Slashdot Mirror
Brain Decline Begins At Age 27
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that a new study suggests that our mental abilities start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, and 27 could be seen as the 'start of old age.' The seven-year study, by Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia, looked at 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60, and used a number of mental agility tests already used to spot signs of dementia. 'The first age at which there was any marked decline was at 27 in tests of brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability. Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.'"
Get off my... uh green thing, with the, um little plants? What's it called?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
but I'm 31, not 22.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
But then I'm way past 27...
"Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help."
What a coincidence! That's when most people graduate from college!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It starts a lot earlier than that.
[sarcasm]
Yeah, like I'm going to pay any attention to a study by a guy who got his Ph.D. in 1974 whose brain has therefore been declining for at least 35 years...
[/sarcasm]
Or, maybe by their late 20s, people have had enough of stupid tests -- they're done with school and the day when success was measured by testing rather than real accomplishments are over. Being less interested and excited by tests, they score lower.
If old age begins at 27, then I can say that from over a decade in, it's not so bad. I can still kick 20-somethings butts. I just wish those darn kids would stay off my lawn. (True -- I live near a middle school and the bastards keep cutting through yards to walk to school...)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Finally, an excuse to forget an anniversary or birthday; or more realistically, a deadline.
LAlALala, wooooooot. Kinda ironic that this message is released on frikkin' St. Paddy's Day. D:
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
According to his own findings, these results can't be trusted as they come from a person who's mind is already decaying. I would've believed it if the prof was about 22 years old.
I was born in 1961, got my Computer Science degree in 1982, programmed in Cobol, Fortran, and C and I'm still as smart as I ever was.
Unfortunately, I've forgotten my user login, so I had to post this as Anonymous Coward. I tried to submit my comment using paper tape and punch cards but I couldn't figure it out. My feeding time is coming up... I hope my nurse comes by soon. By the way... get off my lawn.
dum de doo diddle dum dum dum de de de
oops, I forgot that I have to hit this little "Submit" button...sorry I nodded off there
Yup, sharp as a tack. ATTACK! Where?! What?! Who!? Oh dear... My cow-orkers are laughing at me again... I came to work in my pyjamas again. You know, the ones with the giraffes on them? What do you mean you don't know? Don't we know each other? Why am I talking to you? Where am I? I'm cold.
I hope my children visit me.
As a 26-year-old, let me be the first to say:
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
caritj.org
Bit of a flamebait headline, eh? I know I'm not mentally as fast as my 3-year old (watching his little brain hum is a bit awe-inspiring...hard to believe I ever learned at that pace), but at the same time my actual skills are vastly more advanced.
Likewise, I'm sure I was more mentally agile at 18 than I am now at 30, but I know for a fact at 18 I wasn't even a tenth the coder I am now: some of the things I remember struggling with are trivial now, and my productivity is dramatically higher.
So yea, youth and energy are nice, but they fade as experience comes to the fore, and experience carries you until the real mental infirmities kick in.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They told us never trust anyone over 30
What?
Doesn't seem like they have accounted for training. The ages seem to coincide with the years when a person might be actively perusing new knowledge, and generally being in a receptive mode so to speak.
I mean, the skills could be declining from lack of use as opposed to brain deterioration or what not?
I'm ready for Carousel! Let the Last Day celebration begin!
22 year olds are typically either about to graduate from college or just did.
They're still in "study" mode. Older than that, useless information gets shoved aside as people get jobs and settle into doing repetitive day-to-day tasks.
They're not "forced" to learn anymore.
In short, nothing to see here, move...OH SHINY!!!
Yeah, like I was saying, I don't eat anything that an animal has crapped out.
Sent from your iPad.
When does age-related cognitive decline begin?
Timothy A. Salthouse
Received 17 April 2008; received in revised form 20 August 2008; accepted 12 September 2008. published online 24 February 2009.
Abstract
Cross-sectional comparisons have consistently revealed that increased age is associated with lower levels of cognitive performance, even in the range from 18 to 60 years of age. However, the validity of cross-sectional comparisons of cognitive functioning in young and middle-aged adults has been questioned because of the discrepant age trends found in longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses. The results of the current project suggest that a major factor contributing to the discrepancy is the masking of age-related declines in longitudinal comparisons by large positive effects associated with prior test experience. Results from three methods of estimating retest effects in this project, together with results from studies comparing non-human animals raised in constant environments and from studies examining neurobiological variables not susceptible to retest effects, converge on a conclusion that some aspects of age-related cognitive decline begin in healthy educated adults when they are in their 20s and 30s.
My comment:
Speaking as one of those aging boomers, age profiling is OK. So is racial, gender, sexual preference and religious profiling. We operating in a mysterious and complex world while suffering from a poverty of information. It's all about getting all the data you can, baby... its all about the data...
Seastead this.
I'm 33 and currently getting more dumber. I thought it was all the alcohol killing off neurons. Now I can blame old age.
I'll have another one!
Cheers!
I expect stem cell technology will allow us to replenish the abilities of our brains some time before most of us are too much older and dumber. Fear not, fellow 28-year-olds.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Let's see, I'm double that...That leaves me 1/4 the brain power...Eh, whatever...I wasn't using it anyway.
... or perhaps the reason they saw declining figures starting at the age of 27, is that older people who are more intelligent, tend to not have the time, choose not to waste the effort, and do not need the $100, to participate in these kinds of studies.
That's the problem with doing these kinds of studies as a point-measurement across an age-range. The test groups cannot possibly be equivalent, unless a VERY large sample is taken at random from the population. Frankly, I'll have trouble believing such a study unless it's a prospective study that tests the same volunteers across a span of their lifetime.
It depends on who you are. Your genes, your ability and desire to continue to learn throughout life, even your level of physical activity.
Most people pretty much stop learning when they leave school. Keep learning, and your brain won't decline.
You know, even Forest Gump got it right - "stupid is as stupid does."
I saw this headline in a dozen different sites at least 36 hours ago. I remember when /. used to be a redoubt where one could find first hand news. Maybe the editors are getting too old to keep the site sync with the world.
That might be funnier if your username were RemoWilliams82.
Don't downplay the good side of all this. I can watch the same show over and over and over, as if it was the first time!
Most of the people I know in their late 20's (including myself) are done with college (including grad school), have homes, have or are planning to have kids, more concerned with paying bills and beginning to save for retirement than they are with being a super genius.
So my question, is this hard biological evidence or psychology/sociology? I find it hard to believe that, at 27 (give or take) a switch is flicked that starts a downward spiral.
No sig for you!!
The decline is not because people are older, but because they were brought up in an earlier age, before modern technology.
My mental abilities declined severely in 1976 when I was in a terrible auto accident. They improved markedly over the next ten years.
Knowledge, practice, and experience more than make up for the so-called "decline". Why is it that slashdot's geezers know the difference between "lose" and "loose", and between their, they're, and there? Maybe because they've had more time to read more books and figure out the context of those words' uses?
I used to be fast, I could catch a fly in mid flight with my bare hand. Now I can only catch the old flies.
As to your question, see my sig.
Free Martian Whores!
BRAIN?!@# Who cares about yer brain laddy!
What about me grapenuts! They're going to be tooching the floor before me brain goes to mush eh?
Chemo did a number on me too.
But just getting older I can feel myself slipping away. A little less snap. A little slower reactions. The memory is also not that great (wasn't to start with).
It ruins some of my hobbies like Ultimate and Boardgaming because there are no age/skill brackets for those activities like there are for softball.
Ultimate is particularly bad because there has been a big push to get ultimate down to 13 year olds. So now you have people with 18 year old bodies and 5 years experience coming out to play "pickup". This leads to long periods of watching them run around like gazelles tossing the disk back and forth to each other. The only thing they can't do is fake well.
Boardgaming- perhaps because of BSW or perhaps because of boardgamegeek has gone the other way- along the brain axis. Where boardgamers used to be a mix of average folks, increasingly you have certifiable genius's. Likewise, the games have gone away from dice to pure logic/player interaction over the past 8 years and these brainiacs can see almost to the end of the game from the first turn. And the bad part is that 10 minutes in, I can see if I've lost and now i have to sit through another 45 minutes until the actual loss. No handicapping, no dividing into different play classes.
I find the lack of handicapping to be an expression of our "winner take all" society. I guess I need to either start a group with handicapping or move on to other activities.
---
Other things you lose are sense of smell, sense of touch, and sense of taste.
So don't give up your life from 18 to 30 so you can "have a good life" because you are giving up your best years.
Definitely have some fun along the way.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
For men that is.
Now, where did I put my ED pills?
What?
There's evidence that the brain goes through a spurt every seven years where we remember more, become more creative, and learn new stuff.
I had a reference but forgot where I put it.
Now get off my lawn.
I always thought that the brain works best at 39 ;)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/27/1630225
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain... All dead @ 27...
"Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average"
My memory's already pretty bad and I'm just 33. You mean it's going to get worse? Of course, most of my memory issues seem to stem from a lack of sleep. Two kids will do that to you. My other memory problems (not being able to link most faces with names unless I see the person *MANY* times) go way back.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Mods: mod this guy "young"! He's schmort. He must be a mere child. He may of course also be a girl... in which case he's probably wearing pigtails or something...
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
But the difference being insignificant between 22-26.
Anyway. It's just old enough to see your offspring grow to adulthood/sexual maturity and therefore make you largely irrelevant to your genes.
Deleted
So Logan's Run had it right, we stop contributing to society by age 30 and should be "renewed." Bring on the Sandmen!
Stop Runner!
Does that mean I can retire at 35?
His study basically was a criticism of longitudinal studies, giving evidence of retesting effects and then saying that because of this cross-sectional studies are better suited to this kind of evaluation. See, the difference between the two is that longitudinal studies have found that decline begins around 60 whereas cross-sectional studies show decline beginning in the 20's and 30's on some factors (e.g. fluid intelligence, though crystallized intelligence continues to remain intact or improve). The thing is, there are also problems with cross sectional studies, as well, such as the cohort effect (i.e. factors peculiar to the different age groups being tested at one point in time will affect the outcome). In all likelihood the reality of cognitive decline is somewhere in the middle of these two groups of results; earlier than the longitudinal studies suggest and later than the cross-sectional studies suggest.
The minimum age is 35.
Just saying..
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
is 27?
\u262D = \u5350
I took a Gerontology course several years ago that cited several studies stating that mental decline begins between the ages of 20 and 30. It's been apparent for some time that aging begins much earlier than most of us would like, so maybe this study is notable just because it has higher specificity?
I hope by the time I am 60 they discover a cure for ageing...
Considering that at 22 most people are fresh out of college and their brain still well exercised.
After that they join the corporate slavery, where 5 years in cubes destroys their mind and numbs them down to the obedience level demanded by their PHBs, and corporate masters.
A few more decades of that and they will be completely senile.
Those who stay in academia on the other hand make their biggest achievements in late thirties (most at about 38).
http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/youth.html
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
....and just HOW OLD is Professor Timothy Salthouse?? Mmm-hmmmm.
The article say the peak is when people at 22 years old, one of the last years at college, before that people has been learning non stop so the brain is still sharp in things like new pattern recognization. But after that the brain don't need those skills anymore so it start decline.
This conclusion doesn't surprise me at all. That's probably about the age when many people are having children. Most children get their energy by sucking it out of their parents. The process takes brain cells with it -- that's why the children get smarter and the parents get dumber.
All I gotta say is use it or lose it...
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Now I have serious Shuffleboard skillz.
The more time I spend with children the more I realize that learning is nothing more than the elimination of options. By 20 we have removed all but the most probable options, and by 30 we simply run out of, for lack of a better term, "possibilities."
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I'm 40. Excuse me while I nip outside and shoot myself.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
we stop giving a fuck.
Its like sex.
In my teens I couldn't wait, It was all a mystery.
In my twenties, I was into "The Selfish Gene" and "Spreading my Seed" far and wide.
In my thirties and forties, I wanted a friend more than a fuck.
In the middle fifties, I am coming to the conclusion that I was a hormonal idiot.
It's taken years, decades, to come to the conclusion that I'd have been a more productive human being, though a worse coder/project lead/manager.
In the end, hopefully years from now, its as a human being that I'd really want to be remembered.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Congratulations, you have just been trolled. *clap*
your average 70 year old has a foot long dick, and works in the pornography business
don't tell me that's not true! i need some sort of hope to cling to!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...we can start to have normal conversations with women, not thinking about math problems and technological stuff etc. all the time?
If this is valid, I'd like to know what is the cause. Is it a physiological degradation or an psychological one?
This is wild speculation, but people seem to remain fairly active before their 30s but there seems to be this crossover point where people tend to fall into a rut and tend to be resigned to their lives at that current state. From observing family, friends and myself this seems to be the case. Could that variety help provide inspiration and the sort of motivation that help people continue to grow?
That said, I think that experience far outweighs anything else. I find myself solving problems and handling issues with far more easy and speed than at any time in the past. Work that I labored over in college for hours, if not days, I could now be done with within 30 minutes.
This sort of thing certainly doesn't make it easier for job security. The last thing companies need is yet another excuse to dump older, more expensive employees.
