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Researchers Find 70-Year-Olds Are Getting Smarter
Pickens writes "AlphaGalileo reports that researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty-year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors, making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages. 'Using the test results, we've tried to identify people who are at risk of developing dementia,' says Dr. Simona Sacuiu. 'While this worked well for the group of 70-year-olds born in 1901-02, the same tests didn't offer any clues about who will develop dementia in the later generation of 70-year-olds born in 1930.' The 70-year-olds born in 1930 and examined in 2000 performed better in the intelligence tests than their predecessors born in 1901-02 and examined in 1971. 'The improvement can partly be explained by better pre- and neonatal care, better nutrition, higher quality of education, better treatment of high blood pressure and other vascular diseases, and not least the higher intellectual requirements of today's society, where access to advanced technology, television and the Internet has become part of everyday life,' says Sacuiu."
and get off my alopecurus pratensis!
Table-ized A.I.
it's well documented that staying active in the workforce is good for the brain, at least when compared to the sedentary tv-filled days of most retirees.
todays 70-year-olds are smarter.... because most of them can't afford to retire.
THL phish sticks
...There predecessors are in their 80s and 90s now or dead. If a 70 year old isn't smarter than a dead person, then I don't understand science!
...researchers from the Universiy of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages.
Dammit, seniors! Get dumber so we can detect your dementia!
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Maybe, smart people armed with health information live longer than not-so-smart people. Or, maybe smart people are richer and can afford healthcare.
You whippersnappers wouldn't be able to get on it in the first place!
* PROBLEM SOLVED *
You're welcome America.
Well they must be getting smarter, they surely can't possibly get any dumber. Being against a public option yet if you try to take away their medicare there'll be hell to pay. I wonder how it is that the stupid seem to often outlive the intelligent.
If you are locked up in a room, detached from communication with the outside world and people look at you as a piece of furniture, you expire faster.
Besides, same is true of all animals, not only 70 year old homo sapiens. Me and my neighbour got our dogs from the same litter almost 19 years ago.
He left his dog more or less on its own. It was a happy and long living pup, but died demented at an age of 15 and a half.
My dog (blame the SO as much as me) has had extensive health care -- supplements, regular checkups, and uses a DIY robo-wheel-chair for walks now, because the hind legs cannot support the weight anymore. It is still alive (almost 19 years old) and alert, although completely deaf and almost blind from the cataract.
So, yeah, medical care, attention and stimulation work.
What else is new?
My dad retired from rockwell at 65 and I was worried for while because spent a couple of years cruising around the country with his girlfriend in their winnebago. Not very stimulating and a recipe for a second heart attack IMHO.
But now he is getting into U3A and spending seemingly half the week there. He is teaching courses, taking courses. Reorganising their local area network, installing servers, griping and moaning about this guy who built the sites databases in access, and generally having a fantastic time.
I just wish I could get him to walk or cycle to U3A rather than driving. Its only five km or so and he can't afford to have his heart seize up again.
I think there used to be this expectation that retirement was a time when you could catch up on all that TV you were missing and create the lawn. Baby boomers have different expectations and this may be helping their prospects.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
knowledge != intelligence
Or since the studies were only done on 600 patients the results are not statistically significant.
From a quick glance in the article, I couldn't find whether or not the test was the same for the 70 year-olds born in 1900 and in 1930. Classic intelligence tests (IQ tests) need to be 'normalized' every few years, because the general populace is getting smarter. If they used the same test, this is not at all surprising. It would hold for a much wider range of ages
80 is the new 60. At this point in life, many of us revert to the "and 1/2" definition favored by 5 year-olds. I'm 77 and three quarters.
I believe that physical, emotional and mental activity prolong life.
Length of life is not as important as quality of life. A factor that's helping me have both is the exceptional preventive health care I get from the US Veteran's Administration. Fifteen years ago, they diagnosed and cured my prostate cancer before it got into my system. They caught my diabetes early, before it did any damage to my heart, eyes, kidneys, etc. and I am healthier for it today.
Sigmund Freud said that mental and emotional health can be measured by ones ability to love and to work. An involved and active life provides both its own health giving benefits and its ongoing joy. I own a business, in which I do most of the work, that builds and hosts web sites. I am active in my community, participating in local issue discussions and confronting office holders to do their jobs. I go out to a movie - big room, big screen - about once a week. I regularly attend live theater, opera, ballet and concerts regularly. I take a good long and fast walk every day, regardless of weather. I have dinner or breakfast with friends at least once a week. When television switched to digital format on June 12, 2009, I gave away my rabbit-ears tv set and have not missed a damn bit of it. In the past 10 years I have spent months at a time as as a traveller (not a tourist) through China, India, Australia, small countries of Asia, many Caribbean islands, etc. and of course, the USA, by bus and train after flying in.
I have a social and sex life. Last week I married a woman 22 years younger than me. She and I first met in 1987, so I admit that both of us have been a little slow in getting to this point.
Most important of all, I have lived the life of Mark Twain espoused. When he was asked, near the end of that long and exciting life filled with crushing failures and exhilarating successes, if he had any regrets, he reflected for a moment and said, "Regrets? Many. And every one of them because of a temptation I resisted."
Carpe diem.
> and uses a DIY robo-wheel-chair for walks now
Any chance you will (or already have) posted instructions or a description of this invention?
I was kind of hoping that by the time my dog will need it, there'd be an affordable exoskeleton available for this problem; on the other hand, given my dog's temperament, he'd be afraid of his own exoskeleton.
...we should have voted for McCain!
Pfft. Even my granny could have told them that.
We used to think people had all the neurons they were going to have by their early twenties. It was all downhill from there. We now know that we can grow new neurons. We also know that the brain can wire around damage.
We now know that the brain is a lot like a muscle. Exercise builds the brain just like it does muscles. Seniors don't have to be feeble. The reason most seniors are feeble is that they quit exercising. Seniors who exercise physically aren't feeble physically. Seniors who exercise their brains aren't feeble minded. BTW, physical exercise is also important for the brain. The brain relies on nourishment from the rest of the body. A feeble body doesn't give the brain what it needs.
The new mantra is 'use it or lose it'.
That was about five years ago. They should do a follow up to see if it was as successful as they hoped.
it's just that the 30 year olds running the tests are getting dumber
Am I misunderstanding this, or does this just sound like a logical extension of the Flynn effect? Everyone's getting smarter, and "everyone" naturally includes seniors, so . . .
Yesterday, my friend's 70 year old dad scalded himself by pouring water from the kettle over his hand to test "whether it had boiled yet". Fortunately we didn't miss the match back home, having been fast-tracked through casualty since he's a doctor at the local hospital.
My masters adviser was a guy named John Fenn. He's now 93 and still quite active in academia today.
When he was about 70 Yale University tried to forcibly retire the guy. The laugh about this is that about this time he started a course of research into characterization of protein molecules that led to a Nobel Prize, awarded in 2002. Because of the retirement flap he left Yale and is now at Virginia Commonwealth.
So was he smart at age 70? Duh.
> ... making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages.
Isn't it some treatment to bring dementia to manifest earlier, so we can treat it precociously?
(*) As usual, I'll probably be modded as troll, and /. will do some port scans in my machine -- possible related to a past grade of trolling associated with my IP. Fine, no problem -- after all, I'm surely not here for the karma... but just for the sake of an intellectually profitable conversation, let me warn you there is something named "irony" (look it up if you don't believe me). It's regrettable that it came down to me having to send a guide to reading my posts. Meh...
CLEARLY Brain Age is responsible for this.
I've personally found that one of the biggest advantages of taking a course at a community college vs a big university is that there are more people 30+ years old. In every class, there is a time almost daily that one of these students has insight to offer that they've gained from the professional world (eg. working in the healthcare industry) or their personal lives (having kids makes you a valuable asset to any psychology class :-). There are a lot of things I'd never get to hear or understand if I was just in a classroom full of my peers (college-age kids).
In a non-academic context, I've always been fascinated by the stories I've heard from old folks. It's almost unbelievable the amount of jobs and cities and roles that can be crammed into one person's life. So I imagine I'd see the same principle, but to a greater effect in a class with a few elders in it. I would love to see seniors come to study at my university simply because of how much I think it would benefit _me_.
I have read that every 20 or 25 years or so the IQ tests have to be re-calibrated to make them harder. This is because of the Flynn effect.
The average IQ scores rise 3 points per decade or 10 points per generation.
One explanation I have heard is that the tests measure how abstract your thinking is and each generation has more and more developed abstract thinking.
So this result should have been expected.
My poor mom is 71 and has dementia. When you loved ones get this, you lose them a little at a time instead of all at once. She used to read voraciously and carry on intellectual conversations. Now that is all gone. She taught me to think for myself.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Now lets just get working on the 10-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds.....
It is very logical, if you consider how their education and background was.
They started out as children of people who believed that the sun rotates around the earth.
Also, they are smarter, because the previous 70-year-olds were not very well educated and healthy.
Leaded petrol introduced to Europe during WWII was phased out during 90s due to accumulative neurotoxicity of lead. The guys tested in 2000 had probably much lower blood lead concentration than the group tested in 1971. Chronic lead exposure is known to have adverse effect on short-term memory and concentration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning
If we know our children are getting smarter quicker because of the constant blasting of technology around them, they know how to program the pvr at 5...etc...of course once they get to 70, they will be smarter then last generations 70 year olds.
It is the same with technology, our curve will adapt to match that of technology, we have no choice, because technology is designed by us for us, and mass produced for the population we have, they say in another 10 years everyone will have their own cell phone....if that is true, then no one will left not knowing that you can add speed dial, or contacts to your phone, or sync it with your outlook, or thunderbird etc....step by step we match the technology curve, so of course as time progresses are dying older people are dying smarter then they were generations before.
Therefore I am at least 10 years away from dementia, which is freemdom fromr worrying about life or health or taxes or burial plots.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada