The mind is the way we define ourselves, what it means to be us. A survey of more than 2,000 people by psychologists at Harvard University reveals how we perceive the minds of others and what criteria we use.

The survey found that we use two dimensions by which we perceive the minds of others: agency and experience. Agency means the ability for self-control, morality and planning. Experience represents the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear and pain.

Respondents to the survey were presented with 13 characters: 7 living human forms (7-week-old fetus, 5-month-old infant, 5-year-old girl, adult woman, adult man, man in a persistent vegetative state, and the respondent himself or herself), 3 non-human animals (frog, family dog, and wild chimpanzee), a dead woman, God, and a sociable robot.

The respondents were asked to rate each on the possession of characteristics of agency and experience. The results may give insight to how moral and philosphical questions are individually answered as well the formation of a society’s views on issues such as capital punishment, abortion and torture.

The fetus was regarded as having experience but no agency. The man in a persistent vegetative state scored low on agency but in the middle range on experience, showing that people may disagree on whether he would be capable of experiencing sensations.

“The perception of experience to these characters is important, because along with experience comes a suite of inalienable rights, the most important of which is the right to life,” co-author of the study, Kurt Gray says. “If you see a man in a persistent vegetative state as having feelings, it feels wrong to pull the plug on him, whereas if he is just a lump of firing neurons, we have less compunction at freeing up his hospital bed.”

Respondents viewed themselves as highest in agency and experience and viewed the normal man and woman to possess the same degree of these attributes.

How we view the minds of others shapes how we relate and how we believe society should relate to and treat them. If we believe a person has agency - that is, can tell right from wrong and possesses self-control - then society may punish them for wrong-doing. It is when we believe that they may not possess full agency, say due to mental illness, that our response to their actions is altered.

The findings of the study are published in the journal Science.

When Dorothy told Toto in the Wizard of Oz, “I’ve a feeling were not in Kansas anymore,” she spoke for many mid-lifers who make choices daily that slide them over the banks of well being. Now research affirms that slippage can be fatal. Often, it’s simply a matter of seeing why to change, and finding better options that lead to healthier horizons. Your brain will do the rest.

JAMA just reported, for instance, that men who avoid certain risk factors during midlife life longer, and healthier lives. But mid lifers, much like King Atlas from Africa, who carried the world on his shoulders, also have a harder time changing their mental maps to avoid pitfalls along their paths. Scott Sander, in his book “Writing Along the Way,” suggested that, “Only by leaving that familiar ground did I discover one place among many places.”

We often know what we have to do. In this study, for instance, we discovered that midlife men who avoid smoking, overweightness, excessive drinking and hypertension live longer and healthier lives. We’re told that of the 5820 original male participants, 2451 men or 42% survived to age 85 years. Of those 655 participants or 11% only, met the criteria for exceptional quality of life to 85 years. But the facts are often not enough to fuel change.

The key is to sketch a mental blueprint to change, by leaving all familiar ground, as Scott Sander did, to rejuvenate your options. Dr. Bradley J. Willcox, warns that persons alive at age 85 years and older are the fastest-growing age group in most industrialized countries, and so there’s a higher necessity to identify risk factors for healthier quality of life at older ages.

They found that certain risk factors can be measured, and luckily can be modified, are especially important for mid-life men, few of whom survive to oldest-old ages, because of choices made in mid-life.

Although no universal mind map exists for hanging onto a finer mental and physical quality past mid-life, research about the mid-life mind shows you can rewire your brain for new choices in these identified areas of risk.

Simply forge a few fresh streams for new lifestyle choices, and you’ve already changed the lay of the land for better horizons.

One writer in a class I taught described himself “as riding the wind into a new adventure” in mid-life, after completing a Master degree in computer science. What metaphor in nature describes something you’ve accomplished lately?

Nature holds more fuel for your brain than most people realize. To see how, watch lights and shadows dance on woods or water and then write a sentence to show lights and shadows in your day.

