Science of aging: Is it all in your head?

Psychologist Ellen Langer is out to prove that age really is just a number. Langer established a novel experiment wherein turning back the clock mentally--making what is essentially a life-sized time capsule of years past--helped her patients make strides in improving their physical health.

An excerpt from New York Times magazine:

The men in the experimental group were told not merely to reminisce about this earlier era, but to inhabit it -- to "make a psychological attempt to be the person they were 22 years ago," she told me. "We have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this," Langer told the men, "you will feel as you did in 1959." From the time they walked through the doors, they were treated as if they were younger. The men were told that they would have to take their belongings upstairs themselves, even if they had to do it one shirt at a time.

Each day, as they discussed sports (Johnny Unitas and Wilt Chamberlain) or "current" events (the first U.S. satellite launch) or dissected the movie they just watched ("Anatomy of a Murder," with Jimmy Stewart), they spoke about these late-'50s artifacts and events in the present tense -- one of Langer's chief priming strategies. Nothing -- no mirrors, no modern-day clothing, no photos except portraits of their much younger selves -- spoiled the illusion that they had shaken off 22 years.

At the end of their stay, the men were tested again. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn't imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller -- just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told me, had "put their mind in an earlier time," and their bodies went along for the ride.

Langer joins The Daily Circuit to talk about the science of aging.