By Karen Springen and Sam Seibert

Don’t ever assume your best work is behind you. Creativity often peaks in our later years.

On his desk at the University of Kentucky, Prof. David Snowdon displays an artistic treasure: a ceramic sculpture of Santa Claus perched atop a John Deere tractor. The artist, Sister Esther Boor, gave it to him before her death in 2002. At 107, she was the oldest participant in the research project Snowdon directs, the university’s groundbreaking Num Study. Since its start in 1986, the program has investigated the relationship between aging and Alzheimer’s disease by tracking the health of 678 Ro n Catholic nuns over 70. Sister Esther took up ceramics after she retired at 97. Snowdon cherishes her reply on first being asked to join the project: “She said she was too busy to be in a study of old people.”

Snowdon still isn’t sure what kept Sister Esther so vibrant for so ny years. But the secret of her kind of sustained creative energy is an increasingly valuable one. People are living longer lives than ever before. What tters now is to ke those extra years more fulfilling – and it can be done. Researchers who investigate longevity are discovering that old age can be a peak period for creativity. “We always think of winding down in old age,” says Judith Salerno, deputy director of the National Institute on Aging. “We need to begin thinking about late life as an opportunity for people to explore.” Oldsters y not be a quick or prolific as they were in their 20s, but experience is a rich resource. Those who learn to tap it as they grow older can accomplish a zing things and sometimes develop talents they never recognized.

There’s no shortage of precedents, great and all. Some have been classic late bloomers. Laura Ingalls Wilder was in her 50s and 60s when she wrote her “Little House” books. Anna (Grand Moses) Robertson sold her first paintings to a collector at 79 – and kept at it for the next two decades. Others went on blooming long after their expected season. I.M. Pei designed Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum in his 70s, and Frank Lloyd Wright d at 91 building his final monument, the Guggenheim Museum. Still others, like Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig von Beethoven, found way to redouble their inspiration as they entered their final years.

No one denies that age has costs. A healthy ’s brain contains approxi tely 100 billion neurons (nerve cells), some of which off with age. “For all of us, there’s undoubtedly a very slow degeneration,” says neurologist Arnold Scheibel, turning 82 on Jan. 18 and still hard at work at UCLA. The loss is drastic in people with Alzheimer’s, but no big deal in health individuals. And other parts of the brain actually keep developing as we get older – particularly if we give them plenty of exercise. “Over time, and especially with challenge, brain cells sprout new projections called dendrites,” says Dr. Gene Cohen, author of “The Creative Age” and director of the Center on Aging, Health and Hu nities at George Washington University. Dendrites flourish in the brain’s critical infor tion-processing sector throughout our 50s, 60s and 70s.

Despite the gain in dendrites, mental processes tend to lag. “Your reaction time slows down with age,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. “Forget it if you want to take up tennis in your 50s and become a world-class player. But creating things is not a speed test.” Still, some mental pursuits do ke it easier than others for young minds to excel. “Different fields require different amounts of expertise,” says Simonton. “In fields that are very abstract and very finite, like higher the tics, you can ke a contribution earlier.”

For those who like scientific definitions, creativity is an exasperatingly slippery concept. Scheibel explains the process as “the putting together of familiar infor tion in an unusual way.” Nevertheless, the seemingly idea covers a range of mental tasks, all of them valuable. Researchers sometimes measure creativity by seeing how ny different ways a subject can devise to use a paper clip, say, or a toothpick. “If you look at people’s perfor nce on those tests, it tends to increase until around 40 years old, and then it starts to decline,” says Simonton. “But if you look at something called practical creativity – solving everyday problems you have in life – that peaks later.” Sometimes much later, as in the case of Ben Franklin, who at 78 invented the world’s first bifocals for himself.

No one has figured out yet exactly how the brain handles these feats. At UCLA, gnetic resonance i ging (MRI) y be giving at least some clues into the nature of sudden insights. Subjects are asked to solve anagrams. The answers y come in a flash (“Aha!”) or slowly, by methodical examination of the different possibilities. The Aha! Answers are associated with bursts of activity in the brain’s right temporal lobe. “This region seems to connect infor tion of various kinds,” says neurologist Marco Iacoboni, one of the scientists conducting the study. And king fresh connections is an essential part of creativity.