Have you ever tried to write sounds you hear along a wooded path or have you compared nature’s fragrances to aromas that remind you of people or events from your past?

In the last article we wrote stories to activate your linguistic intelligence, now let’s throw another mental resource into the storytelling ring - Nature. If you’ve never thought of the natural world – as power to help you spin a yarn, you’re in for a surprise. Naturalistic intelligence can enrich your writing by activating parts of your brain that keep you young. It’s all part of the multiple intelligences you possess, that could enrich your world.

For the past 18 years, it’s been my privilege to know and exchange ideas about human intelligence, with Dr. Howard Gardner, who, at Harvard University, discovered naturalistic intelligence as one of eight intelligences that define all humans. As with any intelligence, naturalistic smarts grow with use.

Here’s a writing idea to activate your naturalistic intelligence and ratchet up your IQ at the same time. Still wondering what nature has to do with your brain… your life story… or a younger, healthier mind. Compare a person you admire to an animal you value… Or create a conversation between a tree and its nutrients to find a financial solution or answer question you’ve been asking.

Go for a walk, tend a garden, or sit alone beside a brook… and let nature play back its ideas in tender roots for a story that relates to your life. Tell your story to a friend and you’ll grow new dendrite brain cell connectors as a result.

Stories inspire us to write from meaningful experiences. What you may not know, though, is that to write stories, is to develop new dendrite brain cell connections in your linguistic intelligence. Not a bad takeaway when you consider that writing process can also ensure you a younger brain….

What fun or moving story projects itself on the back screen of your mind, that you could write as a way to exercise your brain? I’ll start.

Ten years ago, during a skidoo race to the Igloolik Airport , I almost missed a once-a-week flight to another remote community on the north tip of Baffin Island. It was Saturday, I was 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle and the mercury was about 70 degrees below zero. For all those reasons, I counted myself lucky to get Cecilia, head of the Government Social Work, to roar up to my home in a skidoo, in a last ditch effort to get me there. Yikes! Did I tell you yet about frigid conditions on Baffin Island – up beside Greenland?

Back to my story though… ten minutes before flight time, we hopped onto a small broken skidoo seat, piled my four bags anywhere they’d stick, and Cecilia promised to race back for one bag that refused to stay with us. What a ride! We zoomed through Igloolik’s snow-packed, uneven ditches, out of town to the airport, as if headed down Aspen mountain in a ski race.

Cecilia skidded into gullies over bumps and teetered on the edge of snow banks while I held onto blowing bags, and held my breath. Inuit seem undaunted by the tundra’s’ icy obstacles, and the weaving and tipping of her race machine seemed part of the whole arctic adventure.

Unprepared for a skidoo, or the sub zero temperatures, and even less prepared for the rugged terrain we encountered, I fought to hold bags flying in the wind. Although I could see little of anything that wasn’t white, from behind frozen eyelashes, I caught Cecilia’s smile – a symbol of sheer conquest.

Moments after I spilled into the tiny airport, and tried to thaw ice that seemed to form over my eyeballs, Cecilia burst through the airport door - red-faced and smiling. Hurling a large frozen bag in front of me, she pronounced. “Hope there’s no breakables in this thing… Yer bag flew off the skidoo three times… but I got ‘em here.”

“No problem.” I shot back, “It could have been me flying off that skidoo” And it nearly was.

To write this little skidoo story today, is to relive a keen lesson I learned up past the North Pole. It’s a tale about gratitude for people’s generosity, and about the Canadian Arctic’s hidden wonder. Looking back at this yarn, reminds me a bit of the wonder many brains hide – in uncharted landscapes, now that I think of it.

New dendrite connections keep your brain alive, and writing a story revitalizes these neuron networks. You don’t have to go to the High Arctic to find that story, either. Just jot a few details to share one of your fun or moving moments, and you’ve already started a writing journey that adds youth. So what’s your story?