There are two books on this, the better one was 'The Wisdom Paradox' (my bad! correction from earlier version of this comment), the less good, slower, less medi

There are two books on this, the better one was 'The Wisdom Paradox' (my bad! correction from earlier version of this comment), the less good, slower, less medical + informative was 'The Mature Mind'. IIRC from reviews (I only got 1/4 way through the first book), the theory is, that the right brain starts being used more (and it's been fed longer, now) so that, as you age, while you're maybe less 'whip smart', you have 10,000 shortcuts and indeed as you say, you see the bigger picture better. Ugh - actually I couldn't swear the one that impressed me as 'sharper' was the first, I believe so though. I could use some of my old 'whip smarts', such as they were :(.