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The mental deterioration of middle age is real, though for most people it's minor. People in their 40s, 50s and early 60s process information and respond more slowly; their brains are more vulnerable to distraction, as Rotman Research Institute scientist Cheryl Grady has shown in MRI studies comparing younger and older brains. By some estimates, the brain shrinks two per cent per decade.
But even these subtle losses can be unsettling. It's disturbing when you find yourself putting the coffee pot in the refrigerator. Many older employees worry about competing with younger, quicker-thinking colleagues. Or that their cognitive missteps are signs of pathology.
Yet there's evidence that despite these declines, the brain can remain strong and even improve its performance well through the middle years. After all, middle-aged people — the same ones who can't remember 20 seconds later the name of someone they've just met at a party — lead think tanks, memorize Shakespeare and are CEOS of multinationals.
Leading researchers in the middle-aged brain are middle-aged themselves.
For many people, middle age brings more confidence, more skill at assessing things quickly, and as neuroscientists are beginning to show, an adaptability in the way the brain functions..
Advances in imaging technology mean researchers can now get a better picture of what's going on in the aging brain, and it turns out there isn't the large-scale neuron death that we once thought was inevitable.
Why the middle-aged brain can be a potent force
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- Public Discussion (17)
Some of the strongest evidence for the resilience of the middle-aged brain comes from University of Washington psychologists (and married couple) Sherry Willis and K. Warner Schaie and their pioneering studies in adult cognition. Over five decades, some 6,000 have taken part in their Seattle Longitudinal Study; the current group ranges in age from 22 to 101. The researchers follow their subjects’ cognitive performance at seven-year intervals.
They found that in four out of six tests, people in middle age perform at a higher level than people in their 20s. They scored better in vocabulary (identifying synonyms), verbal memory (of a list of words), spatial orientation (identifying an object that’s been rotated) and inductive reasoning (seeing patterns in a series of numbers).
“A life span perspective of cognitive development suggests that midlife, the age interval of the 40s through the early 60s, is a period of maximum performance on some of the more complex, higher order mental abilities, such as inductive reasoning, spatial orientation and vocabulary,” Willis and Schaie write in Life in the Middle.
But there are differences between the two genders. Men reach their peak performance in those three abilities in their 50s, while women get there in their early 60s.
“Contrary to stereotypical views of intelligence and the naïve theories of many educated laypersons,” the authors continue, “young adulthood is not the developmental period of peak cognitive function for many of the higher order cognitive abilities.”
An interesting read, with some good practical advice at the very end.
- 3 votes
#1 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 6:28 AM EDTSo this means that there is some hope for all those 13-year-olds I teach???
- 4 votes
#4 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 8:28 AM EDTWhat about the other 75% of the brain that those scientists don't have a clue about? Maybe all that gray stuff kicks in at 60, or maybe we have never needed or called for those capacities.
- 4 votes
#5 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 8:37 AM EDT
Some of the forgetfullness is just information overload that people shouldn't worry about. We see and do more things, meet more people than folks did 50 years ago and add to that way too many passwords and PIN numbers to remember.
I'm convinced that the brain is much more robust than we think. It's well proven that it can access previously unused parts to compensate for loss somewhere else. This is how some people recover from serious head injuries or strokes, why not the same for aging affects as well?
Prevention is key. To slow down the loss of brain cells or balance the loss of cells by activating existing but unused ones. The article makes a good point that diet, physical and mental exercise, smoking and alcohol intake all factor in for good brain health in later life. Sitting on the couch everyday with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other is an easy way to get on a gradual but slippery of decline.
- 6 votes
#6 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 9:07 AM EDTHad-E-Muf
Some of the forgetfullness is just information overload that people shouldn't worry about.
How about this possibility: As our ancestors grew older in times past, their reflexes, hearing etc, tended to decline a bit. Hence those with a genetic trait that allowed them to take in a greater number of stimuli in the environment were more likely to be aware of dangerous things.
- 4 votes
Why not? Those able to acquire more acute senses could survive by avoiding environmental threats and thus carry on their lineage while those with less acute senses die off. A perfect example of natural selection. Still the external stimuli back then doesn't begin to compare bombardment of information we can take in on a daily basis
- 4 votes
But Willis notes that the loss is not so much a loss in mathematical ability but in timed speed.
This tells it all! In our frantic society speed is considered part of intelligence. The solution of most real problems can take days, weeks, months or years. In a sane world, the right answer, one examined and well thought out, trumps the absurd notion that we must work at light speed! This frantic behavior, one engender by an economic system based ever growing profits, requires that people must burn themselves out in the service of runaway corporate greed.
- 6 votes
#7 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 9:58 AM EDTI agree with the slower process ...being in my 60's... distractions? I .. (wait a sec my wife is trying to say something).. now where was I? ...hmm.. Oh yea.. distractions... umm gawd.. have to come back on this one...
- 4 votes
#8 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 11:39 AM EDTAs a person, and peer, to fellowman it is time we promote our brain by positive interaction. Our lives, and others, become enriched when we force good experience to happen. Science has long reported these experiences are remembered more than the mundane. Let us make memories.
- 5 votes
#9 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 2:08 PM EDTThere is one basic problem with this theory .. human nature as it is .. someone has to be right, and there is always someone that is wrong. There are people only in it for themselves, as well looking for something for nothing. It would be impossible to have a segment of our society to agree on anything without someone giving in to something...as illustrated in the halls of Congress.
- 4 votes
Willis made lots of good points. .." ...young adulthood is not the development period of peak cognitive function for many of the higher order cognitive abilities." .... I completely agree.
- 4 votes
#10 - Sat Aug 7, 2010 11:32 PM EDTI am only in the beginning of my thirties and I have a huge amount of memory loss and have a hard time trying to remember what just happened. In turn I can remember most of thie things that happened 20-25 yrs ago. I often ask myself how can this be possible to remember so far back and not 10 minutes ago. The only thing that sticks in my head are basically anything to do with numbers. I am willing to be any part of a research program to help me figure this out, it drives me crazy to forget important things when it is most important to remember them. It gets in the way because I like to learn. but most of the time it is impossible for me to remember it later when needed.
- 3 votes
#11 - Sun Aug 8, 2010 3:02 AM EDTYou're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |
