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.'"

Comments

Peaking at 22

[Thelasko]

What a coincidence! That's when most people graduate from college!

Uh-huh

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:Uh-huh

[SatanicPuppy]

So the BBC can't do flamebait? Come on.

And problem solving ability is more useful when you're young anyway, because there are so many problems that you don't know the solution to. Your brain is working overtime, all the time, trying to process crazy new information.

My first mainframe admin job, I lived in a heightened state of awareness, like a 20 point buck during deer season. Every time the system hiccuped or some COBOL job crapped itself I had this adrenaline response...It was off the charts in my previous experience. That weight of hundreds of people and millions of dollars was terrifying.

Now? It's old hat. Where I would have been running around and wracking my brain, I go get a cup of coffee, check the logs, and fix the problem. There's no panic, there's no high-end problem solving even, because I've already solved those problems in the past, I just need to apply that experience to the current problem.

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.

You see what I'm saying? The sort of problem solving that's declining isn't as useful to an adult as the ability to constructively apply experience. It is pejorative to refer to it as an overall decline in problem solving abilities; it's a decline in a type of problem solving ability.

stem cells

[Lord Ender]

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.

Confounding Variable

[TheMeuge]

... 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.

Re:Confounding Variable

[da cog]

...except that the study didn't just show that people over 27 did less well on the score, but also that their scores on certain tests *declined over time*.

So assuming your theory, which basically boils down to supposing that the older people who are taking this test are stupider then those who chose not to take the test and thus bias the outcome, you would also have to explain why this group also just happens to get less good at the test over time than the younger people.

Of course, I suppose it would be too much to assume that the people doing a study such as this probably know what they are doing and probably accounted for such an effect, since they are merely professional scientists and all. :-)

Re:Confounding Variable

[Anarchitektur]

To quote my dad's favorite proverb...

Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

Re:Abstract

[girlintraining]

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.

Nah. Its just that after a while,

[crovira]

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.

I'd like to know why.

[MaWeiTao]

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.