According to Brain Age, I have a brain of a 24 year old!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
experimental stem cell therapies will just give you cancer
unfortunately, futurology is about extrapolating too many variables. such that rocket cars, or fusion based power: its perpetually 20 years away from now
not that we won't ever have actual fusion power someday. just that the game of saying its 20 years away or 100 years away is mostly bullshit. no one knows, so don't depend on it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Says it all, when I was in my early 30's I wasnt getting a straight nights sleep 9 times out of 10 and was constantly exhausted from juggling infants and work. I'd happily admit my IQ took a U dive of stellar proportions for the best part of a decade.
If you have a family - and for most graduates who do they start it in their late 20s/early 30s - this is the most godawfull time of your life as far as physical and mental exhaustion goes. Of Course it has other compensations - wouldn't have missed it for the world - but as far as intellectual performance goes, well it's survival.
No, you've just replied to a troll. Do you think that a character that stupid would know how to spell "mentholated" much less know what it means as applied to the stereotype of blacks?
Congratulations, you've just been trolled. *fart*
I wrote my first program in the early 1970s (Conways Game of Life in Dartmouth BASIC on a teletype) and haven't stopped. I think I notice a decline in short term memory- the number of ideas I keep active in mind at time- but not a major decline. Thats where a trusty legal pad where I write done bug/enhancements that come to mind, but deferred to later, comes in. When younger I'd keep these all in my mind. The legal pads also double as a lab notebook for review or writing up documentation later.
I can still work in 12-hour streaks if need be or highly motivated as I am doing this week. I never did marathon all-nighters at any age.
I am still surprised I am being paid to program at this advanced age. I dont like managing. I work in a industry where many of use have a graduate degree in a non-computer domain specialty which we code for. Youngsters arent particularly attracted to this domain anymore, even though it is lucrative. And offshoring to youngsters in India without the domain knowledge or any job stay tenure was a dismal expensive failure some years back.
My 40+ year old brain is much more efficient than you young'uns because if only I could remember...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A newer study has shown that in WoW, characters start losing their mental abilities at level 30.
Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
your entire development from fetus to teenager has momentum behind it, and launches you into the prime of your life. you stay up there in your 20s, at top shape, with little change over time. after which you begin a gradual fall, imperceptible at first, but it accelerates, until you are standing there wondering why your car keys are in the refridgerator, and then soon after in a pine box
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I am not even going to dignify this the time it takes to read the article, it is patently wrong.
I am 34, and I have never felt more quick, creative, and industrious as I am today. (And I can still whoop ass against guys half my age in on-line shooters.)
The reason older people appear to take longer to make decisions and learn and create and recall memory is simply because our database is far more full and complex than the youngster's.
When a youngster is taught to cross a one-way street, they look only the way traffic will be coming from.
But an old-folk goes, "Ah, a one-way sign. Hmm, I've seen people run the wrong way before..." so they look both ways.
When someone asks a youngster a question, they quickly run through their database in their mind and pick the answer (probably their only answer).
But an old-person may have seen the question more than once in their lifetime, and has to pick through a larger network of data, and decide through possible multiple instances of the same data, and compound those memories into an answer.
For example, ask a young person if eggs are good or bad for you. They'll think of the first aspect of eggs that they've heard, and tell you whether they're good or bad for you.
But an old person has to think, "Hmmm... back in the 70's, doctors said they were good for you. Then they said they were bad. Then certain kinds. Oh, and they may be good for certain parts of the body, but maybe elevate cholesterol and high blood pressure. Does it interact with any medications?..."
You get my point. It's an apples and oranges comparison he's trying to do.
And what about filters? Young people have fewer filters on their brains than older people. When I was younger, I could bounce down a stairway and have no problems. Now I have this filter on my brain that says, "before you move any part of your body, look ahead to see if it will cause pain."
Another filter is, when the wife says something that just sets herself up for a punchline, about 3 or 4 things drop down in my head that I *could* say. But which ones will get you in trouble? So I take longer to respond... and look slow.
Here's another example of a filter you can even test: Play CS or any other on-line shooter game where you have two teams. Play once where team-killing is disabled (can't kill your own guys). Then, play one where you can accidently shoot your own team. Takes longer to decide to shoot, doesn't it!
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
...when many people are finishing University and the decline seems to start just when you'd probably finish grad school. ;)
Now, if everyone tested had NOT attended a University in any fashion, it would be interesting to see the results.
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I would have thought the peak in ability to learn would be around 2-3 years of age when (young) people learn to talk, and by and large become a lot more independent.
Anyway it doesn't really matter too much. I think people around age 22 are by and large just through college and are learning at a full steam rate, hence
appear faster/more intelligent.
Now recent study have shown that the aging brain does not really lose cells or the capacity to learn. Just keep learning then. Train yourself, read a lot, have engaging conversations, don't harm yourself with alcohol or other substances too much and you should do fine until you are in your 80s or so, probably longer by then.
"if you want people to like you then you cant be an asshole about talking SHIT and wanting attention for it"
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps he doesn't care what overly-sensitive easily offended people think about him? That maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want everyone to like him?
The best part is, he said black people taste bad. You, however, seem to think they eat watermelons, drink malt 'liqor', etc. And, since race is obviously such an issue for you, I'd pick you as the racist out of the two. "My girlfriend's smart even though she's black" LOL does she know you say these things?
I'd say it's less a matter of not needing those skills and more of not practicing those skills quite so much. Except in a very few career fields, it's hard to practice pattern-recognition and learning as often as back in school when they were being drilled into your head for several hours a day.
But it does make me wonder: would the results be the same if they ran this test on a group of detectives, researchers, doctors, and others whose careers are largely based around exercising these skills?
Whooooooooooosh!
I just turned 26 so.... next year I'm totally fucked.
You can't take the sky from me.
Bet you can't work out which way round the cartridges go in the gun.
I am sure, that the tests were not conducted including background as a major influence.
Background, being that of the people in the study, such as diet (starting at what age),
lifestyles(drug use, either prescribed or not), even climate, can affect the release of
certain self regenerative properties.
As well, we are talking about coherence here, not intelligence, and being that alzheimer's has now been classified as diabetes3, and that dementia is somewhat related on a perticular level...
we should have split the study into diabetic and non diabetic, to better show that
insulin levels at the time of testing (early morning or late at night) can affect the outcome
of tests being taken.
you don't put stem cells in your brain and they magically decide to become the exact cells you need in exactly the right places growing at exactly the right rate
you put stem cells in your brain, and you've just given yourself brain cancer
there is a lot more work to be done to control stem cells. stem cells have the POTENTIAL to become the right cells in the right context. but getting them to behave is a HUGE undertaking, and should fill you with caution, not ignorant optimism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In my case it was in 2000, and I spent a year having a lot of trouble reading sentences and managing to follow the meaning. I could handle Dr. Seuss. It's gotten consistently better since then, although I'm still nowhere near as conventionally smart as I was.
What I find interesting is that although I feel like I'm the same person, my friends say I'm a much nicer, more considerate person now, and that I accomplish a lot more because I'm more persistent and organized -- because I have to be, since I have a lot of issues with short-term memory.
When I was going to a cognitive therapist, one of the things she mentioned was that in some ways they were going to treat me for aging, as much as the accident. She said, four years ago, that she felt like people peaked mentally at about 30, and she wanted to see if she could do stuff to just ward off age-related decline so I'd be about as smart as I would have been anyway. I was prescribed two different types of anti-Alzheimer's medication and wowie, were they amazing in terms of focus and memory. I wish I could afford to keep taking them. Breathtakingly expensive but seriously amazing effects.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I forgot, what was the article about again?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Figures this article would come out on my 27th birthday.
"Traitor!"
Then it takes ages to respawn. Been there, done that. (Not on purpose, though. I'm not one of those douchebags who does it intentionally for kicks.)
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
"Currently the average age at marriage in the US is 26.8 years for men"
Renew. RENEW!
I just turned 27 on Steak, Blowjob, and Pi day! I just thought my rapid mental decline was from watching too much TV
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Really..Think about your argument again.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Yet another waste of time and money with this foolish pursuit of bad science
You cant quantify the results, why fucking even bother to read the stupid article which basically amounts to fiction, just like any finding on Man Made Global Warming or mental decline.
There is so much of this kind of science these days and yet you all laugh at religion. Look in the fucking mirror
Once again its Bushs fault and its all because of Global Warming
Also, you geezers rattle on forever.
And the bad part is that 10 minutes in, I can see if I've lost and now i have to sit through another 45 minutes until the actual loss.
My entire life is like that. I had a long bout of depression, starting around 18. I turn 27 this year, and I'm just finishing university. I'm no longer clinically depressed, but I haven't fully healed, either.
I had little social life and no love life in my teen years. I threw away my university years between depression and a degree I didn't like. Basically, I have missed my youth and I know I'm not getting it back. Worse yet, my future prospects are damaged beyond repair. All I can hope to accomplish now is a pale shadow of what could have been.
Too bad there's no reset button.
meanwhile, i am discussing the realities of stem cell therapy from an understanding of the daunting challenges
if you explain vaccination to me, and i've never seen it before, i would accept it, because you've just explained it to me in a coherent fashino that makes it plausible
so prove to me wrong: in the same shorthand you would explain to someone vaccination who doesn't understand vaccination, please explain to me:
1. how to get stem cells exactly where they are needed on a cellular level
2. how to tell a stem cell to stop growing
3. how to tell a stem cell to turn into the exact cell you want
4. how to get the stem cell interacting with cellular neighbors who have gotten used to not interacting anymore
i am not saying it is impossible. i am not just some wet blanket out to destroy people's hope. all i am simply telling you is that it is incredibly difficult. you are the one is telling me, out of ignorance, that its going easy and any day now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Plant nettles.
If anyone asks, they're tastier than spinach. Good in bread, good in soup.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Senescence provides a useful biological function. It allows each new generation to triumph over the old. Without it we would eventually stifle our youth and die out.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Certain skills peak early. We know this. I know I am not as good at some sorts of tasks as I was at the age of 22 and I am only 32. However I am better at others. "How quickly can you process this information?" is something that peaks early. Memorization skills can also peak somewhat early. Interestingly, 22 would be the age where most Bacchelors' Degrees are issued, so I don't know if school might be a factor in that age breakdown. It would be interesting to add post-doc students to the sample and see if their reactions were different.
Personally I think that a big part of the issue is that our brains change how we process information as we age. So this may go well beyond environment. I am now studying harder than I have since I can remember (harder than I did in college), and reading over 150 academic books per year. One thing I am noticing though is that my ability to learn has changed. It hasn't diminished, but it has taken a different form.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
As George Carlin pointed out, when you turn 60 you can crap your pants and no one will care, so getting old isn't all bad.
Maybe I can use this to convince the professors to let the curve slip a bit for me in Random Signals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_at_first_marriage
I'm 34 too. When I was younger, I would happily take tests to show how smart I was. Now, I just find them annoying, and think the person that wrote it was an idiot. Then I question their theory, and I think that I'd probably score higher than the douche that designed the test, even if it is a flawed model. Then I notice some kids walking across the lawn....
I've been having moments like that since I was a teenager. I used to think they meant I was going downhill already, but really, I think it's just indicative of the fact that we have good days and bad days; on the latter, it's easy to be surprised by your eloquence on the former.
Now, when I stop being impressed by anything I wrote less than n years ago, that's an important sign. I keep thinking it's happened already, but then I manage to impress myself one more time.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It doesn' offer any explanations that relate to the findings. Perhaps this isn't a biological factor, but a social factor. Late 20 somethings start settling down as they get comfy in their jobs and start families. Perhaps this comfort level decreases the need to keep that mental edge. A good portion of people aren't going to exercise just for the sake of it, whether it is physical or not.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I have always had a terrible, unreliable memory, going back to when I was a kid. The only way I could get by in school was to compensate for the bad memory with reason and logic -- remembering the *pattern* rather than the data itself. A side effect of this technique is that I'm quite good at puzzles. I've spent the last 30 years or so working with computer software, so, while my poor memory hasn't gotten worse, the constant exercise of what I *do* have means I'm just as sharp as I was in college.
Now if I could only remember where I put my car keys!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
The thing is, that's life. As you move through life, the ability to react immediately to never-before-experienced situations should decline in favor of the ability to apply experience to a familiar problem.
Some cog sci people believe that the very root of consciousness is the gradual development of a world model over time. Babies don't have memories, under this theory, because they have no framework of the world to hang memories on, and only become truly conscious entities once they've figured out to a certain extent how the world works. I wouldn't be surprised (if this idea was true) that as we get older and "figure out how the world works" we no longer need to work so hard to challenge it -- even though it might be wrong, or, worse, we're getting set in our ways.
Larry: It's all downhill from here!
Mr. Shoop (wistful): Yeah, but it's a lovely ride.
(Great line from the otherwise forgettable movie Summer School).
On my Slashdot?
More likely than I thought.
all I have to say is, "Well, damn."
Not unless something goes extraordinarily wrong.
I see what you're saying about how it's the organization of brain cells that make them interesting--a bit of liver with circulation through it works fine, while a bit of brain with circulation through it may not be neurologically linked to anything in a way that makes sense.
But that's not "cancer". As far as I know, stem cells are generally coaxed into turning into healthy body cell types, none of which fir the definition of "cancer". I think what you mean to say is that you'd have a useless lump of healthy brain tissue in your head.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In all seriousness, stories like this are a little scary and depressing. I hate the idea of my brain changing me against my will. I prided myself on my intelligence and mental agility. As an introvert, it's something that defined me. I don't like the idea of losing any bit of that. I always figured if I took care of myself and kept sharp, I'd stay as sharp as always even into old age, but studies like this bum me out.
22, eh? That was before I was even able to make my first post to USENET. To think, all my sharpest and quickest wit is lost to humanity for ever. Now I can safely tell my grandkids how funny I used to be, and they won't be able to Google it up.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
now you are talking from understanding, rather than ignorant optimism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At least two times I dug up a forum discussion to reference something, read a read summery and was shocked at how clearly & concisely the guy commented.... then realized that past was me.
Hey, at least I amaze myself, I guess this is a prequel to a day where somebody could tell me the same great joke every week and I'll laugh every time because I forgot he told it to me.
Ignorance and forgetfulness is bliss.
You do know that stress & adrenaline cause damage to your cells, accelerate disease and speed up aging.
Be happy you're out of that mode, you'll live a better life.
What the heck does that even mean?
All I'm saying is that there are far more variables that determine how well your mind is working than the simplistic few he's looking at.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Sure, why not? If you worked as an auto mechanic for twenty years and decide that you want to switch to engineering or law, graduating from college would be a useful and necessary thing.
My mother graduated from medical school when I, her fourth child, was an infant. She was 35 years old. Going a step or two higher in education can be a smart move when your family is growing and your spouse is underemployed.
Also, college is not trade school. I gained many things from my education that don't show up on my resume but make me a more fulfilled human being.
Mine started heading downhill at 21 for some reason...
Meh!!!
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
... has speed been more important than accumulated knowledge? WTF!
realkiwi
If you don't mind my asking...
Seastead this.
Studies of the performance of baseball players have shown that their peak seasons come at 26 and 27. Quite possibly, mental and physical decline begins at the same age. (Though naturally, the former may be caused by the latter.)
Hurry, i'm having probblms evn typpn ths pst.
mary hda a litel labm
"it perpetually frustrates organized religion"
When atheists claim hegemony over the intellectual realm.
Blind optomisism and enthusiasm make way for realism and dealing with society in general and the ghastly place it is.
As a 56 year old, I'm happy to say that at least your self-judgment circuits decay at about the same rate as your mental agility, so at least it ends up feeling about the same!
More seriously, I've seen studies that show that verbal ability holds up pretty well, even though math ability starts to slip. I think that this may be true (not that I was ever a big math wizard to begin with). I can still do math and programming, but it feels like more work now, and I try to avoid doing it unless it's absolutely necessary.
I'm 26. I feel so smart after reading this...
Interesting post - relating it to databases. From what I have read, IQ has two main components, gC and gF, standing for Crystallized and Fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is raw problem solving ability, crystallized intelligence is the database aspect you are referring to (tables, the data in the tables and the queries you have built up over the years). I guess fluid intelligence is more the ability to create the right tables, fill them up with good data, and creating meaningful queries.
Fluid intelligence is known to peak in young adulthood and then steadily decline. Crystallized intelligence gradually rises and then stays stable through most of adulthood, declining after 65 on average. I think practically for many things, the increase or maintenance in gC offsets the decrease in gF.
I notice the drop in gF type things in myself - I certainly don't have the superior reaction times I did in my late teens. If I play an FPS, I have learned to make up for that by playing in a more patient manner and playing the percentages - picking my battles. It's harder to say about the reasoning, I haven't noticed much decline yet. But I certainly notice having the larger database of information and more queries, and more refined queries of gC, which enables me to solve some problems much quicker than previously.
Eventually though, it's downhill and I hope to anticipate that and lower my expectations accordingly.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Sorry, brother, but you're in denial. All of your examples involve experience, and while knowledge can be more important than intelligence, I doubt you can deny that you would be even more creative if you had the same physical brain as you did 10 years ago. Considering the typical unfairness of life, it would be strange if it were otherwise.
when you start reading Slashdot. Wichever is sooner
Maybe Dr. Lobe or the Brain age guy is the reason why my memory is ... umm... I kinda forgot my point :S
whatu see is not whatu get.
Starting with the president.
"Ok, so like, Nietzsche is my favourite philosopher and we should raise taxes for like, Greenpeace and stuff. While you're at it, put all my memos from Hilary in the 'thats what she said box'. Oh snap!"
Yesterday I saw this survey which says that entrepreneurs peak between 25-29.
Credible
I think that you have hit on the major flaw with these types of tests ignore that as people get older they become different kind of *people*. You have to change and at the very least an older persons perception of time has to adapt. Life moves faster as you get older because when you are 20 a year is one 20th of your life and when you are 40 it's a fortieth.
I'd like to add that even if true (which it probably is) it's more than likely enhanced problem solving abilities of youth are the brains analogy of baby teeth and as the brain passes certain survival barriers certain attributes are no longer required.
Also, I would be interested in the relationship between the spinal health of the participants and their cognitive abilities. It is well know that the brain produces chemical compounds to mask pain in the body and perhaps 28 is the time where enough injuries have accumulated that it starts to overwhelm the brains capacity.
Finding a good chiropractor (which is a big problem solving exercise itself) went a long way to freeing up my mental capacity as I aged. I had some accidents that had bound my spine up in several places and I felt physiological changes (as well as physically getting bigger shoulders) as these were slowly undone. It was great, as I became less preoccupied with emotive issues my ability to focus dramatically *increased* allowing me to sift through my experiences more rapidly.
Being young is great fun, it should be because you're not born with wisdom and everyone gets older. I'm more curious about what characteristics are developed as the brain ages, why they are useful and how they can be maintained. Frankly it would have been more appropriate to tittle this 'New Study finds a way to promote Ageism'. I'm surprised that the person's who devised this study didn't have the grace or wisdom to see this for themselves.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Due to a bug in the discussion system, posts only display the absolute value of the poster's UID.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
nuthin but a suger high for 8hrs. brain will kick.
I just read the other day peak synaptic throughput actually occurs about age 40 and slows from there.
I've never attended university, or passed any exam of any sort other than a driving test which I took for the first time at 54. I did take up the guitar to learn bebop at 70 though, but that was after I won a film award at 68 but before I started gym classes at 72. At 78 I do find my mind declining, but that is because I find learning programming quite hard, though it appears from my acquaintances, not as hard as it is for the 30-somethings who have other things to do. My friends in the 70-80s write books, go scuba diving, play jazz, run companies. Some have degrees and some not. Those that have feel that it doesn't make much difference providing you are generally active and not too much concerned with what you are supposed to be doing and concentrate on what you want to do.
I think this is an important point you are making... I am 36 (going to 37 soon) and I have every interest to consider the research invalid ;-) My main consideration is that every day, the brain keeps piling huge amounts of information, consciously and subconsciously... Eventually, the weight of all this will make the brain functions slower. It may be a simplistic view but I think it is not too far from truth... Besides, I am beyond my peak now and I am automatically excused for saying stupid things...
Funny that you mention that as a slightly older person you have lots of different sources for questions you are asked and yet you are firing off an answer of your own without reading the article. You seem to have missed the conclusions of the article.
It doesn't say anything about your effectiveness, your ability to deal with real world problems, or any learned skill. It even says this in the summary:
while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60
BTW The article linked didn't say that much anyway, but from the abstract it sounds like the research was very rigorous and well thought out.
Having said that, the answer you gave was actually interesting and I don't disagree with it.
n back is boring. And not adaptive enough. Someone make a fun version that is more adaptive.
I just found 3D dual n-back Speed Run. Makes it a bit more interesting.
-metric
Actually, I fully agree with you. I noticed up until my later teens, I could learn some things much more quickly than I can now. However, today, I've also learned how to learn things faster. Some things I can memorize quite quickly, would have taken me a whole week to do before. (And this is a talent I've only had for a couple of years, since my 30's).
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Not at all. In fact, if anything I *have* to be more creative -- because when I was young, I had enough time (measured in days compared to my hours of free time now) to create things. Now that I'm old and have a life and a job and responsibilities, and relatively short on free time to do those same things (such as composing music), I am forced to maximize that time, so I am far more advanced than I was.
I think this is partially due to a theory that a friend of mine has (that I'll adapt here): "Art is not created, it is discovered."
I've pondered that for a long time, and still haven't quite made up my mind about it. But, one conclusion it led me to is that the more you are exposed to, the more you can use as a creative base to work with. Obviously, I didn't have the experiences I have now when I was younger, therefore... I think possibly harder to be creative with less stuff in the "library."
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
I wish I could give you a hug.
Damn, that comes off cheesy. But really, you're still alive. You survived all that, and you still have most of your life ahead of you. Don't spend it mourning what's lost.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca