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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.'"
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".
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.
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.
... 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."
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...
Sure, until someone spots a trend that Christians show a greater tendancy towards dementia than Atheists. Then it's a throw-down. Nevermind that it might be an exploratory study, or not be statistically significant (3%?), etc., the problem is as soon as we start doing these kinds of analysis people will take it out of proportion to either support or refute their own niche. The end result is social chaos. No, profiling is not okay. Gathering data is all fine and good, but there's serious ethical questions about how that data is packaged and released.
I mean, look at how many people think evolution is "just a theory", and you might start to realize just how dangerous a little knowledge is in the hands of morons.
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No offense, but TFA is backed up by at least SOME research. They stated the peak was 22.
On what info can you just posit that "The peak is probably somewhere around 24".
Based on what it says it looks like a peak at 22 and then it would plateau until starting to fall again at around 27.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Sounds like you need to take up Go. Comes with handicapping, nobody ever sees to the end from anywhere near the beginning (you could have an IQ of 368, I don't care, you still won't see to the end), played by people of all ages, has nothing to do with reaction times.
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.
How would you know that old people are using correct grammar while the hatchlings are not?
There are other contextual clues that a young person doesn't have the temporal experience to be able to see. You are unacquainted with 1965, while I am fully acquainted with 2005.
And no, I'm sure there are geezers who don't know "they're" ass from a hole in the ground. Illiteracy is the mark of someone who doesn't read.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
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.