideration given to social positioning within old age itself in the literature. We further argue that using brain-training devices can support a distancing from intimations of dementia; a condition associated with an ‘ageing without agency’. Drawing on Bourdieu, we use the concept of distinction to describe this process of social positioning. We discuss the impact that such ‘technologies of distinction’ can have on people with dementia by ‘othering’ them. We conclude that the issue of distinction within later life, particularly within the field of cognitive decline, is an important aspect of the current culture of active cognitive ageing.

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Section: The Success Of Brain Training and Its Relation To The Dividementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Success Of Brain Training and Its Relation To The Dividementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Discourse Of Brain Training and How It Enables The ‘Willmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive decline and distinction: a new line of fracture in later life?

2019

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“…“Neuro” brain stimulants, “neutraceutical” dietary supplements, and brain training games, such as BrainAge 2, fill the pages of retirement and lifestyle magazines. While no real evidence exists as to the cognitive benefits of such products, as with sexual function the “use it or lose it” motivational discourse treats the body as modifiable and improvable, apart from any social, environmental, and educational determinants of well‐being (see George and Whitehouse ; Ortega and Vidal ; Thornton ; Millington ; Williams, Higgs, and Katz ). In this discourse, brain plasticity, a process that makes some sense on a synaptic or neuronal level, has become inflated to a neurocultural ideal (Pitts‐Taylor ).…”

Section: Chronological Age In the Biosocial Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging in the Biosocial Order: Repairing Time and Cosmetic Rejuvenation in a Medical Spa Clinic

Katz

Gish

2015

The Sociological Quarterly

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This article examines the relationship between biosocial meanings of aging and anti‐aging culture, whereby new standards of measuring age derive from nonchronological models of plasticity. The first part explores recent models of functional age, sexual performance, and cognitive health, while the second part outlines the cosmetic rejuvenation practices, discourses, and technologies of medi‐spa clinics that promise to repair the effects of time on the bodies of aging women. Both parts illustrate the sociological significance of the aging body in posttraditional society as the object of increasing public anxieties about the health of aging populations and ethical concerns for extending life.

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“…The biomedical tradition already maintains a powerful influence on most pathological processes in old age such as preventative lifestyle practices or views about death and dying, but growing interest in anti-aging technologies has promoted a view of the typically aging body according to a medical gaze and focus on pathology (Rose, 2001; Kaufman et al, 2004; Mykytyn, 2006; Powell, 2006). More recently, several authors have posited that these trends are employing widening interest in neuroscience to draw nearer to the mind and brain (Rose, 2007; Katz and Peters, 2008; Millington, 2011; Williams et al, 2012). …”

Section: Situating Plasticity In a Social World: Sociocultural Factormentioning

confidence: 99%

Indestructible plastic: the neuroscience of the new aging brain

Holman¹,

Villers-Sidani²

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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In recent years, research on experience-dependent plasticity has provided valuable insight on adaptation to environmental input across the lifespan, and advances in understanding the minute cellular changes underlying the brain’s capacity for self-reorganization have opened exciting new possibilities for treating illness and injury. Ongoing work in this line of inquiry has also come to deeply influence another field: cognitive neuroscience of the normal aging. This complex process, once considered inevitable or beyond the reach of treatment, has been transformed into an arena of intense investigation and strategic intervention. However, important questions remain about this characterization of the aging brain, and the assumptions it makes about the social, cultural, and biological space occupied by cognition in the older individual and body. The following paper will provide a critical examination of the move from basic experiments on the neurophysiology of experience-dependent plasticity to the growing market for (and public conception of) cognitive aging as a medicalized space for intervention by neuroscience-backed technologies. Entangled with changing concepts of normality, pathology, and self-preservation, we will argue that this new understanding, led by personalized cognitive training strategies, is approaching a point where interdisciplinary research is crucial to provide a holistic and nuanced understanding of the aging process. This new outlook will allow us to move forward in a space where our knowledge, like our new conception of the brain, is never static.

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Use it or lose it: ageing and the politics of brain training

Cited by 15 publications

References 30 publications

Cognitive decline and distinction: a new line of fracture in later life?

Cognitive decline and distinction: a new line of fracture in later life?

Aging in the Biosocial Order: Repairing Time and Cosmetic Rejuvenation in a Medical Spa Clinic

Indestructible plastic: the neuroscience of the new aging brain

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